The Institute of Food Technologists and Seeding The Future Foundation Announce Winners for Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge

CHICAGO, IL – Dec. 13, 2022 – The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) and Seeding The Future Foundation today announced the winners for Growth Grants and Grand Prizes of the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge. Out of over 600 application submissions from 75 countries, three organizations were selected to receive Growth Grants and two organizations were selected to receive Seeding The Future Grand Prizes.

The Global Food System Challenge is an initiative created and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation to inspire and support innovative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to develop game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system by making healthier diets more accessible and empowering consumers to make choices benefitting both personal and planetary health. To qualify, innovations must be highly impactful and benefit the following intersecting domains: safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet; environmentally responsible practices; and consumer trust, accessibility, appeal, and affordability.

“Congratulations to the Growth Grant and Seeding The Future Grand Prize winners of the 2022 Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge,” said Bernhard van Lengerich, Founder of the Seeding The Future Foundation. “We were astonished by the varying innovations developed by the winning organizations – each of which addressed a different, but equally important, element of the food value chain. There is still much work to be done in establishing a food system that provides a rapidly growing global population with access to affordable, safe, and nutritious food for a healthy diet while maintaining the health of our planet, but these solutions will help kickstart real transformational change.”

To incentivize innovations at varying stages in their development, the Challenge offers three different levels of awards. The $25,000 Seed Grant winners were announced in October and awarded to teams or organizations that have planted and nurtured high-potential innovative ideas and developed a prototype and/or initial proof of the concept demonstrating feasibility. Following October’s announcement, a ninth recipient, Nurture Posterity International, has been added to the list of Seed Grant winners. The $100,000 Growth Grants are awarded to organizations that have demonstrated their innovation is doable and have projected both economic feasibility at scale and high-impact potential to transform the food system. And the $250,000 Seeding The Future Grand Prizes are awarded to organizations that have created innovations that are scalable, economically feasible at scale, trusted and compelling to consumers, and have demonstrated major impact potential to transform the food system affecting the lives of millions of people.

Seeding The Future Foundation and IFT are thrilled to announce that out of the Growth Grant and Grand Prize winners, there are three repeat recipients including World Wildlife Fund, INMED Partnerships for Children, and Food Systems for the Future Institute – each of which won a smaller award last year and have since leveraged the funding to scale their projects and increase impact.

The Growth Grant Winners are:
INMED Partnerships for Children for its aquaponics social enterprise program which accelerates the deployment of a simplified, adaptable form of aquaponics, combining soilless crop production and fish farming in a closed symbiotic system to increase global food production in the face of climate change, and transition historically marginalized populations from subsistence to sustainable livelihoods. INMED Partnerships for Children was a 2021 Seed Grant winner.

Smart Villages Research Group for their Smart Agri-Centres, a community-led solar powered cold storage program that uses energy as a catalyst for rural development. Smart Villages focuses on using energy to enable access to improved agricultural techniques and practices, which in turn can improve quality of life in multiple ways.

World Wildlife Fund for its Farmers Post Program, which leverages the US Postal Service (USPS) as a significant yet underutilized asset to help bring fresh produce from farms to front doors across the United States. Farmers Post has the potential to transform how we get food from farms to consumers, benefitting farmers, consumers, the environment, and the USPS. World Wildlife Fund was a 2021 Seed Grant winner.

The Seeding The Future Grand Prize Winners are:
Acceso for its work to eliminate Aflatoxin from smallholder supply chains. Acceso is working to eradicate dangerous aflatoxins in smallholder supply chains, starting with peanuts in Haiti. This system utilizes an innovative combination of economic incentives, rigorous testing, and strategic logistics which prevents aflatoxin contamination at the farmer, buyer, and consumer levels.

Food Systems for the Future Institute for their work in commercializing black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) as chicken feed to enhance egg nutrition and lower the cost of eggs in Rwanda. FSF Institute is working with the Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture and technical partner Protix Ltd. to develop Africa's first fully automated BSFL production facility. This innovative facility will sustainably and cost-effectively scale poultry production and make it easier and more affordable for consumers to access nutritious, protein-rich eggs. Food Systems for the Future Institute was a 2021 Seeding The Future Grand Prize winner.

“When the Seeding The Future Foundation first approached us with the idea to host the Global Food System Challenge, we were thrilled,” said Corrine Calice, Senior Director of Knowledge and Learning Experiences at IFT. “But after seeing the game-changing solutions submitted in only its second year, our expectations have been tremendously surpassed. This Challenge has the potential to drastically improve our food system, and IFT is proud to play a role in its development and implementation.”

Applications for next year’s Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge will open June 1, 2023.

More information on the Global Food System Challenge can be found at ift.org/food-system-challenge.

About the Institute of Food Technologists
The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) is a global organization of approximately 11,000 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.