Winning team Battle of Ideas focuses on Food Security – Reducing Food Waste
As part of the celebration of WOTRO’s 50th anniversary, WOTRO organized the Battle of Ideas. To enter the competition, students had to form a multidisciplinary team and jointly develop a social innovative solution for a specific global challenge. At the conference on Wednesday October 15, three teams with creative ideas competed in the final round of the battle. Team 2 focused on the theme Food Security – Reducing Food Waste; the conference audience voted for this team to win the prize of 1500 euro per team member.
During the celebration of WOTRO’s 50th anniversary, the three teams with the best ideas in the Battle of Ideas worked together with experts on further developing and improving their proposed solution.
Team 2 consisted of four students: Oluwaseyi Alalade (WUR), Camilla Ponte (WUR), Lavinia Plataroti (WUR) and Marisol Amador (UT). They focused on the theme Food Security – Reducing Food Waste. The conference audience voted their innovative solution “Back to the basics: establishing a trade by barter food network with dried fruits and vegetables in Nigeria” as the winning idea.
Team 2 won a prize of 1500 euro per person. Soon the team members will meet with the Food & Business Knowledge Platform to discuss different options of how to use the total amount of 6000 euro within the scope of their proposal
On YouTube you can watch the promo video of team 2.
Idea Summary
One out of four calories produced every year on the planet is estimated to be lost before it reaches the consumers, or wasted at the end of the supply chain. In this initiative, farmers are encouraged to process fruits and vegetables, which are too ripe to transport, into dried products. Drying will improve quality of almost condemned produce, neutralize the impact of time on the products, and thereby ensure availability of nutrients-rich plant products year round. In conjunction to drying, a trade by barter system will be created using mobile phones. Dried fruits and vegetables together with the barter system gives solution to food wastage, preservation of nutritional quality, seasonal food insecurity and meeting local food preferences. Combining existing solutions might result in one great solution.
