The Institute of Food Technologists and the Seeding The Future Foundation Announce the Return of the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge

The Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge provides monetary awards in the form of grants and prizes totaling up to one million US dollars annually

The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), in collaboration with the Seeding The Future Foundation, is proud to announce 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, as well as 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,” said Christie Tarantino-Dean, Chief Executive Officer at IFT. “Last year’s Challenge was a great success with nearly 900 organizations 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 incentivize innovation at all levels, ranging from idea generation to development and scale-up, the Challenge offers three levels of awards, totaling up to $1 million annually:

• Seed Grants ($25,000 each) will be awarded to organizations 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 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. 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 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. 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,” said Dr. Bernhard van Lengerich, Founder of the Seeding The Future Foundation. “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 June 1, 2022, and close on August 1, 2022. Seed Grant recipients will be announced in September 2022, 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.

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 Foundation

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.

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