Mission Possible: The role of challenge prizes in a revitalised UK Innovation Strategy
Aquaculture Revolution Prize A £10m prize awarded to the team that can invent a digital service that trebles healthy fish production by smallholder farmers in India or Bangladesh, and scales it to at least 50,000 fish farms within three years Why a prize? Much developing world agriculture and aquaculture is still done by smallholders – some of the poorest people on Earth. The Aquaculture Revolution Prize would incentivise the transfer and adaptation of advanced techniques and technologies developed for industrialised fish farming, to make them suitable for use by poor smallholder farmers. The prize would
Technology leadership for the UK The prize would foster innovation and technology development primarily in AI, digital and advanced computing – existing areas of strength in the UK. It would galvanise collaboration between technology and agriculture sectors, and between UK and Indian firms.
provide a £5m split between the teams who create the most promising technology, and a £5m final prize for the team that can demonstrate adoption and impact in the real world by successfully rolling out to 50,000 farmers in India and Bangladesh – a model of incentive-driven scaling previously successfully demonstrated by the Haiti Mobile Money Initiative and the Million Cool Roofs Challenge.
Alignment with the seven technology families of UK strength and opportunity Advanced Materials and Manufacturing AI, Digital and Advanced Computing Bioinformatics and Genomics Engineering Biology Electronics, Photonics and Quantum Energy and Environment Technologies Robotics and Smart Machines
The problem
The impact
Fish production is big business in the developing world, providing cheap, healthy and relatively sustainable protein. There have been vast production increases in recent decades, driven by the adoption of scientific management in intensive farms. These include technologies such as pumps, filters and aerators – but also advanced data-driven, digital services to help with the management of farms. These improvements have not, to date, been replicated in the huge but unproductive smallholder fish farming sector in India and Bangladesh.
Our a nalysis s uggests t hat productivity increases of up t o 3 00 per cent a re e nvisageable for smallholders, using relatively simple scientific fish farm management techniques. Such increases would have a transformational effect on h ousehold livelihoods in fish farming communities. The prize would incentivise tech developers and agricultural suppliers to design digital services to help manage and supply inputs to these newly productive fish ponds.
The mission The Aquaculture Revolution Prize could be a keystone element of a mission to double income levels in farming communities in the Global South.
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