For the first time in its history, the Iowa Master Farmer Association is hosting a side event at the annual Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue. A panel of Master Farmers will discuss timely topics of interest to everyone.
The World Food Prize Foundation, based in Des Moines, Iowa, hosts the Borlaug Dialogue.
This special Master Farmer side event will take place from 6:25-7:15 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines. Attend all or part of the three-day World Food Prize conference from Oct. 20-22.
The theme of this year’s Borlaug Dialogue is “Before Hunger Wins.” Presentations from farmers, scientists, humanitarians, global leaders and policymakers will center on this urgent question: What will it take to build a world where hunger loses?
Attending the Borlaug Dialogue
There is a registration fee to attend, but a special discount for Iowa residents is available. Visit this link for information and to register. There also is a discount if you only want to attend a side event and not the entire three-day conference.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the World Food Prize, an annual award honoring individuals who have significantly helped improve the quality, quantity or availability of food worldwide. Often described as the “Nobel Prize for food and agriculture,” the award includes a $500,000 cash prize.
The World Food Prize was founded in 1986, conceived by Norman Borlaug. Born and raised on a farm in northeast Iowa, he was an agricultural scientist and 1970 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who led the Green Revolution.
100 years of Iowa Master Farmers
2026 also marks the 100th anniversary of the Iowa Master Farmer award.
Henry A. Wallace established the annual award in 1926 to honor Iowa farmers for “Clear Thinking, Good Farming, Right Living.” That was the motto of his family’s magazine, Wallaces Farmer. He wanted farmers to be recognized the way other professions recognize their best people.
Master Farmer award recipients are honored not only for being productive with their farming, but also how they manage and take care of their land, their family and their community. That includes serving in leadership and volunteer roles to help at church, school, farm organizations, etc.
The “100 Years of Iowa Master Farmers” centennial exhibit will be on display each day of the Borlaug Dialogue.
Ties between Wallace and Borlaug
In addition to being editor of Wallaces Farmer, Henry A. Wallace was a corn breeder. He started a hybrid seed corn company and was instrumental in the adoption of higher-yielding hybrid corn by farmers in the U.S. and other countries.
Like Wallace, Borlaug focused on plant genetics and improving the world’s food supply. These two Iowans, a generation apart, both changed how the world grows food. They knew each other, shared ideas and had mutual respect.
Wallace was the elder statesman of hybrid corn development and the New Deal farm policy. Borlaug was the younger one, a plant pathologist who developed high-yield wheat and turned it into the Green Revolution.
Wallace was already a national leader when Borlaug was still a farm kid. They had shared goals and messages to bring to the world, with timely discussions on topics of interest to help agriculture in the U.S. and abroad feed a hungry world.
Side events at 2026 Dialogue
There will be 12 side events at the 2026 Borlaug Dialogue. The side event hosted by Iowa Master Farmers will include a panel discussion with Steve Berger, Jeff Jorgenson and Larry Buss. Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Association, will facilitate this discussion.
In addition to side events, a number of sessions with interesting speakers and presentations are on the main agenda of the three-day Borlaug Dialogue.
For example, focusing on women in agriculture, a panel discussion titled “What If Her Harvest Changes Everything?” is slated from 9:20-10 a.m. Oct. 20. Iowa Master Farmer April Hemmes, who operates her family’s farm in north-central Iowa, will serve as a panelist alongside female farmers from Germany, Kenya and Ecuador.
Nobel Prize winner is keynote speaker
The keynote speaker at the 2026 Borlaug Dialogue will be Nobel Peace Prize winner Mala Yousafzai. On the main stage from 9-9:30 a.m. Oct. 21, she will address the audience in a presentation titled “When Does a Voice Become a Movement?”
A Pakistani activist for education for young girls, Yousafzai became the youngest recipient in Nobel Prize history at age 17 when she won the award in 2014. She documented life under Taliban rule in a blog during the Taliban’s occupation of an area of Pakistan, eventually becoming a vocal critic and target of the militant group.
In 2012, when she was 15 years old, a Taliban gunman stopped her school bus and shot her in the head.
Yousafzai survived the assassination attempt and became a global advocate for women’s rights, starting the nonprofit Malala Fund in 2013 to expand access to education for young girls around the world. She has helped reform policies and secure billions of dollars in education funding, reaching more than 26 million students worldwide.
The official daily schedule for the Borlaug Dialogue features main-stage sessions, awards ceremonies and networking events. To explore the agenda, click here. To register for the Borlaug Dialogue, click here.
Why Iowans should be there
The 2026 Borlaug International Dialogue is expected to attract more than 1,500 participants from over 60 countries, representing more than 600 organizations across governments, nongovernmental organizations, businesses and academia.
“People travel from around the world to come to Iowa for this special week,” said Mashal Husain, president of the World Food Prize Foundation. “We want to make sure Iowans are there to experience it, too. Our featured speakers include Nobel laureates, hunger fighters and thought leaders from around the world. We will have a robust and dynamic series of conversations.”
To mark the 40th anniversary of the World Food Prize, this year’s event will feature a world-record attempt to package 600,000 meals for families facing food insecurity. Volunteers, including anyone who wants to help, will try to do this in one hour, which would set a record.