(People's Choice voting now open!)
The Katerva Award highlights the most innovative projects from around the world and has been referred to as "the Nobel Prize of Sustainability." The SRI International Network and Resources Center (SRI-Rice) at Cornell University has been selected as a finalist for the 2013 Katerva Award in the Food Security category. SRI-Rice was created at Cornell University in 2010 with funding from Jim Carrey's Better U Foundation in response to the increasing importance of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a climate-smart, low-cost, yield-increasing methodology that has spread from Madagascar to over 50 countries in little more than a decade. In an era of climate change and increasing stress on the world's natural resources, SRI is an innovation that, without purchasing expensive inputs, can help farmers adapt to climate change, while reducing methane (an important greenhouse gas) emissions and sustainably increasing productivity and system resilience.
Katerva also allows the public to help choose from the finalists the innovation they feel has the most to offer the world. All 50 finalists are therefore eligible for the Katerva People's Choice Award. The public is invited to vote for the People's Choice Award from the 7th through the 28th of March, 2014, on the Katerva website. (See the following page to cast your vote: http://katerva.net/home/2013-pc-voting/. Please cast your vote for SRI-Rice!
For more information on the nomination of SRI-Rice as well as the others who have been selected, see the press release. Thanks to all who have supported SRI-Rice through the years and to all those who have spent time evaluating, adapting and helping others to learn more about the System of Rice Intensification.