Ms. Josette Sheeran is Vice-Chairman of the World Economic Forum and a member of the Managing Board. She previously served as Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme and Chair of the UN High-Level Committee on Management. She has been named as Forbes 100 most powerful women and amongst Foreign Policy's Top 100 most influential "Twitterati". She serves on several boards including Mars Global Advisors, the Center for Strategic and International Studies Development Council and the US State Department's International Council on Women's Business Leadership Committee on access to markets. She was Under-Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs at the US Department of State responsible for economic issues including development, trade, agriculture, finance, energy, telecommunications and transportation. In 2006 she was appointed to the High-level UN Panel on System-wide Coherence in the areas of development, humanitarian assistance and the environment. Ms Sheeran also served as Deputy US Trade Representative responsible for trade negotiations in Asia and Africa. She was Managing Director of Starpoint Solutions and was also President and CEO of Empower America. She has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize Juror and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He was born in Tokyo on 11th of August, 1933. He is 78 years old now. In the period of the war, he evacuated from Tokyo to the suburbs of Tsu city of Mie prefecture where his mother’s parents lived for 6 months and returned Tokyo after the end of the war.

He graduated Seikei junior high, high school and Agricutural department of Tokyo University. After the school he worked at National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences for 7 years then moved to Mie University as a teacher and had been working there for 34 years. He took the degree of Agricultural Doctor from Tokyo University on October of 1969. He visited Swedish Agricultural Science University as a visiting researcher 2 times from 1974 to 1980.for 11 months. He became a professor emeritus of Mie University on September of 1997.

His special fields are soil science, plant nutrition, environmental chemistry and analytical chemistry. He is a foreign member of Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.

He visited Thailand on 1979 as the first time, after that visited there 81 times and stayed there for 15 years in total.

His motto is “Dream and Play” and his nickname in Thailand is “MANAO” that means lime in Thai language and that came from the similarity of the pronunciation of his name “Nasanao” and of course he planted many lime trees.

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu is a leading social entrepreneur and Executive Director of The Smallholders Foundation, a social development organization based in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria which he founded in 2003 at the age of 21. The organization promotes sustainable agricultural development and environmental conservation beneficial to rural poor small farmers, through educational radio programs and field practical demonstrations. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History and International Studies form Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria and a Masters in Development and Cooperation from Institute for Advanced Studies, The University of Pavia, Italy.

Through his organization owned community radio station, The Smallholder Farmers Rural Radio (Farm 98.0 FM), Nnaemeka develops and broadcasts 10 hours daily agricultural, environmental management and market information radio programs in the local Igbo Language radio which informs, educates and improves the economic and environmental management capacity of 250,000 small farmer listeners living in 3 local catchment areas of Imo State, Nigeria. Since, 2007 65% of his radio program present listeners have increased their agricultural yield by 50% and their household income by 45%.

There are nominations from 15 countries for “The 2nd Niigata International Food Award” and the 3 winners are selected.

We are really grateful from the bottom of our heart for various nominators and the members of selection committee.

We hope to contribute for the development of the world and our region through our award, and try harder to establish the international stronghold of the information on food here in Niigata.

The awarding ceremony and the commemorative lectures will be held on this coming 15th and 16th of October in Niigata City. We appreciate much of your attendance.

Henceforth we wish your continuous support to our foundation and the warm understandings for the ”Niigata International Food Award”.

I am very pleased to announce that, in response to our call for the nominees, there were a number of nominations from fifteen countries all over the world.

As a rule, only one winner is planned to be selected for each of the Main Prize, The Sano Touzaburo Special Prize and The 21st Century Hope Prize. The Selection Committee members tried their best to select the best candidates by reviewing the documents and also by serious discussion. 　

For the Main Prize, document review was conducted by the Selection Committee for the evaluation of each candidate recommended from around the world. We also had a face-to-face discussion and suggested to the board those candidates who put the high score ranking.

For the Sano Touzaburo Special Prize and the 21st Century Hope Prize, there were candidates recommended from around the world. We made the similar selection processes and suggested to the board one or two candidates who put the high score ranking.

The final winners for these prizes were decided by the council based on the suggestion from the Selection Committee.

 I would like to express my sincere thank to those who kindly made recommendations for excellent candidates, and also to the member of the Selection Committee for their effort.