Des Moines Register
10-18-07
Heroes of food, heads of state dot D.M. confab
Also seen at the downtown Marriott: A biodiesel-powered sport utility vehicle -- in
a third-floor conference room.
By REID FORGRAVE
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
These folks just don't come around our little Iowa capital city every day.
At the hunger-fighting events leading up to tonight's World Food Prize laureate
award ceremony at the Iowa Capitol, plenty of impressive faces, and plenty of
impressive stories, are turning up at Des Moines' Marriott Hotel downtown.
Among those scurrying between the Marriott's second- and third-floor conference
rooms this week are former African heads of state, current United Nations
ambassadors, a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- and a farm girl from Polk, Neb.,
who loves 4-H.
To be fair, Natalie Hahn isn't just any other farm girl. First off, her father was
Dwight Burney, who served as Nebraska's Republican lieutenant governor for
several years in the 1950s and 1960s and who was the state's governor for a few
months after Gov. Ralph Brooks died in office in 1960.
Second, Hahn's career has taken a different direction from those of most farm
girls who grew up in an east-central Nebraska town of 300. After graduating from
the University of Nebraska in 1967, Hahn went to New Zealand and India to live
with farming families on the International 4-H Youth Exchange Program. That
began a life spent abroad, as Hahn worked for the United Nations system for 35
years.
She worked at the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome. She
lived in Nigeria for five years, researching women and crops. At Harvard
University, she wrote her doctoral thesis on women's legal status in agrarian
reform and land ownership in Ethiopia. She served as the representative for the
United Nations Children's Fund in Malawi and adopted six Malawian children
during her five years in the southeastern African country.
Then she came home.
Hahn and her family live in Central City, Neb., and keep a farm in Polk County,
Neb., where she grew up. And when she got back from 35 years with the United
Nations system, she started a foundation in Nebraska. It's called the Malaika
Foundation, and it means "my angel" in Swahili. The organization encourages
Nebraska teachers to think and teach globally.
"My mother would always say, 'Hey, it's great that you're introducing soybeans to
the rural women of Nigeria, but what are you doing for Nebraska?' " Hahn
laughed.
Now, after more than three decades hopping around the world, she's back home,
fulfilling her mother's wish.
If there's one theme that runs through every participant here, it's this: Connect
scientific knowledge throughout the globe.
Just ask Karim Maredia.
He's from a small village in India, a place where a small farm is one acre. Where
he is now - in America, as a professor at Michigan State University and director
of the World Technology Access Program -- 400 acres is a small farm.
"We share our knowledge and information with people around the world,"
Maredia said of his program. "We are Dr. Borlaug's children. ... We want to build
a global community of researchers. This was the true vision of Dr. Borlaug."
Maredia would know. He spent three years in Mexico, studying at Nobel Peace
Prize winner Norman Borlaug's research center.
Now, the program Maredia started at Michigan State aims to share knowledge
among the world agricultural community -- a goal that's similar to the Borlaug
Fellows Program, which began in 2004 and brings scientists from around the
world to American universities for short-term training in their fields.
Maredia's university has hosted 10 Borlaug fellows. At this week's World Food
Prize events, there are 44 Borlaug fellows from 17 countries, including China, Sri
Lanka, Serbia, Comeroon, Uganda, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. There have been
300 Borlaug fellows since the program started.
And then there was the SUV.
Workers were setting up displays Wednesday morning in a soon-to-be-bustling
conference room at the Marriott. The Iowa Corn Growers Association, the Iowa
Renewable Fuels Association, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Iowa
State University Bionewables Initiative, Pioneer, Instapro, TechnoChem -each had its own booth.
But what was that, smack dab in the middle of the Marriott's Des Moines Room?
A Jeep Liberty trail-rated 4x4?
A sticker on back indicated it was "powered by Soy Bio Diesel." Giant photos of
soybeans adorned each side of the Iowa Soybean Association vehicle.
But this was on the third floor of the hotel - no doubt a tough place to get an SUV.
Which begs the question: Does biodiesel have more potential than we ever
expected?
Did biodiesel give this Jeep Spider-Man-esque building-scaling powers? Can this
new frontier in fuel, the product that some say will help solve America's
geopolitical quandary in the Middle East -- can it also help us fly?
The question was posed to maintenance workers: How did this sport utility
vehicle make it to the third floor of a hotel?
They pointed to the corner of the conference room, at a huge commercial-grade
elevator.