A few weeks ago, an ethanol plant employee called me. He wanted to talk about similarities between ethanol production and a food he ate growing up in Nigeria&mdash;he just couldn&rsquo;t stop thinking about it. Tuwo, as Adamu Muhammad describes it, is a tribal food that is as common as steak in Iowa, where he now lives and works. Made from corn flour and water formed into dough, tuwo is scooped out in portions and served with soup. Adamu (or Adam) ate tuwo, on average, at least once a day as a child. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s part of my life,&rdquo; he said.
Growing up, Adam&rsquo;s parents would tell him to eat as much tuwo as he could in the morning before school. The idea was to keep his belly full so he could go longer without needing to eat. &ldquo;Talking about food in African terms, especially how I grew up, food is like a gas for your car, a full tank takes you longer than a half tank,&rdquo; he said. Although eating tuwo did help Adam stay full, it also made for some sleepy times in class. &ldquo;I guess that is what happens when you eat a little too much starch in the morning,&rdquo; he said.
One day, someone from the U.S. embassy, who was looking for good students whose parents were unable to send them on for more schooling, met with Adam's principal. As a result, Adam was the only student picked to come to the U.S. in 2008. He studied chemistry at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, and graduated with an undergraduate degree in August 2012. Today, he works at the Valero Renewable Fuels ethanol plant in Hartley, Iowa. He is a process operator, with half of his time working in the lab and the other half in the plant, gathering samples.
It&rsquo;s the early cook process of ethanol production that reminds Adam of his childhood in Nigeria. Both processes start with grinding corn to flour and then adding it to water. For the ethanol production process at Valero, the corn is mixed with hot water, steam and enzymes&mdash;a mixture called the slurry. When making tuwo, African cooks first mix corn flour with cold water (Adam called this the cold slurry) which is then added to a pot of boiling water.
Another similarity is that the two processes must each guard against dough balls. In ethanol production the ground corn, water and enzymes is mixed using giant stirring blades. For tuwo it&rsquo;s about thoroughly mixing the cold slurry. But it&rsquo;s not just the process that reminds Adam of his childhood&mdash;the smell brings him back too. &ldquo;Not every workplace smells like the food you grew up eating for the first 20 years of your life,&rdquo; he said, commenting on how corn has been his friend through so much of his life.
I really enjoyed talking to Adam. He&rsquo;s excited about his job in the renewable energy sector and his stories about his childhood in Africa were really interesting to me. It&rsquo;s fascinating that, despite the fact that Nigeria and Iowa seem like such different places, Adam has actually found the sights and smells of his old and new lives to have much in common&mdash;and the connection is corn. If you&rsquo;d like to talk to Adam, he gave me his permission to share his email address, <a href="mailto:samdanko@yahoo.co.uk">samdanko@yahoo.co.uk</a>.
Talking to Adam was so much fun I&rsquo;d like to make this a regular part of my blog&mdash;sort of a meet the ethanol producer feature. This is something I&rsquo;d do periodically, as often as I have willing subjects. If you or someone you know works at an ethanol plant and you&rsquo;d like to submit that person&rsquo;s name for an interview, send me an email at <a href="mailto:hjessen@bbiinternational.com">hjessen@bbiinternational.com</a>, and tell me a little bit about why I should talk to them. I&rsquo;m looking for people with interesting stories to tell about how they got their first job in the ethanol industry and/or why they are passionate about their job.

One of the most interesting things about my job is the chance to talk to ethanol producers. I've met some really interesting characters—from Midwesterners that remind me of my farming roots to people with an international flair. 

Ah, the smell of tuwo or ethanol in the morning

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