Guest blog by Tamara Rebanks, Director of the Weston Family Foundation.
In this guest blog, Tamara Rebanks at the Weston Family Foundation reflects on the process of developing the $33-million Homegrown Innovation Challenge, sharing lessons and key takeaways for others.
For many, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for thinking on food availability and supply chains — from bare shelves in supermarkets and processing factory closures, to freight delays and lost harvests – it’s increasingly clear that more action needs to be taken to build the resilience of food systems worldwide. Similarly, with the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables being vulnerable to climate shocks, many organisations committed to positive social impact have started to look at ways to support sustainable food systems.
In early 2021, reflecting on these twin realities and our commitment to advancing the well-being of all Canadians, the Weston Family Foundation started to explore how it could contribute and play a meaningful role in catalysing much-needed innovation in this space – in particular, we were curious to know how/if new innovations in food production could cultivate greater self-sufficiency and help Canada adapt to future uncertainty. After all, a resilient food system is key to not only ensuring food availability, but also the health and wellbeing of Canadians, and the country’s ability to withstand systemic climatic shocks.
Further inspired by the Barton Report from Canada’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth (Dominic Barton is now chair of the Homegrown Innovation Challenge judging panel) – which identified agriculture as a sector where Canada has substantial growth potential given its trusted food supply, resource availability, land and research talent – we started working with Challenge Works to explore how the challenge prize model could be tailored to reflect our goals, taking us beyond our established grantmaking approach to support innovation funding and take a new approach to the big challenges of today.
Over a period of twelve months, our organisations committed to a robust research agenda: we set out to really understand the opportunities and challenges from a multitude of perspectives. Enlisting local and global experts through a series of interviews and workshops, coupled with desk research and engagement with trusted partners, this period of discovery showed us that Canada’s over-reliance on imports, coupled with growing public awareness of the need for sustainable and environmentally-friendly-growing practices, means there was a timely opportunity to improve Canada’s ability to produce fresh fruits and vegetables out of season at home.
Working with Challenge Works, we zeroed in on the opportunity to support the development of technology to extend the growing season of fresh produce and, if we succeeded, would both reduce the country’s dependency on imported fresh fruits and vegetables and increase the resilience of Canada’s agricultural sector. This became our problem statement and set the direction for the challenge, from the application process to the judging criteria.