Men behind the doomsday seed vault in the Arctic win World Food Prize WFTV [Video]

DES MOINES, Iowa — (AP) — As Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin began thinking about ways to prevent starvation and protect the world’s food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea anybody ever had” — a global seed vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain.

About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the U.S. special envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, an agricultural scientist from the United Kingdom, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a backup spot for seeds that could be used to breed new crops if existing seed banks were threatened by wars, climate change or other upheaval. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be named 2024 World Food Prize laureates for their work.

“To a lot of people today, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It’s a valuable natural resource and you want to offer robust protection for it,” he said in an interview from Saudi Arabia. “Fifteen …