Heidi Kühn

Heidi Kühn (born 1960) was the 2023 winner of the World Food Prize for her work with the nonprofit organization Roots of Peace to remove landmines around the world and turn the land into productive agricultural areas.

Early life and education Kühn comes from Marin County, California, and traces her ancestors back five generations to early settlers who became farmers. She attended San Rafael High School in San Rafael, and was a high school exchange student in Japan. In 1979, she obtained a degree in political economics from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), where she met her husband. Living in Juneau, capital of Alaska, she founded a television news company and reported for major television networks on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. She was also the first US reporter to visit the eastern region of the Soviet Union.

Roots of Peace After surviving cancer, Kühn set up the nonprofit organization Roots of Peace in 1997. Initially the aim was to contribute to landmine removal but she realized that this was not enough and that the land had to be restored as agricultural land. Starting in Croatia, her original plan was to replace "mines with vines". For this, she sought funding from the Californian winemaking industry, approaching notable producers such as Mike Grgich, Robert Mondavi, Diane Disney Miller and Francis Ford Coppola. In Croatia, Roots of Peace assisted farmers to re-establish both vineyards and orchards, making use of modern techniques such as cement trellising for vines. Her NGO planted 25,000 grapevines and 14,000 apple trees, as well as cherry trees and lavender. Roots of Peace now has 300 employees with an annual budget of $200 million.

In addition to Croatia, Roots of Peace has worked in Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Guatemala, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and Vietnam.

In October 2024 it was announced that The Kühn Initiative for Post-Conflict Development Studies had been established with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at UCB to explore sustainable economic and agricultural development in societies recovering from military and civil conflict. The initiative aims to unite academic experts, charitable foundations, and governmental organizations to develop innovative approaches to advance peace through agriculture.

Awards and honours Kühn has received many awards, in addition to the 2023 World Food Prize. They include:

Skoll Award for Social Innovation, in 2006. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting Local Communities, in 2007 (shared with four others). Mahatma Gandhi Global Family Seva Medal, in 2019. Mother Teresa Award for Social Justice, in 2023. In September 2024 she was appointed chair of the U.S. 250 Council of the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Publication Kühn's book Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines, One Woman's Mission to Heal the World was published in April 2020.

Personal life Kühn is married to Gary Kühn and resides in San Rafael, California with 4 children and 7 grandchildren.