This year’s World Food Prize goes to Bread for the World and Heifer International. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack. Visiting with HI grantees in Rwanda)
Next week Nourishing the Planet co-Project Directors Danielle Nierenberg and Brian Halweil are traveling to Des Moines, Iowa to attend and participate in the 2010 World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue Symposium – “Take it to the Farmer”: Reaching the World’s Smallholders – on October 13-15.
The event will celebrate the co-laureates of this year’s World Food Prize, David Beckmann of Bread for the World and Jo Luck, President of Heifer International, an important collaborator of Nourishing the Planet. This year represented a shift as the award was given to grassroots organizations working with farmers to alleviate hunger and poverty instead of scientists.
On Tuesday, October 14th, Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin will be speaking on a panel entitled “Conversation: Smallholder agriculture and biodiversity”. Worldwatch will also be hosting an official side event that morning, a preview briefing of State of the World 2011 featuring Brian and Danielle, additional contributing authors, and a video presentation.
The Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium is held annually as part of the World Food Prize presentation, bringing together international experts and policy leaders to address the latest issues in food security and nutrition.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
