Food Prize for Pioneer in Drip-by-Drip Farming Efficiency I've intersected a few times with Daniel Hillel, a pioneering agricultural innovator from Israel, and each time I've come away with new insights, often about subjects far broader than the efficient irrigation methods he devised and refined, which have helped dry regions around the world feed themselves. It's great to see him named this year's recipient of the World Food Prize, an award created in 1987 by another agricultural leader, Norman Borlaug (read Justin Gillis's fine obituary of Borlaug here). Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the award at the State Department this morning. His achievements are described in depth here. Hillel will receive the $250,000 award in Des Moines, Iowa, the home of the prize foundation, in October. One challenge will be finding ways to spread this kind of efficiency ethic into other arenas, like energy, where ready sources - like coal and oil - remain abundant and cheap (in monetary terms) but pose long-term environmental risks. Maybe he can jump fields in coming years. One of Hillel's most inspiring and valuable traits is his devotion to interdisciplinary inquiry and the borderless exchange of ideas. That trait was on display last year in a lecture he gave at a meeting on climate change and agriculture in Punjab, India: Before diving into the heart of his talk on soil and climate, he began with a sweeping and illuminating discussion of the importance of collaborative learning and discourse in considering environmental risks and opportunities. Here's a snippet: We organized our universities by dividing the disciplines into departments and these departments didn't much interact with one another - as if it is possible to divide the world into discrete units. Everything is interlinked. And we have come belatedly to realize as environmental scientists how interdependent all of these facets of knowledge must be. In the olden world we would divide scientists between specialists and generalists. Those who were the specialists studied more and more about less and less until ultimately they would know everything about nothing. And the generalists studied less and less about more and more until presumably they would know nothing about everything. And what is the answer? The answer is we must study more and more about more and more. And to do so, because we are limited, each of us, in our ability to know, we have to associate. We have to cooperate. We have to reconstitute our research institutes and our educational modes and curricula so as to be able to cooperate - internationally, interdisciplinarily. This is one aspect of what I've been calling the emerging Knowosphere. As I put it not long ago on Google+: T-shaped people are great: Deep in one area, but able to connect to others. Comb-shaped communities are even better: ITTTTTI Congratulations, Dr. Hillel!