More than 1,000 volunteers gathered at the Iowa Events Center Tuesday night to package more than 600,000 hunger relief meals, turning the World Food Prize’s discussions about food insecurity into a hands-on effort.
Organizers announced the volunteers had broken the record for the most hunger relief meals packaged in one hour. The previous record was 533,000 meals, according to World Food Prize Foundation President Mashal Husain. A Guinness World Records representative was on site to monitor the attempt.
The meal-packing event marked the 40th anniversary of the Borlaug Dialogue, the World Food Prize Foundation’s annual gathering of people working on global food security. Husain said this year’s conference brought together participants from more than 50 countries and 400 organizations to discuss hunger, poverty, water scarcity and the effects of war and conflict on food access.
“Alongside our daily Borlaug Dialogue, the sessions that people have a chance to listen in to, we thought, why not put it in practice?” Husain said. “And while we’re addressing hunger, let’s do something about it.”
The meals include rice, soy protein, dried vegetables and vitamins. Husain said the plan was to split the meals between hunger relief efforts in Iowa and overseas.
World Food Prize Foundation CEO Thomas Vilsack said the effort also called attention to food insecurity in Iowa. He said one in eight Iowans is food insecure and one in six children may go without enough to eat at some point during the week or month.
“About 1,300 people decided tonight, ‘We’re going to make a statement about Iowans and about food insecurity,’” Vilsack said.
Nick Miller, who volunteered with a group from Jimmy John’s, said people worked together across the assembly line, weighing ingredients and sealing meal bags.
“It feels really good to be a part of the record and to be able to break the record and smash the record, frankly, is what it sounds like,” Miller said.
The Dialogue’s discussions also focused on how crops can support both food security and farmers’ livelihoods. In a panel about cowpea and cassava, Kira Eberhardt Valentine of Gates Agricultural Innovations said farmers she met in northern Ghana described cowpea as a kind of savings account.
“The cowpea that they produced and that they store in their homes, that is effectively their bank account,” she said, explaining that farmers could sell it to pay for school fees or medical bills.
The Borlaug Dialogue continues in Des Moines this week, with the World Food Prize Foundation set to recognize its 2026 laureate, Dutch food safety expert Huub Lelieveld.
Dining and Cooking