You’d better get over here to the state Capitol, the staff told Ed Redfern one afternoon last October; it looks like an emergency. And it was. An entomological emergency.

“People were all over the place trying to figure out what to do with all of the ladybugs on the west side of the Capitol,” said Redfern, who interrupts his Washington, D.C., lobbying efforts every fall to help organize the World Food Prize event. In a short time, dignitaries and guests would be arriving for a banquet in the Capitol, and the plan called for them to use the west entrance. However, “thousands of these bugs had swarmed on us, and we knew if we opened the doors, we were going to have thousands of guests we didn’t want.”

Redfern and the staff made calls, changed plans and avoided disaster, reminded once again that when it comes to organizing large public events, you just never know what’s going to happen.

That might be especially true for the World Food Prize International Symposium and its attendant events, given their unique combination of local, statewide and international logistics.

During the big week in October, the full-time staff members of the World Food Prize Foundation divide their time between their offices in the Ruan Center and the meeting rooms of the Des Moines Marriott hotel across Seventh Street, and get somewhere around three hours of sleep per night.

The rest of the year, they make new contacts among worldwide leaders in food research, keep in touch with past winners of the prize and former speakers, seek out high school students to participate in the Youth Institute, organize related events such as the Hoover-Wallace Dinner and line up lots of volunteers.

This is the 20th year for the World Food Prize, which moved to Des Moines from Washington in 1990 when businessman John Ruan agreed to endow the award. The scale of the event and the number of participants have grown significantly, which makes planning more complex. Its increasing prominence makes some tasks simpler, though.

“It’s getting easier to get speakers as the status of the event grows,” said Judith Pim, director of secretariat operations at The World Food Prize Foundation. “But there are always scheduling issues; the people we invite have a lot on their calendars.”

Pim will have the main speakers for 2006 lined up by April or May. Last fall’s event drew 11 of the 24 past Food Prize laureates, and the foundation is trying hard to bring them all back to mark the 20th anniversary.

And just like every other year, an invitation will be sent to the president of the United States. None of them have showed up yet, and if President George W. Bush were to say yes, the answer wouldn’t come until late in the planning.

“The presidential schedulers won’t commit until late,” Pim said. If the answer ever is yes, “it would be a blessing and a curse,” she said.

In addition to the speakers and other participants, the planners deal with the Marriott catering staff and work with Mark Thomson of Thomson Productions on details of the Statehouse festivities.

Redfern, who honed his planning skills as an advance man for several U.S. presidents, beginning with Gerald Ford, arrives three to six weeks ahead of the event.

“Someone is in charge of each event, and we go through each one in great detail. about every other day,” he said. Every year is different, Redfern said. When things start to seem routine, “that’s when you know something is going to happen.”