The Celebrating Success Innovation Awards run by the Lincoln University’s Blinc Innovation centre have three sections.
They are for on-farm innovation, off-farm-consumer innovation and a creative innovation-future tech award for secondary school students.
Global HQ co-owner Dean Williamson said the primary sector has had to respond to covid-19 in numerous innovative and nimble ways to continue growing, harvesting and processing primary products.
“This has driven many companies, our own included, to some quite innovative and exciting solutions to stay in business.
“We felt this was an ideal time to lift the lid on what some of those solutions have been and showcase them to the entire country.”
The last eight weeks prove a good crisis should not be wasted because they gave a chance to inspire new approaches to old problems.
“We have this new generation of agripreneurs who have embraced the digital opportunities technology has presented us with and are now delivering some really exciting solutions for the primary sector.”
The chance for high school students to enter the creative innovation-future tech category enables pupils with blue-sky ideas to be rewarded for their creativity.
B.linc Innovation’s Julia Henson said that category will reward its winner with fully paid undergraduate study at Lincoln.
“Anyone who wants to study can appreciate the value of such an award and it’s a good fit with the type of graduates Lincoln is attracting,” she said.
Henson said it was too early to know if the event will become an annual one but the timing is good as the country adjusts to life around covid-19.
“We feel the time is right for a new competition that takes a positive approach to this new environment, recognising people who have seen the opportunities the challenge has presented and developed solutions.”
The Celebrating Success awards close off on August 1.
