Innovation Prize

Carrot Cache $1,000 Innovation Prize

Voting for this year has closed.  Watch for the announcement of the winner!

The Carrot Cache Innovation Prize is back for the 7th year at the 2020 Virtual EFAO Conference.

A $1,000 prize will be awarded for innovative, low-cost solutions to planting, harvesting, and managing food grown on an Ontario urban or rural organic farm.

Farmers can share proven, creative ways already in use on-farm to build financial and environmental sustainability.  Feel free to send details about the Innovation Prize to anyone you think has an innovation worth sharing.  Do you know someone who is too humble to nominate their own innovations?  You can nominate a fellow farmer-innovator.  We’d love to see any tried-and-tested innovations.

Last year, Richard and Ella from Heart’s Content Farm, won for their creative solution of retrofitting an old Allis Chalmers “G” tractor to electric.  We asked Richard and Ella how winning the money has made a difference for them and they responded:

We used the prize money to buy implements for cultivating the garden. It worked very well and cut my weeding time down substantially, not to mention it’s a joy to work quietly in the garden with no exhaust fumes. We also used some of the money to buy new batteries for our solar system to charge the electric tractor with.

It’s such a great prize to motivate innovation with small farmers and share that with others so they can benefit from all the entries and then perhaps adapt it to their own farm. Thanks again to carrot cache for their continued support.

Richard Tunstall farming on his Allis Chalmers “G” tractor that he retrofitted into electric.

Ideas will be displayed virtually at the conference and the winner will be selected by conference attendees.  The winner will be announced on Saturday, December 5th.

Submissions are now closed for the 2020 Innovation Prize.