A global food system that improves the health of people and the planet.
Seeding and accelerating innovative, multidisciplinary, and scalable approaches to create solutions that sustainably improve the food supply and reduce chronic hunger.
Submissions Now Open for $1 Million USD Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge
Submissions for the third annual Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge are now open. Funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation and hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), the Challenge invites scientists, engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and multidisciplinary teams from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profits, social enterprises, universities, research institutions as well as small and emerging for-profit enterprises to submit game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system.
The Challenge is focused on high-impact innovations that lead to significant advances in one or more of the following domains: safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet; sustainable practices including food loss/waste reduction; and access to affordable, appealing, and trusted food by consumers. Submissions close on August 1.
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 USD:
Seed Grants ($25,000 each) will be awarded to organizations that create innovative ideas and have developed a prototype or initial proof of concept demonstrating that their idea is feasible and impactful when scaled.
Growth Grants ($100,000 each) will be awarded to organizations that have demonstrated their innovation is doable, scalable and have projected both economic feasibility at scale and high potential to be transformative in impacting the health of people and the environment.
Seeding The Future Grand Prizes ($250,000 each) will be awarded to organizations that have created innovations that are economically feasible at scale, trusted by consumers, and have demonstrated major impact potential benefitting the lives and health of people and the environment.
Fatuma Oluke and Ali Sonko in Uganda using AgriShare
Featured Project
Digital Innovations for Zero Hunger – Joining forces to transform food production in African countries
Digital innovations provide strong opportunities for creating social impact and paving the way to sustainable food systems. However, a huge digital divide in the Global South exacerbates existing inequalities. To bridge this digital divide, The Seeding The Future Foundation, Welthungerhilfe, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development have joined forces to develop digital solutions – Agricultural Extension Apps and the AgriShare App – to strengthen food security and to fight for ZeroHunger in African countries and beyond.
Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge
This Challenge seeks to inspire and support creative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that will help transform the food system. Competitive grants and prizes will be awarded for innovations targeting the white space where three domains intersect: safe and nutritious food; sustainably produced; and accessible, appealing, affordable, and trusted by the consumer. The domains reside within a food policy framework where innovations can either be implemented within an existing policy framework, or change or create policy.
Transformational changes are needed in the global food system.
Our vision is a global food system that always provides equitable access to safe, nutritious, affordable, appealing, and trusted food for everyone and improves the health of people and our planet by being sustainable, resilient, and regenerative. Our moonshot is to affect the lives of one billion people.
Inspiring innovation across cultures to improve the lives of people around the world.
Advances and discoveries in science and technology, as well as creative new approaches and collaborations across disciplines will lead to solutions that result in significant food system changes and impact people's lives.