Ending Malnutrition with Better Corn

Curt Bowen has spent the past decade fighting malnutrition in Guatemala. Living and learning alongside farmers, Curt saw numerous traditional nutrition programs fail because they ignored the cultural and economic importance of corn for poor families. After training with leading scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, he founded Semilla Nueva, an organization that fights malnutrition with biofortified corn seeds. Semilla Nueva sells more nutritious corn seed to smallholder farmers and has improved nutrition for over 200,000 people. Curt led initial efforts to launch new biofortified seeds in Guatemala and co-founded BioFORT Platform, a stakeholder group which has expanded the use of biofortified crops to over 10,000 families in Guatemala. Curt serves as Semilla Nueva’s Executive Director, overseeing growth as the organization expands nationally. Curt has been recognized as a Mulago Fellow and Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur.

Globally, 900 million people depend on corn. In Central America and sub-Saharan Africa, corn is the most widely produced crop and is the primary dietary staple. Corn’s naturally low nutrition content causes high malnutrition rates. Semilla Nueva reduces malnutrition by selling high-yielding, biofortified corn seeds to farmers. Our seed contains higher levels of key nutrients and closes dietary gaps for farmer families and consumers. We use commercial sales to reach farmers and they adopt our seed because its high yield quality can increase their incomes. Our model has reached over 200,000 people with better nutrition and attracted the attention of the Guatemalan government to explore public policy that could scale impact nationally. Increasing the use of biofortified seeds, through sales and public policy, will lay the foundation to impact more of the nearly one billion people that are trapped in the cycle of malnutrition due to dependence on corn.

Nearly a billion people consume corn daily across Africa and Central America, this number will grow to two billion by 2050. While global malnutrition rates are falling, the number of malnourished people is growing in Guatemala and sub-Saharan Africa, regions where corn accounts for half of the diet. Corn dependence traps countries in the cycle of poverty. Despite decades of interventions and trillions invested, malnutrition continues to plague these countries, undermining health, education, and economic progress. In Guatemala, malnutrition costs $8.4 million daily through increased disease, educational delays, and lost productivity. Globally, malnutrition contributes to 55% of childhood deaths and $3.5 trillion in economic losses annually. 

Exacerbating the situation, climate change will reduce the yields and nutrition content of staple crops like corn. Further, to keep up with population growth the world must produce more food in the next fifty years than in the entire history of humanity. Addressing a problem of this scale requires technology that improves the nutrition, yields, and climate resilience of staple crops that poor populations rely on and a delivery mechanism that reaches rural farmers. We’ve established that commercial sales can reach hundreds of thousands with biofortified seeds; public policy will help us reach millions.

Semilla Nueva launched the world’s first commercial, biofortified (non-GMO) corn seed with 19% more iron, 39% more zinc, and 2.1 times the protein quality of traditional corn. These nutrients are critical for immunity, healthy development, and can prevent under-five mortality. The seed can reduce childhood stunting by up to 20% and close zinc and iron gaps for pregnant women and children in Guatemala. We partnered with scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to develop and test the seed in Guatemala, ensuring it had favorable yield and climate resilient traits in addition to improved nutrition traits. 

We launched commercial seed sales in 2018. The seed is the second cheapest in the market and yields an average of 5% higher than competitors, generating income increases for smallholder farmers and driving adoption of the seed through economic incentive. To impact malnutrition at a national and global scale, we will: 1. continue expanding our sales and evidence base in Guatemala  2. pilot public policy with the Guatemalan government to incentivize other seed companies to sell biofortified seeds and 3. develop more competitive biofortified seeds for Guatemala and partner organizations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Over a decade in rural Guatemala has taught us: 1. solving malnutrition is the most important thing we could do to improve quality of life and 2. we need innovative approaches to solve malnutrition. Traditional  programs - like diet diversification and education - ignore the cultural importance of corn and economic realities of poor families. Home gardens are work intensive and don’t produce enough food to change nutrition outcomes. Nutrition education can be ineffective because nutritious foods are more costly, and families must focus on immediate needs and ensure they have enough to eat.

It’s frustrating to witness resources being dedicated to these projects, all while Guatemalan children continue to suffer immensely from malnutrition. Malnutrition leads to preventable death, higher incidence of disease, reduced cognitive skills, poor education outcomes, and lower lifetime earnings. To get these children the nutrition they need to thrive, we must appeal to farmers. Over 90% of Guatemala's farmers live in poverty; they need a chance to improve their earnings. By marketing our seed based on its high yields, we've been able reach over 200,000 people with better nutrition.  Our solution is unique because it combines what people need (nutrition) with what they want (better incomes).

Malnutrition and poverty disproportionately affect Guatemala’s indigenous and female population. 67% of Guatemala’s indigenous children are malnourished, nearly twice the rate of non-indigenous populations. Stunting rates peak at 79% in some Mayan areas, and girls are impacted more severely than boys. The lack of meaningful reductions in the malnutrition for Mayan populations has been attributed to the persisting cultural importance of corn based agriculture, making communities resistant to adopt “western style diets”. Our solution embraces corn’s status as a cultural staple, improving the crop itself and simultaneously offering an opportunity to increase incomes for the poorest group in the country.

Guatemala, a country with the world’s fifth highest malnutrition rate, is a graveyard of well-intentioned but unsuccessful development projects. During my first few years in Guatemala, I would often read about another multi-million dollar program for water filters, even though I’d already seen existing filters being used as storage containers in hundreds of households. I once heard about a new nutrition program from a woman who told me she was using nutrient enriched flour gifted to her to feed her pigs, because her family hated the taste. Our team was furious seeing Guatemala’s staggering poverty alongside the endless array of poorly planned and executed projects. Determined to do things differently, we focused on corn farmers because they make up the biggest group of Guatemala’s poor. We decided to identify the most promising technologies that could improve lives, vet the ideas with farmers, and train farmers to spread the technology to their communities. In five years spent cultivating solutions through these community level idea laboratories, we saw that affordable, high-yielding seeds were farmers’ top priority (a chance to improve their incomes). High-yielding, biofortified seeds address farmers' priorities and one of the country’s greatest needs - the malnutrition impacting half its children.

When we first launched the organization, we had two staff members, $2,000, and a borrowed motorcycle. Since we didn’t have funds to stay in hotels, we stayed with farmers - trading a few dollars of beans or eggs for a place to stay on the floor. At night over tables filled with tortillas, I learned about the farmers' daily lives, their dreams for their children, and their challenges. At times the challenges seemed endless - a baby with diarrhea that wouldn’t go away, health centers without nutrient supplements, an inability to pay for child’s school fees due to a drought. The statistics I’d read on poverty became people with names. For me, these conversations with rural families felt like a promise, a promise to find a solution that would actually make a difference. There has never been a better time to make such a promise than in the current period of technological innovation. In 35 years, corn will be the staple of the majority of the world’s poor. I'm honored to be part of building a solution with the potential to transform nutrition for nearly a billion people and make good on the promise to create lasting change.

Semilla Nueva’s success is rooted in our:

1. Narrow and disciplined vision: When our organization made a pivot to focus solely on producing and selling biofortified seeds, we reoriented our internal systems to meet operational needs of the new model and launched a seed venture to conduct sales.  We only pursue funding that does not distract from core operations to avoid mission drift and remain hyper-focused on the quality of our model.

2. Team of leading industry experts:  The executive team has 50 years of experience in Latin America’s agriculture sector. Notably, Operations Director, Dr. Angela Bastidas, led Monstanto’s seed development pipeline in northern Latin America. Since joining our team she has nearly doubled sales annually. Juan-Jose Catalan leads our breeding efforts and previously led breeding efforts in Guatemala for Central America’s leading seed company Cristiani Burkard. My experience institutionalizing programs with the Guatemalan government to reach thousands of farmers, will be leveraged to advance policy efforts. The Board of Directors includes Dr. Keith Andrews, the former director of Zamorano, Central America’s most prestigious agricultural school, Jerry Brady, the co-founder of ACCION, the world’s largest microfinance organization, and Dr. Jack Fiedler the world’s lead scientist in ex-ante impact evaluation for biofortified crops. 

3. Strategic alliances with biofortification leaders: We work with CIMMYT scientists to identify promising seeds. We are building a lab with the Instituto de Nutricion de Centroamerica y Panama (INCAP) to conduct nutrition testing. We are working with the World Food Programme to ensure biofortification is part of their national strategy.

Guatemala detected its first case of COVID-19 on March 13th and the Government reacted swiftly implementing a military curfew, banning gatherings and interdepartmental travel, and closing the borders.  Our work, getting better nutrition to farmers, is essential to address economic and hunger crises being caused by COVID-19. In the face of evacuation measures, I made the decision to stay in Guatemala so I could lead the team.

Logistically, the restrictions made it challenging to continue farmer outreach and simultaneously ensure staff safety. With gatherings banned, we launched a digital and text message campaign, posted billboards, and aired radio ads to mitigate potential sales losses. Our efforts have been fruitful and we are on track to meet 2020 sales goals. By remaining present in Guatemala, we’ve been able to advance our policy work with the Government. They are interested in the benefits our seed offers in addressing the current food crisis and proximity has allowed me to attend meetings with key ministry staff and congressional leaders. While many organizations have ceased operations, our leadership staff remained in Guatemala. Our continued presence has allowed us to reach more families, mitigate food crisis, and demonstrate our unwavering commitment to Guatemala's farmer families.

In 2016, we reached a crossroads between our longstanding model of farmer outreach on sustainable farming techniques and moving forward with biofortified seeds. Many of our staff members and nearly all of our donors were attached to our original model. While the model had reached thousands of farmers, it was resource intensive and there was no way to reach the national scale required to change nutrition for children across Guatemala. When we surveyed farmers on what they needed most, they all requested high-yielding seeds. To be true to our mission, I knew we needed to take our lead from the farmers we served and shift to selling biofortified seeds. 

Implementing this change required a significant organization restructure, that while uncomfortable, was necessary to increase impact. As the Executive Director, I had to ease the team's fears of the unknown and simultaneously spearhead initiatives to improve our capacity to meet the demands of the new model. We offered our existing staff members intensive training to prepare for them for commercial seed sales and recruited seed industry leaders. I advocated to our supporters, highlighting the evidence base supporting biofortification and the farmers’ preference, to convince the majority to continue supporting our work.

Semilla Nueva’s model is innovative at three levels. We: 1. produce and sell more nutritious, climate resilient, and high-yielding seeds, 2. use commercial sales to reach people with better nutrition without changing behavior and 3. employ policy and strategic partnership to expand the use of biofortified seeds. The combination of proven technology (biofortified seeds), an effective delivery mechanism (sales), and a plan for scale (policy and partnerships) will allow Semilla Nueva to meaningfully improve nutrition for farmer families in contrast to failed efforts of the past.

Our model is distinct from other nutrition programs because it does not require behavior change. Further, it is different than previous efforts by the Guatemalan government to give farmers free low-yielding biofortified seeds and promote them based on better nutrition that failed because farmers will not trade nutrition for low yields. Instead, we produce high-yielding seeds and sell them at an affordable cost. Farmers care deeply about their income and our seed can improve incomes by up to $200 annually. 

We leverage our model’s success to demonstrate the benefits of high-yielding biofortified seeds to the Guatemalan government to support a national policy. Our impact evidence is an advocacy tool we use to push for a pilot a subsidy program with the Guatemalan government to incentivize additional seed companies to sell biofortified seeds. The program has the potential to reach over 8 million Guatemalans in three years. Additionally, our model’s success and increased sales help us advance partnerships with African agricultural organizations.

In corn dependent regions around the world, farmers are beginning to switch to improved seeds sold by seed companies in order to produce enough corn to feed national populations. If we can get more rural farmers to adopt biofortified seed we can improve the nutrition of hundreds of millions and help farmers adapt to climate change. 

Studies across the world have shown that farmers select seeds based on yields and price and don’t consider nutrition. To get millions of farmers to buy biofortified seeds, we need seed companies to offer high-yielding biofortified seeds at low costs.

Our initial work with seed companies has shown that small financial incentives can lead seed companies to sell biofortified seeds at highly competitive prices. In Guatemala, the entire seed sector could be incentivized to switch to biofortified seeds for about $4 million a year - equivalent to 4% of the national agricultural development budget or 1% of the health budget. Significant nutritional impacts could be obtained with less than a quarter of this adoption rate. Faster biofortified seed breeding would decrease the subsidy cost even further. 

Policy to incentivize seed companies to sell biofortified seeds at low costs could be highly attractive to governments because it 1) improves nutrition for previously hard to reach demographics at a low cost, 2) leaves implementation to the private sector and only pays for results, and 3) could increase political capital if the decreases in seed prices are noticeable to farmers. 

To expand access to biofortified seeds globally, Semilla Nueva must continue: 

1. showing the feasibility of selling biofortified seeds and generating initial evidence, 

2. improving the development of biofortified seeds, and 

3. building alliances with other seed companies, development organizations and the Guatemalan government to push for a policy pilot and later long-term institutionalization. 

If we can succeed in Guatemala and if we can generate new seeds for sub-Saharan Africa, we will create the groundwork for a highly promising model that could reach over a hundred million people with improved nutrition in the next ten years with potential to impact 2 billion by 2050.

In our first three years we’ve nearly doubled our seed sales annually. In our second year, 2019, over 5,400 farmer families purchased seed, improving their income and nutrition. The grain they consumed and sold improved the nutrition of over 150,000 of Guatemala’s poorest consumers. Sales are on track to reach nearly 8,000 families in 2020 and nearly 11,000 families in 2021, improving the nutrition of over 250,000 people and nearly 400,000 people respectively.

Within five years, Semilla Nueva hopes to have a policy in place to incentivize other seed companies to sell biofortified seeds at reduced prices and also launch the next generation of biofortified seeds. Combined, this would lead to 45,000 families purchasing seed, improving their incomes and nutrition. These farmers would sell enough grain into the market, saturating it with higher nutrient grain, to make a populational impact on nutrition. According to our ex-ante nutritional impact model, this would improve the nutrition of more than 8 million people. At the same time, Semilla Nueva would launch new seeds in Africa, beginning to repeat the process with partners who already sell seed to the largest concentrated population of malnourished, corn consuming people.

To reach our goal of improving the nutrition of 8 million people within five years, and laying the groundwork to reach 100 million within ten, Semilla Nueva has to meet several key milestones in seed development, marketing, and building a coalition for public policy.

In terms of seed development, within the next year we need to develop improved laboratory techniques to measure the nutrition of seeds without destroying them and use these techniques to prove that nutritional traits can be bred into the parental seeds of highly competitive, non-biofortified hybrids. If successful, this will allow us to launch new biofortified seeds with up to 30% higher yields (making them competitive with the best seeds of transnational companies) within three years. It will also enable us to begin developing seeds for our partners in Africa, with a goal of launching within four years.

Using our seeds already in development, and these new seeds, we will expand sales, but most importantly, we will begin building general support from farmers, NGOs, international development organizations, and other seed companies to encourage the Guatemalan government to adopt a policy to incentivize all of Guatemala’s seed companies to copy our model. Given timelines for similar policies in other countries, we expect this phase to take approximately two years, with an additional two years to pilot the implementation of the policy, generate results and work towards its institutionalization.

Semilla Nueva is facing three immediate challenges to be able to significantly scale our model. We need to develop advanced in-country nutritional testing capabilities and create the evidence and public demand to support public policy.

1) Current testing for seed nutrition requires grinding seeds and evaluating the powder for zinc and iron levels. Because seeds are destroyed in the process, additional breeding generations are required; this can triple the time and cost to develop new seeds.  New advances in both X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Near Infrared Spectrometry (NIRS) should facilitate a testing method that can assess a seed’s nutritional content without destroying the seed. This technology should allow us to develop higher-yielding, more climate resilient seeds much faster and enable us to begin developing seeds for Africa.

2) Semilla Nueva has convincing data on the impacts of our seed on improving nutritional intake, incomes, and food security. We haven’t yet developed a cost-effective means of measuring local health outcomes. While the case for improved health outcomes due to improved nutrition from biofortified seeds is relatively strong in the literature, we need to collect local evidence of health outcomes in Guatemala to improve our argument for policy.

3) Currently, Semilla Nueva’s marketing appeals to farmers by highlighting the income increases our seed can generate. As we launch advocacy efforts to promote national policy, we need to develop a new strategy to generate widespread public demand for biofortified seed, with farmers and rural families becoming central advocates to the Guatemalan government.

Semilla Nueva is addressing these barriers by:

1. We are working with scientists and industry experts at companies which develop XRF and NIRS technology to test if they can be used to analyze single seeds. Testing is underway with seeds available in the US and seeds from Semilla Nueva’s breeding program, with known nutritional qualities, will soon be sent to several international companies. Successful testing results will lead to an XRF machine being installed in Guatemala.

2. Semilla Nueva recently hired an additional M&E coordinator to strengthen survey data collection quality and analysis. This position will allow us to move to representative and regional samples of economic impact, family demographics and consumption data, and improved analysis on nutritional impacts for farmers, data which will guide the creation of a larger health outcomes study. We have held initial conversations with organizations such as JPAL, ID Insight, and local research organizations to build initial proposals for health evaluations based on this data. Additional work is necessary to solidify these proposals and seek corresponding funding.

3. Semilla Nueva hired a marketing strategist to oversee new national marketing campaigns and digital marketing. We are also working with USAID’s Feed the Future program to launch a new market study geared towards using the improved taste and texture of the tortillas produced from biofortified corn (in addition to the low cost and high quality of our seed) to create a deeper sense of customer loyalty, an important step before beginning a marketing campaign to build support for policy. 

As mentioned above we partner with CIMMYT to support seed breeding efforts, Harvest Plus to track the impact of biofortification nationally, and INCAP to support impact evaluation and a nutrition lab. Our priority for the rest of 2020 and 2021 is continuing to build strategic partnerships in Guatemala to promote policy efforts and with leading organizations in Africa to support geographic expansion. 

In 2019, we began a policy working group with the World Food Programme, USDA, INCAP and additional stakeholders to promote a national program providing subsidies for companies to sell biofortified seed. The policy has the potential to improve the incomes of over 25,000 farmer families and produce enough biofortified corn to improve the nutrition of over 8 million people in three years. At full scale, it would cost less than 4% of the national agriculture budget, improve incomes and food security for over 200,000 farmer families, and improve the nutrition of nearly 75% of the country. We’ve established relationships across the Ministries of Agriculture and Economy. Additionally, we are cultivating relationships with potential allies in Congress. 

We will identify and work with top organizations in Africa to biofortify their top seeds. By selecting partners that have large farmer networks, we can scale the use of biofortified seeds to millions of farmers through existing channels. We are currently in conversations with One Acre Fund to explore and develop a potential partnership model and anticipate officially launching the partnership at the end of 2020.

Semilla Nueva launched a subsidiary seed company in 2018. This seed company uses the same business model as Central America’s other competitive seed companies. Local farmers are trained and contracted to produce seed which is certified by the Guatemalan government for quality. Seed is sold to distributors who stock local retailers throughout the country who in turn sell the seed to farmers. Semilla Nueva promotes the seed through demonstration parcels with community leaders, field days where farmers can visit demonstration parcels to see the seed during maturity and harvest, and advertising through radio, billboards, SMS and digital promotion.

Approximately half of Guatemala’s corn is produced by 150,000 farmers who buy hybrid seeds. These farmers are dependent on erratic rainfall and do not have crop insurance, making them highly risk averse. Over 60% buy inexpensive and outdated seeds from local seed companies. While aware that more expensive seeds and inputs could increase incomes in good years, climate risks lead them to seek the best inputs they can purchase with minimum investment. Semilla Nueva’s seed costs the same as the cheapest seed in the market, but yields similarly to the seeds in the mid-price range, which are close to twice as expensive. The result has led to increasing brand loyalty, with Semilla Nueva’s net promoter score, a measure of how much farmers would recommend a seed to friends and family, ranking in the top two brands for surveyed farmers during the first two years of sales.

Semilla Nueva is a hybrid organization, with an NGO that owns a subsidiary seed company. In the near-term the NGO is supporting the seed company as well as funding impact evaluation, reporting and other non-business expenses. Sales covered 10% of the seed venture’s costs in 2018, increasing to 16% in 2020. Without policy support for biofortified seeds, sales will begin to cover 50% of costs by the end of 2024 and lead to profitability by 2028. Similarly, total philanthropic funding requirements will peak in 2024 at $2 million, before being cut by 52% in 2028 as the seed company reaches profitability and begins to cover non-profit expenses.

With policy support as described above in this application, the timeline for profitability and reduced philanthropic funding increases dramatically, with a peak of philanthropic needs in 2022 at approximately $1.8 million and seed company profitability by the end of 2024 with philanthropic capital needs of approximately $1 million.

Semilla Nueva is primarily funded through philanthropic grants. We have consistently grown our budget over the past three years by 15 - 104% annually.

In 2018, our budget was $611,000. 93% of this funding came from grants and donations and 7% came from sales.

In 2019, our budget was $1.24 million. 94% of the funding came from grants and donations and 6% came from sales.

In 2020, our budget is 1.54 million and we estimate 86% of our funding will come from grants and donations and 14% will be covered by sales.

The budget figures referenced above include overall operating costs (both NGO and seed venture).

We are primarily funded by family foundations, members of Big Bang Philanthropy, and two USAID subgrants. We cannot disclose individual donors amounts due to confidentiality. 2020 donors include: USAID’s Feed the Future program, the Mulago Foundation, Cartier Philanthropy, the Vitol Foundation, Expo 2020, the Swiss Re Foundation, the Light a Single Candle Foundation and Miracles in Action.

Semilla Nueva is seeking to raise $1.7 million for its core operations in 2021, of which approximately $500,000 is already committed and another $750,000 will be up for renewal. We are continuing to focus on expanding sales and grant funding, specifically continuing to pursue Big Bang affiliated and other family foundations as well multilateral and bilateral funding, promoting the same goals mentioned in this application.

Our 2020 budget of $1.54 million focuses on reaching nearly 8,000 farmer families and over 250,000 individuals with better nutrition while laying the long-term foundation for developing new seeds, impact evaluation and policy.

 Combining our NGO and seed company budgets, our biggest costs are seed production and seed sales, at 20% and 24% of the total budget respectively. Sales costs include team salaries, travel, marketing, and farmer field days. 12% of our budget is allocated to seed development efforts, which we expect to grow in 2021. 10% of our budget is allocated to M&E efforts, which covers costs for design, implementation, and analysis of the economic impact, improved nutritional consumption, and farmer perception of our seeds. 7% of our budget is allocated to collaborative work with farmer associations to support free seed distribution in communities facing immediate food crisis due to COVID-19. The remainder of the 2020 budget is divided across finance, administrative, and fundraising costs, which have grown in the previous year due to reporting requirements for Semilla Nueva’s current bilateral funders.

Malnutrition holds back nearly a billion people from reaching their full potential, undermining the health, educational, and economic development of entire nations. To keep up with population growth, we need to find a cost-effective way to reach rural populations with better nutrition. We have a promising blueprint that combines effective technology (biofortified seeds) and delivery models (sales, policy, and partnership) to improve nutrition, incomes, and climate resilience for rural farmers. Every $1 invested in fortification generates $27 in economic return from averted disease, improved earnings, and enhanced work productivity.

We need Elevate’s partnership to overcome our current barriers to scale - the need for improved nutritional testing methods, improved impact evaluation, and advocacy to promote biofortified seeds. Elevate’s model, providing expert mentorship and access to media and communications support, will position us to leverage a critical window of opportunity to build widespread support for biofortification. As Semilla Nueva explores developing a national policy and expanding to sub-Saharan Africa, it will be critical to build organizational systems that can manage government and cross-country partnerships. Further, elevating our model’s impact through strategic publicity and advocacy opportunities will build the required support base for national policy and global partnerships. As the world assesses its progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, we need to promote biofortification as a key strategy for solving poverty and hunger. Integrating biofortification into global nutrition strategies will require generating a strong base of supporters across governments, the public and private sector, and our clients, farmers.

Mentorship: Semilla Nueva is at a critical juncture; with policy and seed development, scale could expand by five-fold in the next 3 years. Public policy experts will be critical for building and implementing a successful national policy. Expansion into other geographies will require mentorship from leaders in the seed industry and social enterprises in new regions.

Marketing, media, and exposure: The public policy expertise mentioned above will be critical to increase national support in Guatemala. We will need additional global media coverage and exposure to promote biofortification as a cost effective way to address malnutrition. Elevating the efficacy of our model will help us pursue partnerships and expand the use of biofortified corn seeds to other malnourished and corn dependent countries. To increase global support and multilateral funding allocations for biofortification, we need Elevate’s strategic media exposure to attract attention from multi/bilateral leaders, government officials, and high impact philanthropists.

The Elevate Prize convenes global thought leaders and decision makers and provides access to strategic media campaigns to promote heroes and organizations. If awarded, we would pursue the following partnerships:

1. Business mentorship: We would welcome partnership with industry experts at Bayer, Syngenta, and Pioneer, seed companies with a presence in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa. We are already in conversations with MyAgro and One Acre Fund, and would welcome partnership with local agriculture organizations. 

2. Public policy expertise: Cultivating support for a national policy will require: 1. a nation wide marketing campaign that builds consumer demand and 2. policy expertise to reach consensus across ministries and multilateral stakeholders. Partnership with policy experts from Central America will be critical to design a successful campaign and agricultural marketing experts will help us build consumer demand.

3. Mass media advocacy:  By 2050, two billion people will depend on corn for diet, leaving them malnourished. Biofortification is underutilized technology with potential to cost-effectively reduce malnutrition. We would like to partner with leading global advocacy and marketing organizations that have experience influencing multilaterals like the World Health Organization and the United Nations, and world leaders. We need to design a global campaign that highlights the impact of biofortification and integrates it as a solution for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals. A successful campaign would ensure that global resources are allocated to biofortification and countries prioritized biofortification in national nutrition strategies. Potential partners include Panorama Global, Devex, PATH, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.