THE National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is hoping to discover new uses for corn with the second Consider Corn Challenge contest.
NineSignma is acting as the facilitator for this competition which has set the goal of finding innovative uses for field corn.
2017 saw American farmers produce a whopping 14.6 billion bushels of corn. NCGA hopes to partner with industry to find three new uses for the crop, with a minimum of 75 million incremental bushels by 2020.
Entries for the contest are due March 20th, with the three to six winner’s announced in July 2019.
NCGA Feed Food and Industrial Action Team Chair and Nebraska farmer Dan Wesely says the plant has abounds of untapped potential.
“Corn is an economical, abundant and environmentally friendly source which can be converted into a range of high-value uses including plastics, solvents and fibres,” he says.
“Right now, consumers are asking for products that are more environmentally friendly and corn has a role to play in that space.”
In 2018, The Consider Corn Challenge received 33 submissions. The five winners were: Vertimass, South Dakota State University, Annikki, The Iowa Corn Promotion Board, and Lygos.
NCGA Market Development Director Sarah McKay says the contest aims to increase corn grind and find new uses for the crop.
“With another large corn crop being produced by America’s corn farmers, we need to find additional uses for corn, and we know there’s a lot of great work already happening in this space,” she says.
“We want to capitalise on that and help companies get their products to commericalisation.”
More information about the contest can be found at: https://9sig.co/UseCorn.
