The Katerva Awards are given annually to excellent sustainability ideas and initiatives in 10 categories. Finalists are announced in September each year. A single winner in each category will be selected by a panel of experts in that category and announced in October each year. A grand prize winner will be selected among category winners and announced as the best new sustainability effort of the year.
Food Security | Behavioral Change | Economy | Protected Areas | Gender Equality
Materials & Resources | Human Development | Energy & Power | Transportation | Urban Design
Food Security
A global human population of 7 billion demands large strides in food production and security. This category involves those efforts made to improve output and efficiency of farmland and fisheries and reduce their effect on environmental systems. As well, this category covers innovations involving efficient water use and sustainable and safe alternative food supplies.
The China Study, 2011 Katerva Awards Food Security Winner
The China Study is the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted. This exhaustive presentation of the findings from the China Study conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Referred to as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” by The New York Times, this study examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in 65 counties, representing 2,500 counties across rural China and Taiwan. Written by Dr. T. Colin Campbell and his son Thomas M. Campbell II, The China Study is a book that challenges conventional wisdom and the claims of fad diets, such as Atkins and South Beach, that stress low-carb, high-protein food. By convincing people to ween themselves off of animal-based food, The China Study can help reverse the trend while convincing people to live much healthier lives.
CoFed, runner up
CoFed trains and educates student leaders nationwide to establish food cooperatives that offer healthy, locally-grown, fair and sustainable alternatives to the fast-food options usually available on college campuses. The Bay Area, California-based CoFed, or Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, is a “training program and research institute that enables students to create ethically-sourced, community-run cafes on college campuses.” Yoni Landau, a University of California Berkeley graduate, founded CoFed with fellow graduate Alex Stone to replicate the Berkeley Student Food Collective on campuses nationwide. CoFed provides training and guidance to student entrepreneurs eager to start their own community-based, sustainable food cooperatives that meet the triple-bottom line of people, planet and profit.
Crop Trust, runner up
The Global Crop Diversity Trust seeks to ensure the conservation and availability of crop diversity for food security worldwide. Challenges such as climate change, population growth, and water shortages will place unprecedented pressures on our ability to grow the food we require, and this will be particularly severe in developing countries. Adapting agriculture to these future conditions is therefore essential. The development of crop varieties that can produce more with less water and cope with heat, drought, floods and other extremes is a crucial step we can take to prepare for our common future. The need for new crop varieties to address these challenges is now widely recognized. Crop diversity is therefore the raw material for improving and adapting crops to meet all future challenges for agriculture.
Sustainable Food Lab, runner up
The Sustainable Food Lab (SFL) aims to employ new business models to accelerate the global shift toward a healthy and sustainable food system that can feed the world’s growing population. In collaboration with business, non-profit and public organizations, the SFL has developed key innovations to foster sustainable agriculture. Core to their strategy is the idea that sustainable practices need to be incorporated all along the supply chain. The principles of this proposed business model include ensuring that intermediary markets look out for the needs of the farmers, encouraging inclusive decision-making at all stages in the supply chain, and creating a sustainable market for the products.
Two Degrees Food, runner up
Two Degrees nutrition bars link consumer purchases with the achievement of on-the-ground development objectives with the idea that only two degrees separate us from helping the 200 million children who suffer from hunger and malnutrition around the world. Two business entrepreneurs, Will Hauser and Lauren Walters, wanted to make a product that would appeal to consumers and help feed the world’s hungry children at the same time. Packaged in 100% recyclable material, Two Degrees bars come in three flavors—apple pecan, cherry almond and chocolate peanut—and are completely natural and gluten-free. For every bar purchased, one nutrition pack is given to a malnourished child.
