WMaria Isabel Andrade is a Cape Verdean food scientist. Andrade has worked in Mozambique as a sweet potato researcher since 1996 and was a co-winner of the 2016 World Food Prize.
WManuel Barange is a biologist. He is the director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Resources Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He is an honorary professor at the University of Exeter. Barange was the Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of Science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the chair of the scientific committee of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. From 2000-2010 he was the Director of the International Project Office of GLOBEC Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics, one of the first ever large programmes working on climate change and marine systems.
WAddeke Hendrik Boerma was a Dutch civil servant who served as the first Executive Director of the World Food Programme from 1962–1967 and as the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization from 1967 until December 1975.
WJohn Boyd Orr, 1st Baron Boyd-Orr,, styled Sir John Boyd Orr from 1935 to 1949, was a Scottish teacher, medical doctor, biologist, nutritional physiologist, politician, businessman and farmer who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his scientific research into nutrition and his work as the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
WOswaldo José de los Ángeles Castro Intriago was an Ecuadorian journalist, teacher, poet, statistician, translator/reviser, and novelist. He was instrumental in founding Chone's first newspaper, the cultural weekly El Iris; in organizing the first census of the city of Quito, Ecuador as president of its technical commission; and in promoting the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization as its liaison officer for Southern Latin America. While in retirement in Madrid, Spain, he published La Mula Ciega (1970), a loosely autobiographical novel about two teenagers coming of age in the early 1900s with Chone, Bahia de Caraquez, Quito, Guayaquil, and the Galapagos as backdrops.
WRené Castro Salazar, is FAO's Climate, Biodiversity, Land and Water Department Assistant-Director General and a former Costa Rican politician.
WVirender Lal Chopra was an Indian biotechnologist, geneticist, agriculturalist and a director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), known to have contributed to the development of wheat production in India. He was the chancellor of Central University of Kerala, a Chancellor of the Central Agricultural University, Imphal and a member of the Planning Commission of India. An elected fellow of several science academies such as Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, European Academy of Sciences and Arts and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), he was a recipient of a number of honors including Borlaug Award, FAO World Food Day Award and Om Prakash Bhasin Award. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1985, for his contributions to agricultural science.
WJacques Diouf was a Senegalese diplomat and the Director-General of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from January 1994 to 31 December 2011. He died on 17 August 2019, 16 days after his 81st birthday.
WJosé Graziano da Silva is a Brazilian American agronomist and writer. As a scholar, he has authored several books about the problems of agriculture in Brazil. Between 2003 and 2004, Graziano served in the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva cabinet as Extraordinary Minister for Food Security, being responsible for implementing the Fome Zero program, which was a focal point of the Lula Administration's cash transfer program Bolsa Familia. On June 26, 2011, Graziano was elected director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), becoming the first Latin American ever to hold the position. After his first term from 1 January 2012 to 31 July 2015, Graziano da Silva was re-elected for a second 4 year-term during FAO's 39th Conference.
WJanie Simms Hipp is the founder of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas, founder of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Office of Tribal Relations in the Office of the Secretary, founding Executive Director of the Native American Agriculture Fund, agriculture and food lawyer, and policy expert. Hipp's work focuses on the intersection of Indian law and agriculture and food law. On June 10, 2021, she was confirmed as USDA General Counsel, the first Native American to serve in that role.
WChavonda Jacobs-Young is an American government executive who serves as the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. The Agricultural Research Service is the USDA's chief, in-house scientific research agency with 1,800 scientists and 90 laboratories throughout the world. Jacobs-Young has been the administrator since February 2014. In 2001, Jacobs-Young became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D in paper science.
WSardara Singh Johl is an Indian agriculture economist, writer, politician and the chancellor of the Central University of Punjab. A former National Professor of Agricultural Economics of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, he served as the vice chancellor of the Punjabi University and Punjab Agricultural University during different tenures and chaired the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices set up by the Government of India. He is a former director of the Central Board of Governors of the Reserve Bank of India and a former consultant to international bodies such as Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 2004, for his contributions to Agriculture and agriculture education.
WManoj Juneja is, since January 2013, assistant executive director and chief financial officer at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Prior to joining WFP, he served in 2011-12 as deputy director-general for operations at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and in 2003-04 as executive director, support services and treasurer and financial comptroller at the International Labour Organization (ILO).
WChandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is a Sri Lankan politician who served as the fifth President of Sri Lanka, from 12 November 1994 to 19 November 2005. The country's only female president to date, she is the daughter of two former prime ministers and was the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) until the end of 2005.
WThemba Nhlanganiso Masuku is a Swazi politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Eswatini since 2018 and as Acting Prime Minister from 13 December 2020 to 16 July 2021. Earlier, he served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2008 until 2013.
WClodomir Santos de Morais was a Brazilian sociologist who originated the Organization Workshop (OW) and the associated Activity-based Large Group Capacitation Method (LGCM).
WJan Mulder is a Dutch politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1994 until 2004 and from 2010 until 2014. He is a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a member party of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
WValentín Paz Andrade was a Galician lawyer, writer, politician, journalist, poet, businessman and economist.
WQu Dongyu took up office as the ninth Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations on 1 August 2019. He is the first Chinese national to head the Organization. Qu won the nomination on the first round of voting at the 41st FAO Conference on 23 June 2019, obtaining 108 of the 191 votes cast by the 194 member countries. He is married, with one daughter.
WEinar Ragnarsson Kvaran was an Icelandic engineer, teacher, genealogist and writer. He lived in America much of the latter part of his life and was the author of the Our Ancestors newspaper series.
WEdouard Victor Saouma was a Lebanese civil servant who served as Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for three consecutive terms from 1976 to 1993.
WVictoria Sekitoleko is a former Minister of Agriculture in the Ugandan government, a post she held from 1986 to 1995. She was a representative for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in China, Mongolia, and South Korea She previously served as the FAO's representative in Ethiopia to the African Union (AU), and to the Economic Community for Africa (ECA) (2005–2006). She was FAO Sub Regional Representative to Eastern and Southern Africa, based at Harare, Zimbabwe.(1995–2004). Recently appointed to the Biyinzika Poultry International Limited (BPIL) Board in June 2017.
WMaria Helena Semedo is a Cape Verde economist and politician who currently serves as Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
WBinay Ranjan Sen, CIE, ICS, was an Indian diplomat and Indian Civil Service officer. He served as Director General (1956–1967) of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). He drew on his experience as relief commissioner (1942–1943) during the Bengal famine of 1943 to build the FAO from a data-gathering bureaucracy into a major force against world hunger.
WEdward Franciszek Szczepanik was a Polish economist and the last Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile.
WAnn Tutwiler was the Director General of Bioversity International from July 2013 to February 2019 and the first woman Deputy Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from January 2011 to November 2012.
WGerritje "Gerda" Verburg is a Dutch politician and diplomat of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party and trade union leader
WJoan Scott Wallace was the first Black female leader of the United States Department of Agriculture, serving as Assistant Secretary. Wallace also served as a diplomat, and outside of government service was a psychologist and educator.