Claire had a fantastic opportunity this week – she was selected as a participant in the World Food Prize Symposium Youth Institute. Usually a teacher accompanies the student to the three day all-expenses paid trip to the symposium, but Claire’s teacher had attended before and asked if Linda or I would like to attend in her place due to our professional and personal interests in agriculture.
The ceremony awarding the World Food Prize, essentially the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture, was held at the Iowa State Capital Building. It was a formal affair. Here the students line the stairway, ready to greet dignitaries and attendees to the ceremony and dinner.
A huge illuminated earth was placed in the capital rotunda.
Here, winner of this year’s food prize, Gebisa Ejeta, gets down with dancers from his native Ethiopia as part of the ceremony.
The actual ceremony itself was the only event that the accompanying teachers could not attend as the ceremony had sold out of the $450.00 dollar tickets. In the past, it had not sold out, so teachers attended live – instead we were ushered in to the state capital law library and watched the broadcast of the event live, as it was broadcast statewide and on the internet via Iowa Public Television.