After a successful inaugural year, the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge, hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation, is returning to support innovations that make healthier diets more accessible and empower consumers to make choices benefitting both personal and planetary health. Additional details can be found below:
- What Is It? 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: Safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet; Sustainable production practices and; Accessible, appealing, affordable, and trusted by consumers and enabling consumer choices benefitting both, personal and planetary health.
To incentivize and support innovations at all development stages, ranging from idea generation to scale-up, the Challenge offers three levels of awards: up to eight (8) Seed Grants at $25,000 each, up to three (3) Growth Grants at $100,000 each, and up to two (2) Seeding The Future Grand Prizes at $250,000 each, totaling up to $1 million annually.
- What is the Goal? The goal of the Challenge is to inspire and support innovative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that are focused on the above-described intersecting domains and have the potential to transform the food system.
- When Is It? Applications will be accepted from June 1 – August 1. Winners of the Seed Grants will be announced in September. Winners of the Growth Grants and Seeding the Future Grand Prizes will be announced in January of 2023.
- Who Should Apply? The following are eligible to compete in the Challenge: nonprofits located in any country; academic or research institutions located in any country; early-stage or emerging U.S. or European based for-profit companies. Individuals are not eligible to apply. Please note, however, that teams of students or researchers may participate through an organization’s submission. Organizations are encouraged to have their researchers form multidisciplinary teams to compete in the Challenge. If two or more organizations form a team to compete, they should choose one of the organizations to serve as the applicant. View selection criteria here.
- How Can You Get Involved? If any teams within your organization are working on an initiative that could be a fit, please encourage them to apply.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this opportunity in more detail, please reach out to foodsystemchallenge@ift.org. We look forward to hearing from you!