In a post on the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog,” Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, discusses the impact of witnessing how road development influenced the introduction of “miracle rice” in Vietnam.

“As a young man, I saw the dramatic, positive influence of agricultural development on smallholders. Villages remained intact, incomes increased, young children gained exceptional opportunities, and benefits spread throughout rural society. Increased yields were key to lifting people out of poverty and eliminating hunger – all from the new rice and the new roads. It’s a lesson that is still appropriate and resonant today,” he writes (6/21).