Cargill partners with World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator to address global hunger

(MINNEAPOLIS) September 10, 2018 – At the Economic Club’s Food Security Summit in Minneapolis, Cargill announced a $550,000 commitment to support the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Innovation Accelerator. The Accelerator identifies, nurtures and scales solutions to address global hunger. A hallmark of the program will be an Innovation Bootcamp, jointly hosted by WFP and Cargill in Munich, Germany, to gather start-ups and companies around innovative solutions to address childhood hunger, improving farmer prosperity and emergency hunger relief. Following the Bootcamp, Cargill will fund a select number of teams to pilot their solutions in the field.

“Cargill’s commitment to nourishing the world can only be accomplished through partnerships like this WFP Innovation Accelerator, which brings together public and private sectors to address the serious challenge of food insecurity around the world. This includes financial support, but also hands-on work to mentor participants and apply Cargill’s 153 years of agriculture expertise to enable the Accelerator to foster a more food secure world,” said Joe Stone, Cargill’s executive vice president and Chief Risk Officer as well as a WFP USA Board Member.

Cargill is the first private sector company to join the Bootcamp. This most recent commitment builds on several other programs Cargill and WFP have launched jointly since their partnership began in 2001. To date, Cargill has provided more than $12 million to WFP to improve the health and nutrition of people in need around the globe, with specific emphasis on Africa, Central America, South America and Asia.