English

Andre Leu
Greeting 2012

The One World Award celebrates inspirational achievements of individuals and their communities showing how powerful personal initiatives based on our values and principles of sustainable and organic agriculture can be. The impressive stories of the finalists and the winners equally encourage men and women in those communities and people in the rest of the world.

IFOAM is proud to be partner and patron of the One World Award and to be among the jury members who selected the 2012 award recipients. It is also our great honor to have once again selected the winner of the One World Lifetime Achievement Award. It goes to the Brazilian organic pioneer and soil scientist Ms. Ana Maria Primavesi.

Not an easy task

Our planet has around one billion undernourished people, all of them are too poor to either produce sufficient amounts of food or to buy enough food for their families. 80% of the hungry are farmers or landless rural laborers and the majority of these people produce organic by default. In this situation, efforts are imperative to support the transition to organic by design. UN studies have confirmed the effectiveness of ecological and social intensification of traditional farming methods.

At a time when troubling news from around the world promote anxiety, uncertainty, and pessimism, the applicants of the One World Award 2012 show us how happiness and wellbeing can be created in real life even under the most difficult circumstances. All applicants deserve our attention, our respect and our admiration.

It was not an easy task to limit the choice to the finalists from Turkey, Nicaragua, India and Cuba.

IFOAM especially applauds the winner, Major Jun from the Philippines who proves that it does not always take non-governmental organizations to respond to people’s needs and make a huge difference in their lives. Thank you and congratulations!

Andre Leu
IFOAM President