When Agrilinks embarked upon a new blog contest to showcase young scholars’ contributions to food security, we had no idea what to expect, but we knew that there were great stories and insights hiding in the proverbial bushes. We were overwhelmed and impressed with the breadth, depth and diversity of entries we received — hearing from 39 students representing 34 universities in 14 countries on five continents!

Judging went into overtime as judges from Feed the Future, the USAID Bureau for Food Security and Agrilinks carefully considered each entry on the basis of its content, originality, relevance and style. Entries covered the universe of food security, including post-harvest loss, integrated pest management, nutrition, behavioral change, food safety, economic implications to food policies and more. Many entries drew from original research and field visits, lending new insights to age-old problems.

We’d like to congratulate our overall winner, Lauren Howe, for her noteworthy blog and accompanying video, Building Community Around the Table: Sweet Potato Leaves for Improved Family Nutrition in Wolaita Sodo, Ethiopia. Lauren’s blog draws from her experiences enticing Ethiopian farmers to try a food source already under their noses – tasty, nutritious sweet potato leaves, previously just used as animal fodder.

Her blog discusses her field work supporting the NGO Send a Cow Ethiopia (SACE) as a student fellow from theTrellis Fund of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture. Lauren is pursuing a master’s degree in International Agricultural Development at the University of California at Davis, with an emphasis on International and Community Nutrition.

We would like to commend all of our finalists:

• Konstantinos Batziakas, Kansas State University, USA
• Joshua Budi, Iowa State University, USA
• Russell Galanti, University of Hawaii, USA
• Sara Garcia, University of California at Davis, USA
• Tran Thi My Hanh, Virginia Tech, USA
• Kehinde Elizabeth Ojo, University of Georgia, USA
• Bert Manieson, Sabina Abuga and Francis Debrah, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
• Tara Mittelberg, Brazil
• Nolan Monaghan, Iowa State University, USA
• Robert Bob Tsutsu, Mzuzu University, Malawi

Stay tuned on Agrilinks as we publish the finalists' blogs and other selected entries over the coming weeks. We look forward to continuing to collaborate and engage with students around the world, to nurture the next generation of food security researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

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Note: The viewpoints of these blogs are those of their respective authors and do not represent the views of the U.S. government, USAID or Feed the Future.