Beginning in July 2008, state funding to the World Food Prize Foundation will more than double when a $1 million annual appropriation, approved last month by the Legislature, goes into effect.

By comparison, the organization received $400,000 from the state this fiscal year and will receive $450,000 in fiscal 2008, which begins July 1. The World Food Prize Foundation has received state funding since 1991.

The money will be used to offset expenses for the annual World Food Prize Symposium and awards ceremony as well as to assist in covering administrative costs, said Kenneth Quinn, the foundation’s president.

The Legislature “saw this increased funding as a way to ensure the annual World Food Prize program will continue to exist and operate in [World Food Prize founder Norman Borlaug’s] honor,” Quinn said. Though the foundation may use the funding to offset operating costs of its planned Hall of Laureates, to be located in the former Des Moines Public Library building, it will not go toward the foundation’s capital campaign for that renovation project, he said.

Quinn said the foundation’s capital campaign has $13.3 million “in the bank,” and that the foundation is in the process of raising the additional $16 million needed.

“We are in the final stages of the negotiations with the city for the transfer of the building, which we hope will take place in the next several months,” Quinn said.