On April 16, The Chicago Council launched a new report, Healthy Food for a Healthy World: Leveraging Agriculture and Food to Improve Global Nutrition, at the Global Food Security Symposium 2015. We have highlighted one of the report’s recommendations in a new post each week on the Global Food for Thought blog. This is the final post in the blog series that has explored how the strengths and ingenuity of the agriculture and food sector can reduce the reality and risks of malnutrition globally. Please continue to join the discussion using #GlobalAg.
Digital and information technologies are changing the way people produce food and the way services are provided in the agriculture, nutrition, and health sectors. In order to improve global nutrition, there is a need to modernize knowledge exchange in agriculture and nutrition to ensure that nutrition goals are built into agriculture and food programs. Taking advantage of this digital revolution can modernize public and private services delivery, enhance farmer-to-farmer interactions, strengthen the interface of extension agents with producers, and improve data collection.
Data collected and analyzed in real time could be used to rapidly assess the impact of newly adopted practices on productivity, livelihoods, and even the health and nutrition of farmers and their families. There is also great potential to incorporate messaging aimed at improving nutrition and changing social behaviors into digital and information technologies for outreach across sectors.
Competitions to incentivize innovation can help identify solutions that utilize digital and information technologies in agriculture and nutrition. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) should partner with multilateral institutions and private foundations to fund an agriculture and nutrition prize to support new solutions – or innovative uses of existing resources and technologies – to modernize knowledge exchange and increase the nutrition sensitivity of public and private service delivery in agriculture.
For example, hosting the prize fund at a university and engaging students from a variety of backgrounds would energize young innovators and entrepreneurs across a wide range of sectors. Partnering with entrepreneurship centers and universities around the United States would provide applicants with mentors and opportunities to pitch their ideas to venture capitalists and others. The prize could provide technical support and mentoring in designing business plans as well as seed funds to launch successful businesses. Because many such centers are hosted by business schools, schools of engineering, and technology institutes, the prize recipients could benefit from expertise in these areas as they develop solutions for the food and agriculture sectors.
One such prize fund, the Agricultural Innovation Prize, was funded by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and developed in collaboration with USDA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In its inaugural year, the Ag Prize was administered by students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Coolify, a micro-cold-storage-based business solution, was awarded the grand prize of $100,000 for its network of cooler storage units for fruit and vegetable producers in India to reduce food waste. Another finalist, Mission to Improve Global Health Through Insects (MIGHTi), was awarded $25,000 for its mealworm protein powder designed for sustainable protein consumption. MIGHTi has since won a second prize through the University of Wisconsin-Madison Climate Quest competition and will receive support to research and pilot mealworm micro-livestock farming as an inexpensive and environmentally sustainable food production system.
The Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition also hosts the Young Earth Solutions prize fund to encourage innovation and sustainable solutions from young people for reducing food waste, promoting sustainable agriculture, encouraging healthy lifestyles, and combatting obesity. They award a prize of 10,000 euros for the winning team of university students from around the world to implement their project.
These prize funds are prime examples of the kinds of initiatives that, if expanded, could help to spur innovation for action on creating nutrition-sensitive food systems.