Finalists have been selected for two $250,000 Grand Prizes and three $100,000 Growth Grants
CHICAGO – Oct. 27, 2021 – The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) today announced finalists for the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge–an initiative which seeks to inspire and support passionate, creative, diverse and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system. Out of nearly 900 preliminary submissions, four finalists were selected in the Seeding The Future Grand Prize category, two of which will be awarded $250,000. Six finalists were selected for the Growth Grant, which will award $100,000 each to three winners.
“We are very excited about the submitted proposals, all from highly motivated multidisciplinary teams addressing significant issues facing our current food system,” said Bernhard van Lengerich, founder of Seeding The Future Foundation. “The submitted ideas for all award categories are very innovative with high impact potential to create a more safe, nutritious, sustainable, and equitable food system, resulting in food that is trusted, affordable and accessible by consumers. The remarkable response in this first year of our Challenge has inspired us tremendously, and we look forward to continue to develop an innovation pipeline to sustainably improve our food system in the coming years, benefitting the health of people and the environment.”
The Seeding The Future Grand Prize Finalists are:
In addition to the Grand Prize finalists, finalists for the Growth Grants are:
An announcement regarding the eight Seed Grant winners is forthcoming and can be found on both IFT.org and Seedingthefuture.org. Winners of the Grand Prize and Growth Grant awards will be announced in January of 2022.
“IFT is thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Seeding The Future Foundation in launching The Challenge in its inaugural year,” said Corrine Calice, senior director of knowledge and learning, and experiences at IFT. “While we were initially uncertain about the response, we are delighted to receive applications from startups, nonprofits, universities, research institutions, and multi-organization collaborations, from more than 60 countries. We would like to thank those who have participated, congratulate the finalists, and express our excitement for announcing the winners of the Growth Grants and Grand Prizes in January 2022.”
The Challenge is funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation and is focused on empowering transdisciplinary teams to develop scalable and high impact innovations that reside at the intersection of three domains: safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet; sustainably produced; and accessible, appealing, affordable, and trusted by consumers. To incentivize innovation at all levels, including ideation, development, and distribution, the Challenge includes three levels of awards, totaling up to $1million annually.
About Institute of Food Technologists
The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is a global organization of approximately 12,000 individual members from 95 countries committed to advancing the science of food. Since 1939, IFT has brought together the brightest minds in food science, technology and related professions from academia, government, and industry to solve the world's greatest food challenges. Our organization works to ensure that our members have the resources they need to learn, grow, and advance the science of food as the population and the world evolve. We believe that science is essential to ensuring a global food supply that is sustainable, safe, nutritious, and accessible to all. For more information, please visit ift.org.
About Seeding The Future
The Seeding The Future Foundation is a private, non-profit organization, motivated by its core value that everyone should always have equitable access to safe, nutritious, affordable, appealing, and trusted food. It seeks to inspire innovative solutions that can help transform the global food system to be more sustainable and benefit the health of people and the environment. The Foundation provides seed-funding and support to promising ideas and high impact innovations to improve food systems globally, technologies to reduce post-harvest losses in developing regions, as well as foundational work in academia and research. For more information, please visit Seedingthefuture.org.