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MONTE CARLO, Monaco • For the second time in 10 years, a Canadian has won the title of World Entrepreneur of the Year.

The world’s top-seeded entrepreneur is now Murad Al-Katib, a former civil servant from Regina who quit his job in 2004 to go door to door to persuade Saskatchewan farmers to grow more pulse crops, such as lentils and beans. Spotting the need to produce more high-quality protein for a hungry world has built into a TSX-listed public company with 2016 revenues of $2.1 billion. It’s considered the world’s largest vertically integrated supply chain for lentils, chickpeas and peas.

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Al-Katib’s story offers all the ingredients that the WEOY program, run by consulting firm EY, likes to see in its winner: humble origins, big success and massive impact, both in its industry and on society. As a result of Al-Katib’s work, Canada now produces 65% of the world’s lentils, which is not just a protein-rich super-crop, but actually nourishes the soil as it grows.