The Award for Digitalization and Innovation for Sustainable Food Systems (Category A) recognizes innovations that impact more than one level of supply chain and strengthen the link between farmers and consumers.
Winners
Ifarm360 is awarded for leveraging technology to enable investors to crowd-fund smallholder farmers in Kenya. In addition to access to finance, Ifarm360 offers smallholder farmers crop advisory and supervision, as well as farm inputs and equipment such as solar irrigation kits.
Ifarm360 also guarantees market access through a network of aggregation hubs - physical structures located within farming communities – that enable bulking-up of produce to meet the demand of large off-takers.
Ifarm360 connects smallholder farmers, crowd investors, and off-takers, creating a win-win-win business model.
Special mention is given to Enveritas for using digital technology and innovation to conduct sustainability verification of unorganized and underserved smallholder coffee farmers around the world.
Category B
The Award for innovations that empower youth in agriculture and food systems (Category B) recognizes innovations that empower youth (under 35) in agriculture and food systems.
Winner
Access Agriculture AISBL has been recognized for enabling young people in local communities, acting individually or as a team, to use solar-powered technology to show farmer-to-farmer training videos in local languages in remote villages with no electricity or internet access and poor mobile signal.
The ERAs are equipped and trained to use the Digisoft Smart Projector which contains all Access Agriculture videos in more than 85 local languages.
Access Agriculture has proven to be a valuable tool for farmers who can access this paid service, boosting the incomes of farming families, while also improving the environment, using agroecological principles.
Bountifield International is awarded for offering young people in rural areas new opportunities as postharvest technology entrepreneurs who can provide a fee-for-service to farmers allowing them to process, preserve and sell their crops.
Bountifield’s ‘business in a box' model equips them with the necessary technology, access to financing, and information they need to drive agri-business value addition, reduce food loss and increase growth across rural Africa.
Bountifield works with local suppliers to develop and disseminate manual threshers and multi-crop grinders to women farmers, including women groups engaged in value addition.
