Wall Street Journal correspondent and now author Roger Thurow speaks in Conrad.

Hunger and malnutrition are some of the greatest challenges facing the world today, and that was the subject of a keynote speech delivered by former Wall Street Journal correspondent and now author Roger Thurow during the opening night of the national summer celebration for Growing Hope Globally on July 26 in Conrad.

Thurow has been a senior fellow on global food and agriculture for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs since 2010 after three decades at The Wall Street Journal. He is an expert on agricultural development and speaks often on high-visibility platforms related to nutrition, hunger and agriculture in the U.S., Europe and Africa.

In 2003, he and WSJ colleague Scott Kilman wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Thurow and Kilman are authors of the book “ENOUGH: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.”

He is also the author of “The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.” His most recent book, “The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children-and the World,” was published in May 2016.

“Hunger and malnutrition are two of the biggest challenges facing the world today, but also some of the ones that can be overcame,” Thurow said. “Everyone of us can contribute to the challenge of world hunger and that is how being involved with projects like Growing Hope Globally can help.”

While in Ethiopia in 2003, Thurow said it was then what he saw that changed his life as a journalist.

“The first 1,000 days – from the time a mother becomes pregnant to the end of the child’s second year of life are most critical and crucial to his or her development. One out of every four children in these overseas countries are stunted – that is too short and underdeveloped for their age. And in developing countries that goes down to one out of three,” Thurow said. “This results in a lost chance of greatness. My role now is to help raise the awareness that we all need to ‘give a damn’ about world hunger and what each of us can do about it.”

Thurow said hunger does not only exist in the world countries overseas, but also right here in the United States. “What are we going to do about malnutrition in our own country?” he asked.

“A malnourished child anywhere in the world, is actually a malnourished child everywhere in the world. The first 1,000 days is a real challenge. Are we ready to meet it?” he said.