Announcing The Winner Of The USD100K Future Food Asia Award

The Future Food Asia conference was hosted on September 21-25, both virtually and in physical satellite venues across the world, hosted by our partners such as HaoShi Foundation (Taipei, Taiwan) and Thai Wah (Bangkok, Thailand). Through this Collective Edition, the conference provided a platform for the much-needed dialogue on the pressing challenges and innovative solutions to add resilience to our agri-food value chain.

For the past four years the Future Food Asia Award has recognized and rewarded entrepreneurs from Asia Pacific who are building disruptive and sustainable innovations to tackle the inefficiencies and scarcities in our agri-food value chain. This year, nearly two hundred contenders from 18 different countries from Asia Pacific applied to the Future Food Asia Award. 

The 11 shortlisted start-up finalists pitched their innovations to a live global audience of 600+ industry leaders, investors and experts. The jury named FluroSat from Australia as the winner. FluroSat is a full crop cycle analytics provider that delivers proactive reports and alerts on all aspects of crop performance and health. Its analytics engine, FluroSenseTM monitors over 7 million acres of arable land supporting leading agribusinesses in delivering precision agriculture programs and decision support to their growers.

“FluroSat is very excited to be selected as a winner of the FFAA prize, and establish this important partnership to support our global expansion and bring the climate-smart agriculture decision support tools to farmers and agronomists all over the world!”, said Dr Anastasia Volkova, CEO and Founder, FluroSat.

The selection of the winner for the Future Food Asia Award was carried out by the jury that consisted of: Gérard Jacquin, former Director of Partnerships, Transfer and Innovation at INRA, Europe’s leading agricultural research institute; Dr. Ralph Graichen, Senior Director of Food & Consumer Cluster at A*STAR’s Biomedical Research Council; and Peter Huang, President of Greater China at Corteva Agriscience; and Isabelle Decitre, CEO & Co-founder of ID Capital.

“Data has the transformative power of making agriculture more sustainable, but Big Data without proper consolidation quickly becomes overwhelming for farmers. This is where FluroSat makes the difference, combining insights from proven science and high level of integration and automation of workflows. Their phenomenal commercial traction speaks volumes on the need for such a solution.”, said Isabelle Decitre.

Championing the burgeoning sector of plant-based proteins, Bühler and Givaudan, also hosts of FFA2020’s exclusive Plant Protein Masterclass, jointly selected two start-ups – DAIZ (Japan) and Let’s Plant Meat (Thailand) – as the winners of the Plant Protein Award. The winners were selected on the basis of various criteria, including their degree of innovation, Asian relevance and commercial potential in the region.

"We congratulate both teams at DAIZ and Let's Plant Meat for earning the Plant Protein Awards of this Future Food Asia edition. Both companies are paving the way to exciting protein options "made-in-Asia" with a focus on Asian consumers and cuisines. The two approaches are hinting at the fact that the future of plant-based protein will be diverse: consumers will be able to pick products on criteria as diverse as ingredients, nutrition profiles or cooking applications. More importantly, the two winners prove that Asia, a long-time protein importer, will take a central role in scaling the plant-based meat revolution" comments Dominique Kull, Head of Technology at Bühler.

Alex Ward, Head of Regional Innovation, APAC, Taste and Wellbeing added: "We are very impressed with all the start-ups we spoke to. They demonstrated innovation, passion and dedication in bringing to market solutions that address our global food challenges. The winners of the Plant Protein Award; DIAZ and Let’s Plant Meat were especially insightful in their product design and commercialisation plans for Asia. We remain committed to work with start-ups in the Plant Protein space and further develop our capabilities to do good for the food industry in Asia."

For Corteva Agriscience, accelerating food resilience remains a priority in the region. At the Future Food Asia 2020, the company awarded its Prize for Food Resilience to Crowde from Indonesia, an agri-focused fintech company which was also a finalist for the Future Food Asia Award competition.

Peter Ford, President of Asia Pacific, Corteva Agriscience said: “The Crowde team stood out as one that is most closely aligned to Corteva’s purpose of enriching smallholder farmers and workers along the food and agriculture ecosystem to achieve food security and resilience through technology innovation. Through close collaboration with a dedicated Corteva Agriscience Advisory Board, we look forward to supporting Crowde in accelerating its development, to support smallholder farmers during and after the pandemic.”

Future Food Asia 2020 has been made possible by continued support from our partners: Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s lead public research agency, Corteva AgriscienceTM, a global pure-play agriculture company that provides farmers around the world with the most complete portfolio in the industry, Bühler Group, the leading global technology supplier to the food processing and advanced material manufacturing industry, Givaudan, the leading global flavours company, Dole Asia Holdings Pte Ltd., one of the world’s largest producers and marketers of high-quality packaged and fresh fruit, ADB Ventures, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) program supporting entrepreneurs to scale technology companies for sustainable impact in Asia and the Pacific, and The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), the lead government agency responsible for strategies that enhance Singapore’s position as a global centre for business, innovation and talent.

More details are available at https://futurefoodasia.com/ffa2020/

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