Fish-farming pioneer wins 'Nobel of food'

US - The $250,000 World Food Prize, considered by many the Nobel Prize of food and agriculture, was awarded today to an Indian scientist credited with launching a "blue revolution" (a rapid increase in fish production) in the developing world.

Modadugu Gupta has spent 30 years creating a cheap and ecologically sustainable system of small-scale fish-farming using abandoned ditches and seasonally flooded fields and water holes smaller than the average swimming pool.

The small ponds become tiny food factories, churning out protein and income for more than 1 million families in Southern and Southeast Asia and Africa. Gupta's work has multiplied freshwater fish production in those countries by three to five times, says Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation.

Source: USA TODAY