Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge- Seeding the Future Grand Prizes Grant

Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge- Seeding the Future Grand Prizes Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Seeding The Future Foundation
Amount: US $250,000
Last Updated: September 30, 2025

Summary

The Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge aims to support innovative solutions that transform food systems, particularly in the Global South. Funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation, it offers grants and prizes totaling up to one million dollars annually. The challenge encourages multidisciplinary teams to create scalable and impactful innovations addressing food safety, sustainability, and equitable access. Participation is open to various organizations, including NGOs and research institutions, while individuals and large for-profit entities are excluded.

Overview

Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge Hosted by Welthungerhilfe (WHH) and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation (STF), the Challenge is intended to recognize and support breakthrough innovations that can spark transformations of our food systems, with a particular focus on addressing critical challenges in the Global South. The Challenge aims to inspire impactful and transforming innovations that reside at the INNOVATION FOCUS AREA in which three domains intersect: Innovations leading to safe and nutritious food for a healthy diet Innovations leading to sustainable or regenerative practices that enable food systems to stay within planetary boundaries, including food waste and food loss reduction Innovations leading to equitable access to food that is affordable, appealing and trusted About the Global Food System Challenge Providing a growing global population with access to affordable, safe, and nutritious food for a healthy diet while maintaining the health of our planet will require a transformation of our food systems. Advances and discoveries in science and technology, creative new approaches, and collaborations across cultures and multiple disciplines, will lead to forward-thinking innovations with the potential for significant food system changes. The goal of the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge is to inspire and support innovative, diverse, and multidisciplinary teams to create game-changing innovations that will help transform our food systems. Award Levels The Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge will provide monetary awards in the form of grants and prizes totaling up to one million US dollars annually.  The Challenge will provide three levels of awards to incentivize transformative food system innovations at different stages of their development. Applications can only be submitted at one award level. Seeding The Future Grand Prizes Seeding The Future Grand Prizes ($250,000 each) will be awarded to applicants with a scalable, economically feasible innovation that is compelling to consumers and have demonstrated major impact potential to transform the food system. Seed Grants Growth Grants

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Welthungerhilfe and the Seeding The Future Foundation are calling on all scientists, engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and multidisciplinary teams from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profits, social enterprises, universities, research institutions and small/emerging for-profit enterprise to submit game-changing innovations that will help transform food systems.Non-profits or non-governmental organizations located in any countryAcademic or research institutions located in any countryEarly-stage or emerging for-profit companies or social enterprises located in any country*Excluded are countries or territories against which the U.S. and/or Germany maintains comprehensive sanctions (currently, Afghanistan, Belarus, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, Sevastopol, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, the Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, & Zaporizhzhia Regions of Ukraine, and Venezuela).Teams of students or researchers may participate as part of an organization’s submission.Organizations are encouraged to form 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.Please see Global Food System Challenge FAQ for additional informations.

Ineligibility

Individuals are not eligible to apply.What will not be funded:Projects that have a negative effect on either the safety or healthfulness of food, the sustainability of the food supply chain, or that are unlikely to be accepted by the end-user or consumer Initiatives for which funds will be used to support large for-profit entities in their commercial activities such as R&D, innovation, manufacturing or sales/marketing Initiatives which are not scalable beyond the initial project scope and have limited projected impact over time For-profit entities with significant financial assets or which passed Series A financing round Theoretical concepts or ideas without any experiments or a reduction to practice Projects associated with political campaigns, capital campaigns, or lobbying Individual people with no existing organizational entity