The leaders of teams of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from around the world presented their grant-award-winning projects aimed at sustainable agriculture that addresses hunger in planet-saving fashion during the “Seeding the Future Global Innovation Speed Pitch” IFT FIRST featured session on Monday.

The Seeding the Future Foundation invested in 12 projects overall this year: seven that received $25,000 each for prototypes or proof of concept, three that received $100,000 after showing economic feasibility, scale, and the potential to transform the food system, and two grand prize winners that received $250,000 apiece after showing they’re economically feasible at scale and have major potential benefits to society and/or the planet.

Bernhard van Lengerich, founder of the Seeding the Future Foundation, said the organization supports innovations that create a sustainable food system with food that’s appealing, affordable, and trusted. The Foundation is building a solution library and network that will be available for “test drives” on Wednesday at the IFT FIRST Innovation Lab on the Expo floor.

Vikash Abraham, chief strategy officer at Naandi Foundation, one of the grand prize winners, shared his organization’s regenerative agriculture model for India’s 125 million small farmers, who have less than 2 hectares of land apiece, for whom the livelihood of their families—not climate change—is the main focus. The project aimed to give them simple instructions on how to till their lands in a sustainable manner through an app that also monitors each farm and returns data to the research team to enable continuous improvement. “The challenge to everybody in this room is, ‘Can we redesign future food systems?’” Abraham said.

The other grand prize winner, HarvestPlus, has developed a nutrient-rich porridge aimed at schoolchildren in Zambia, which has one of the highest rates of malnutrition in the world, explained Katharina Diehl, scaling specialist at HarvestPlus. While farmers often lean into low-nutrient white maize, efforts by HarvestPlus have encouraged them to produce more yellow and orange maize as well as sweet potatoes and beans to create more nutrient-dense, biofortified crops. “The development, production, and distribution of tasty, ready-made porridges will benefit local farmers and local economies,” she said. “And it will help Zambia fulfill its food transformation policy.”

The three $100,000 grant winners included:

  • Kopernik runs a program designed to address food insecurity in West Timor through both sustainable farming and new technologies. In a country where one-third of the population is food insecure, the project aims to teach (or re-teach) farmers sustainable agriculture techniques based on their traditional, indigenous practices to build “a resilient, self-sustaining system that benefits everyone,” said Gumilang Reza Andika, manager of community initiatives.
  • Association 3535 seeks to expand the COOL LION project aimed at safely storing fish and produce using solar-powered refrigerators. “We are building local, climate-smart, food storage facilities that significantly expand the shelf life of the food produced,” said Richard Seshie, impact entrepreneur, who notes that grant money has gone toward four solar cooling hubs in Africa in the past two years.
  • Nurture Posterity International has taught small farmers to use regenerative agriculture to mix their crop rotation and grow pumpkins and maize to be ground into a flour called NutriPosh. This product will be delivered to 3 million children in 6,000 schools, with more than 100,000 farmers involved, said Ibrahim Kasujja, managing director. “We hope the program will become self-sustaining,” he continued.

The seven early-stage grantees are focused in sustainable agriculture in Togo, fortifying grain with indigenous tropical plants in Kenya, hydroponic towers to produce fresh fruits and vegetables in Montreal (and potentially, other cities), sustainable egg production in Albania, seed sustainability practices in the Philippines, water disinfection systems based on ultraviolent light in war-torn Ukraine, and solid waste management that turns “trash into cash,” using black soldier fly larvae, in Kenya.ft

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Ed Finkel is a freelance journalist based in Evanston, Ill. ([email protected]).