The Eiselen Foundation Ulm awarded the Justus von Liebig- Award for World Nutrition for the first time in 2009 for outstanding performance in the field against hunger and rural poverty. The Kenyan Godrick Simiyu Khisa accepted the award endowed with 25,000 Euros at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. He was honored for the successful implementation of the "Farmer Field School" concept in his home country. With his practical agricultural advice, he provided effective self-help on the spot and laid the foundation for improved productivity of smallholder farming.

The award winner is a pioneer of sustainable agricultural development in his home country. “Godrick Khisa's contribution to the world nutrition is the dissemination of a learning-by-doing-concept, which creates a sum of many small improvements in thousands of African peasant families,” said Professor Dr. Hartwig de Haen, agricultural expert and long-serving associate Director-General of the World Food Organization UN (FAO), in his laudation. “In this intermediary role between agricultural science and agricultural practice, he represents an encouraging example in Africa, which has often been dismantled as hopeless.”

The Farmer Field School (FFS) was first introduced to rice cultivation in Asia in the 1980s and 1990s - in that time as part of the development of Integrated Pest Management. “Khisa has brought the FFS concept to Kenya and adapted it to the local conditions - in spite of all doubt and resistance”, de Haen continues. This marks the first award winner of the Justus von Liebig-Award for World Nutrition. De Haen concluded: "Thanks to Khisa, the FFS system has spread like a bushfire - not just a destructive, but a constructive - in Africa.”