FOOD FACTORY-4-US 2024:
UPSCALE OR DOWNSCALE A FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN TO A NATIONAL OR REGIONAL LEVEL
Are you a student in a food study program eager to find solutions to improving short food supply chains?
We want to hear your ideas!
Your project must identify a specific challenge/problem related to upscaling or downscaling a food supply chain to a national or regional level and develop an innovative and exploitable solution to that challenge/problem. The solution that your team proposes should be sustainable and address at least one of the following aspects: technical issues, marketing, policy, business models, consumer-producer relations and/or social challenges. Examples could be anywhere in the value chain including raw materials through processing, packaging, logistics, sales, consumption and waste. Team projects should be focused on finding the best solution to meet food sector expectations in terms of health and safety risks, improvement of economic value, quality enhancement of products, improved sustainability, etc. Practical work in a lab is not required.
INFORMATION
The FoodFactory-4-Us competition takes place in an online learner-centric environment based on active, action-oriented learning. Student teams develop a project which identifies a specific problem/challenge and includes a specific solution exploitable at the industry level and with the aim of contributing to innovative food value chains. The ISEKI-Food Association, under the umbrella of the FoodFactory-4-Us competitions, is organizing this competition supported by the FAIRCHAIN project. You may read about previous FoodFactory-4-Us competitions here.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
Teams must be made of 3-to-5 (min-to-max) students registered in any food-related program anywhere in the world. Teams may have a mentor from academia or from industry if they desire, though this is not required. If a team has a mentor, that person works with the team members on their project and will also be invited to the online sessions. Mentors do not have any official responsibilities during the competition.
Team members understand that in addition to independently preparing their project, they are expected to:
- actively participate in up to 5 online trainings of approximately 2 hours each in spring 2024,
- complete a 5-minute reflection document after each online training,
- complete a 10-minute pre- and post-competition learner evaluation, and
- attend the competition Final Virtual Conference (online) in April 2024.
Performance of the above tasks are considered in evaluation of the winning project.
APPLICATION
You must indicate the title of your project in no more than 100 characters (including spaces) and the description of the problem/solution in no more than 1000 characters (including spaces).
You should describe the problem and solution by:
- identifying a specific problem or challenge in upscaling or downscaling a food supply chain to a regional or national level, and
- giving an outline of the solution you plan to develop.
You should include the first and last name and the email of each team member.
Project proposals will be evaluated based on the matching of the title and problem/solution to the main topic of the competition. Proposals with content not matching the competition topic will not be accepted.
CONTACT
For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at foodfactory4us@iseki-food.net.
