Prof. Dr. Bernhard van Lengerich is the founder and CEO of Seeding The Future, a private foundation focusing on equitable and sustainable food systems enabling a safe and nutritious food supply within planetary boundaries, and the former Chief Science Officer and Vice President of Technology Strategy at General Mills Inc.
He is the inventor or co-inventor of over 150 patents and patent applications and was an invited participant in discussions at the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy on global protein security under the Obama administration. In 2016 he joined Beyond Meat as acting CTO and Head of R&D where he led the development of the first Beyond Burger in 2016 and subsequently served on the Board of Beyond Meat until May 2021.
In this piece, Dr van Lengerich discusses how transforming food systems to address the climate crisis, a key pledge made by 130 countries at COP28, will require transformative innovations as exemplified in the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge.
Food taking center stage in the climate fight
By Bernhard van Lengerich, PhD
The COP28 climate conference hosted over 50 events on food, agriculture, and related issues, highlighted by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launching its roadmap for countries to meet their climate targets through agrifood solutions. Another highlight included 130 country leaders signing the Emirates Declaration, a first of its kind commitment to adapt and transform food systems as part of action on the climate crisis.
How dire is the climate change crisis related to the food system?
As noted in the 2023 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change impacts are stressing agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, increasingly hindering efforts to meet human needs. Impacts on food availability and nutritional quality will increase the number of people at risk of hunger, malnutrition, and diet-related mortality.
Climate change is further increasing pressures on terrestrial ecosystem services supporting global food systems and reducing the effectiveness of pollinator agents as species are lost from certain areas. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions are negatively impacting air, soil, and water quality, exacerbating direct climatic impacts on yields. And climate change is also negatively impacting food safety. Higher temperatures and humidity favor toxigenic fungi, plant- and animal-based pathogens, and harmful algal blooms (HABs). More frequent and intense flood events and increased melting of snow and ice will increase food contamination.
The annual Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge, hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists and funded by the Seeding The Future Foundation, seeks to address issues related to food systems caused by climate change as well as issues that are caused by the food system and are detrimental to the environment. The Challenge, which awards USD $1 million to winners each year, incentivizes multidisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from across the world to create transforming food system innovations that focus on the intersection of three domains: safe and nutritious food; sustainable practices addressing issues that are either caused by climate change or issues that contribute negatively to the environment; and enabling equitable access to affordable and trusted food.
A core requirement to participate in the Challenge is that submitted innovations focus on this innovation focus area as food needs to be not only sustainable and coming from a climate-friendly supply chain, but also needs to be safe and healthy, trusted, affordable and appealing at the same time.
Previous winners who stand out for their impactful and innovative work addressing issues caused by climate change or approaches to mitigate the negative effects of the food system on the environment include:
- Acceso for its work in Haiti to eliminate aflatoxin from smallholder supply chains that is an increasing issue as global temperatures increase.
- Solar Freeze, Kenya for its innovation of off-grid, portable, solar-powered cold storage units for perishable produce to serve rural smallholder farmers. The purpose is to reduce post-harvest food loss that currently accounts for over 45 percent of fresh produce going to waste among rural farmers in developing countries and is increasingly problematic with the rise of global warming.
- Worldfish for its work on homestead aquaculture to bring nutrient-rich small fish production to small-scale actors for a highly sustainable, healthy, and affordable food solution for consumers.
- INMED Partnerships for Children for its environmentally sustainable Aquaponics Social Enterprise program which accelerates the deployment of a simplified, adaptable form of aquaponics, combining soilless crop production and fish farming in a closed symbiotic system. The program will increase global food production in the face of climate change and transition historically marginalized populations from subsistence to sustainable livelihoods.
- International Rice Research Institute for its development of arsenic-safe rice for human consumption in arsenic-polluted regions projected to affect the life of between 40 and 70 Mio. people. Their high zinc rice initiative -also a winning innovation- is a low-cost, regenerative, resilient, and sustainable food-based solution to address zinc malnutrition.
- Food Systems for the Future Institute for its work in commercializing black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) as chicken feed to enhance egg nutrition and protein security in Rwanda.
This year’s over 900 submissions from more than 100 countries also demonstrate that concerns about the effects of climate change are rising everywhere. The Seed Grant Winners and Grand Prize and Growth Grant finalists, announced in November 2023, range from regenerative agriculture innovations, soil health improvements, grassland regeneration practices, aquaponics and hydroponics approaches for marginalized communities, and novel highly accurate weather prediction models for smallholder farmers, to unique approaches to biofertilization and biofortification to eliminate or reduce chemical fertilizers or pesticides.
Grand Prize and Growth Grant winners will be announced this month.
To learn more about the Seeding The Future Global Food System Challenge, go to https://www.ift.org/food-system-challenge.
