IFT, Seeding the Future Foundation announce grand prize, grant winners

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IFT, Seeding the Future Foundation announce grand prize, grant winners

30 Jan 2024

Annie Hollon

Annie Hollon is a journalist, copywriter and social media strategist from the Dallas, Texas area. She found a love for magazine writing during her time at the University of Alabama where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in public relations and English. Beyond writing, you can find her expanding her library, attempting to teach herself the guitar and trying new hobbies.

CHICAGO — The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) and the Seeding the Future Foundation announced the grand prize and grant winners for the Seeding the Future Global Food System challenge, which gives $1 million annually to innovations with the potential to transform food systems to be more equitable and use sustainable practices to create safe and nutritious foods.

“When we created the annual Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge, our purpose was — and still is — to create a powerful, steadily growing pipeline of high-impact innovations that address the most pressing challenges food systems are facing globally,” said Bernhard van Lengerich, PhD, founder of the Seeding the Future Foundation. “We encourage impactful innovations that help food systems to be more sustainable, resilient and equitable, and lead to safe and nutritious food that is affordable, appealing and trusted by the end user.”

This year’s winning innovations include nutrient-dense porridges for Zambian schools, solar cooling hubs for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, an approach to addressing food insecurity in Indonesia, novel composite flours that are nutritious and affordable for Ugandan school feeding programs, and a regenerative agriculture model helping Indian farmers transition away from chemical-based farming approaches.

“It has been truly inspiring to see how many dedicated teams of food scientists and innovators around the world have embraced the Challenge and are working tirelessly creating those transformative innovations,” van Lengerich continued. “Congratulations to the winners and a special thank you to all teams who submitted their ideas. We again saw a tremendous number of applications in each award category.”

Since its inception three years ago, the challenge has drawn over 2,400 scientists, engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs and multidisciplinary teams from non-governmental organizations, non-profits, social enterprises, universities, research institutions as well as small and emerging for-profit enterprises to submit their innovations that will help transform global food systems.

Of over 900 submissions from over 78 countries, three Growth Grant winners and two Seeding the Future Grand Prize winners were chosen. The Growth Grant recipients will each receive $100,000 while the Grand Prize winners will receive $250,000 each.

The Seeding the Future Grand Prize Winners are The International Food Policy Research Institute and the Naandi Foundation.

The Growth Grant Winners are Association 3535, Kopernik and Nurture Posterity International.

“IFT is proud to support and help advance the work of its members, the science of food community, and programs such as the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge to ensure food security for a growing global population,” said Christie Tarantino-Dean, CEO of IFT.

Learn more about the challenge on the IFT website.

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