The Homegrown Innovation Challenge is a six-year, $33-million prize which aims to identify teams and support the development of tools and technologies that enable Canadian farmers and producers to sustainably and competitively grow berries out of season. It was funded and delivered by the Weston Family Foundation.
In a climate-changing world, Canada’s high dependence on imported fresh fruits and vegetables makes it vulnerable to food systems disruption. By solving the interconnected challenges that currently prevent out-of-season production at scale, the Homegrown Innovation Challenge will catalyze a range of solutions relevant to a broad array of fruit and vegetable crops in Canada and around the world.
“Create and deliver a market-ready system to reliably, sustainably and competitively produce berries out of season and at scale in Canada.”
This is the application phase of the Challenge. During this phase, interested teams should develop their concept along with detailed plans for how they will implement and scale their concept during the competition.
During this time, teams can apply for grants, known as Spark Awards, valued at up to $50,000 to support the development of their concept, formation of an innovation team and completion of their full application to the Shepherd Phase. The application deadline for Spark Awards is May 3, 2022, and teams will be informed if they are successful in June 2022.
Spark Awards will support innovators to help teams who might not otherwise be able to develop their concept, to form an innovation team and/or fill critical technical and knowledge gaps to submit a high quality application to the Shepherd Phase.
The top 10 teams selected by an independent judging panel will be awarded up to $1 million each across 18 months to develop and demonstrate a small-scale proof of concept of their system, generating evidence and learning to be assessed for progression to the Scaling Phase.
The top four teams selected from the Shepherd Phase will be awarded up to $5 million each across three years to build and demonstrate their system at farm scale in Canada, providing the judging panel with evidence that it has produced berries out of season during the trial.
The prize focused on digital tools and approaches that provide timely, context-specific information that enable smallholder farmers and those who support them to identify, treat, and track incidence of fall armyworm in Africa, avoiding overuse of pesticides which could promote resistance.
Using open data to help people eat more healthily and sustainably
