Turning mines to vines

World Food Prize laureate honored for work to demine war-torn areas, restoring land to farmers 

Heidi Kühn was in a minefield in Azerbaijan when she learned she had won this year’s World Food Prize.

It was a fitting location since this year’s World Food Prize laureate is being recognized for the work she and her foundation, Roots of Peace, are doing to remove land mines in conflict-ravaged areas and restore that land for agricultural production.

The Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation announced Kühn’s selection during a ceremony last spring at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Kühn received the prize during a ceremony at the Capitol in Des Moines on Oct. 26 during the Borlaug Dialogue, the weeklong event that brings together scientists, agriculture industry leaders and government officials from around the world to discuss strategies to fight global food insecurity.

The World Food Prize was founded in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work to improve the world’s food supply. Borlaug, a Cresco, Iowa, native who was known as the father of the “Green Revolution,” died in 2009.

Kühn works from the Roots of Peace headquarters in an office in the basement of her home, where she has deactivated land mines as desk ornaments. 

Her first fundraiser was hosted by winemaker Robert Mondavi, and along the way she has received financial support from the likes of Diane Disney Miller, the daughter of Walt Disney. Jeff Skoll, co-founder of eBay, contributed $1 million, which Kühn said was leveraged over the years to grow to $200 million.

Kühn also talks about her journey as a cervical cancer survivor and how that has affected her desire to do something bigger.

The Business Record sat down with Kühn to discuss her selection as the 53rd World Food Prize laureate and the impact her work is having on people who live in areas where land is being restored to grow crops.

Here is some of what we learned about Kühn’s  journey. Her responses have been edited for length and clarity.

How did you begin your work to remove land mines?

It was a vision. It was Sept. 21, 1997, and the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco had a cancellation and they asked me if I would host this group [of about 100 people] that was doing something on land mines. It was just three weeks after Princess Diana died. It wasn’t just a princess. It was her compassion, seeing her walk through the minefields of Bosnia-Herzegovina and no one was really talking about land mines before she died. So it really just came from my heart, a toast that was made, “May the world go from mines to vines,” and you could hear a pin drop. To take that other than a beautiful, prophetic toast out of the living room of my home and into the world, that was really where the challenge started.

Please describe a challenge you have faced in your work

This past Christmas Eve, the Taliban announced that women [in Afghanistan] could not work for an international [nongovernmental organization], and the women were frightened. I’m a founder of an internal NGO, so I immediately got on the phone through Zoom, and we decided we were going to stay there. We serve no flag. We serve the farmer. And adhering to the very strict rules of the regime, we’re not political in any way, shape or form, but when I spoke to my team [on Oct. 2], they shared with me that since February, Roots of Peace has directly worked and impacted and paid 5,000 Afghan women. Now they’re bringing kitchen gardens into their homes because they can’t leave their homes without a [man accompanying them]. But we’re bringing the fruits into their homes, and the men are supportive because they can feed their children.

Share a story how your work has directly affected a family or individual

One mother who was on the line [the Zoom call] was just in tears. She said she and her husband have six children and her husband came home one day and said they had to sell their 10-year-old daughter because they couldn’t afford to feed the other five children and themselves. So she applied and somehow got to Roots of Peace and we gave her a job. And with tears, she said she didn’t have to sell her daughter because Roots of Peace employed her. Sometimes when I stay up in the middle of the night wondering what I’m doing and this job has just gotten too hard, there’s always an angel around the corner. And the World Food Prize will allow me to have this platform to get the importance of this out there. Afghanistan is a country 80% dependent upon agriculture for jobs, yet it conversely is the most heavily mined country in the world. And today, 90% unemployment. So our business model for peace, demine, replant, rebuild, is a game changer. I believe the world can come together. And we will be pivoting from Afghanistan to another tough neighborhood, and that’s Ukraine.

What does being awarded the World Food Prize do to elevate awareness around the importance of the work done by Roots of Peace?

I have always been deeply inspired by Norman Borlaug, and I would love to have this as a springboard to lead the horticultural revolution because it gives dignity to farmers. It’s not just dropping food off as a Band-Aid and hoping it gets distributed. We are empowering the farmers with a sustainable business, a model for peace and providing food security. I think this will help raise awareness from the heartland of America to the world. When we look at Ukraine and watch with apathy, 30% of the country is being mined. The future of humanity is at risk unless we can take stock of what we have physically done to the Earth. This is a physical manifestation of the ability of humans to restore. The Earth and the soil, it forgives us. And I can say since I walked my first minefield in January 2000 in Croatia when there were 1.2 million land mines, I have seen a war-torn country go to one of the top tourist destinations in the world. If we can do that in Croatia, we can use our collective wisdom and resources to get this very expensive job of demining [done]. But then the land is cleansed and restored back to the farmers.

What does it mean to you personally to receive this recognition?

When you’ve had cancer, you know, and you have four small children and blessed with a fourth child after surviving cervical cancer, I made a conscious decision if I got it back again. I want my children to remember what I stood for in this life. And I felt passionately about land mines. I feel so embarrassed when people say thank you for doing this. I’ve done just a little. There’s just such a sense of responsibility that I have to do more. Every time I come back from another minefield, I have to do more. I can’t turn my back on the Afghan women and the Afghan farmers, and the World Food Prize is the only way that I can say that speaking from this basement where I’ve been working for these past 26 years and now as a grandmother, I can just hope and pray that I can properly share those stories of the farmers and families that I have met who will never have an opportunity to have their voices heard. But peace is possible, I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and peace through agriculture, I believe very humbly, is the pathway forward for humanity. 

I am fifth-generation Marin County, my family were ranchers, they were farmers and they purchased a 2,500-acre ranch. My dad milked the cows before he went to work, and I can say that my daddy passed away in my arms from COVID almost a year ago, on Oct. 23. When you have a dad who is supportive of a daughter going off to turn mines into vines and restoring agriculture for farmers, it wasn’t really a big thing to do. But when he passed away, this year will be the one-year anniversary of his passing when I get the World Food Prize. I just look my eyes to heaven and just think how proud my daddy would be of me.

What’s next for Roots of Peace?

I’m so very grateful to be alive. And I think very much as a cancer survivor, cancer is a land mine and none of us know when we’re going to step on it. The epiphany to me is that cancer is a land mine to the earth. There are an estimated 60 million land mines in 60 countries. It takes only eight pounds of pressure to detonate, the average weight of a newborn child. So every land mine out of the ground and every tree planted, it produces fruit for food security, but that tree is also producing carbon to restore the lungs of Mother Nature because we’re so off balance with climate change. So we have really developed a business model for peace, demine, replant, rebuild, so we’re going to  launch this campaign at the World Food Prize, the Demine, Replant, Rebuild Alliance. And we have formed a partnership with farmers at Mykolaiv, [Ukraine], outside of Odessa, and we have formed a partnership with them with the Rotary Club of San Francisco and the Rotary Club of Odessa. And I can announce that we’ve raised $164,000 for our mines to vines project there. Some of the best wines grew in this region. It’s a little seed of money compared to the billions that will be needed, but they’re so excited because those mines will come out. Grapevines will be planted. And we’re going to be restoring the cold storage, the bottling companies that have been bombed, and bringing the vintners from Napa Valley to teach them best practices. ν