The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), in collaboration with the Seeding The Future Foundation, has announced the return of the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge.
With up to 811 million people across the globe suffering from hunger and facing food-related challenges, the goal of the Challenge is to inspire and support innovative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to develop game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system. Also, to make healthier diets more accessible and empower consumers to make choices benefitting both personal and planetary health.
“IFT and the Seeding The Future Foundation share similar visions of a world where science and innovation are universally accepted as essential to improving food for everyone,” IFT chief executive officer Christie Tarantino-Dean said.
“Last year’s Challenge was a great success with nearly 900 organisations engaging from around the world, and we strongly believe this initiative will be impactful for years to come by helping to accelerate scientific breakthroughs.”
Hosted by IFT and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation, the Challenge is intended to support innovations that have the potential for significant impact at scale and over time, and benefit at least one or more of the following intersecting domains: nutritious food for a healthy diet; sustainably produced; and accessible, appealing, affordable, and trusted by consumers.
To incentivise innovation at all levels, ranging from idea generation to development and scale-up, the Challenge offers three levels of awards, totalling up to $1 million annually:
- Seed Grants ($25,000 each) will be awarded to organisations that are planting and nurturing high-potential, innovative ideas and have developed a prototype and/or initial proof of concept demonstrating feasibility. Innovation must benefit at least one, ideally two domains with no negative impact on the others.
- Growth Grants ($100,000 each) will be awarded to organisations that have demonstrated their innovation is doable and have projected both economic feasibility at scale and high-impact potential to transform the food system. The innovation must benefit at least two, ideally three domains with no negative impact on the others.
- Seeding The Future Grand Prizes ($250,000 each) will be awarded to organisations 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. The innovation must benefit at least two, ideally three domains with no negative impact on the others.
“We believe that the most revolutionary ideas start at a very small scale, come from passionate and diverse teams, and have the potential for a big impact,” Seeding The Future Foundation founder Dr Bernhard van Lengerich said.
“Our hope is the Challenge creates a robust and powerful innovation pipeline that leads to transformative change within the global food system.”
Applications for the Challenge will open on 1 June and close on 1 August. Seed Grant recipients will be announced in September, and Growth Grant recipients and Seeding The Future Grand Prize recipients will be announced in January 2023.
Additional details on the application process, eligibility, and awards can be found at ift.org/food-system-challenge.