• Submitted by: admin
• Environment
• international
• 05 / 22 / 2010

---

HAVANA, Cuba, May 20 (acn) The representative of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Havana, Ana Maria Navarro, congratulated Cuban researcher Humberto Rios Labrada who on Monday became the first Cuban to receive the Goldman Environmental Prize, sometimes called the Green Nobel and the largest prize in the world given to grass-roots environmentalists.

Humberto Rios Labrada is an expert on biodiversity research with the Cuban National Institute of Agricultural Sciences and he has been working with nearly 50,000 Cuban farmers. His campaign involves choosing the crops and seed varieties best for their
lands and educating farmers on how to grow strong healthy crops with less dependence on farm chemicals.

He has also been lecturing across Cuba on how to mix seed combinations to improve yields and quality, techniques that have helped produce bigger beans, tastier squash, heartier rice and better varieties of other crops across the country.

The six Goldman 2010 recipients were announced last April by an international jury that chose the winners among candidates from six regions worldwide. Winners received $150,000 at a ceremony in San Francisco on Monday night.
 
The prize has been awarded to 139 people from 79 countries since philanthropist Richard Goldman and his late wife Rhoda created it in 1990.

Source: ACN