The winners of this year’s Arrell Global Food Innovation Awards are trailblazing new opportunities to provide sustainable, nutritious food to the world, growing connections across communities, and innovating to improve our food systems from production to consumption.
Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph is pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 Arrell Global Food Innovation Awards. Awarded annually since 2018, two prizes of $100,000 are given to global recipients to recognize their impact and leadership in two categories: research impact and community.
Community Engagement Innovation – UpTrade
UpTrade solves for affordability and access to key farming technology and inputs for smallholder farmers in developing economies by enabling them to pay for these assets using their livestock and produce instead of fiat currency.
Using their livestock as money, it makes otherwise unaffordable assets like solar water pumps and solar microgrids, fertilizers and seeds more affordable and more accessible, increasing the farmers’ productivity and livelihood, building financial resilience and reducing the need for migration away from their natural lands. Having better access to tools and the subsequent increased productivity strengthens the smallholder’s farmers’ roles in the food value chain.
Research Innovation – Distinguished Professor Brajesh Kumar Singh
Singh is a world-leading soil ecologist. His work has brought about fundamental shifts in functional microbial ecology by providing direct evidence that loss of soil biodiversity leads to proportional loss of ecosystem functions from local to global scales.
He has more than 300 journal publications spanning diverse fields including soil biology and health, ecosystem functions, and sustainable food production. Singh is best known for his global studies that demonstrated the central role of soil health and biodiversity in ecosystem functions including crop production and climate regulation.
Congratulations to both winners!
The Arrell Global Food Innovation Awards are adjudicated by scientists and community activists from all over the world. This year’s adjudicators are:
–Simon Winter, Executive Director of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture
–Leticia (Ama) Deawuo, Executive Director of SeedChange
–Mohamad Yaghi, Vice President of Innovation Hub and AgExpert at Farm Credit Canada.
About Arrell Food Instiute
Arrell Food Institute was established in 2017 through matching investments by the Arrell Family Foundation and the University of Guelph. Its vision is to improve global food systems with a focus on food security, safety and sustainability, and elevate Canada’s place in the global food economy.