Agriculture minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has announced 18 semi-finalists to find new solutions to food waste in Canada.

Every year, the agriculture ministry says over half of Canada’s food supply is wasted, and nearly 50 billion dollars of the wasted food is avoidable.

The federal proposal is focused on technological solutions to food waste to extend the life of perishable food and transform food waste.

The 18 semi-finalists span a wide range of areas including green chemistry to create natural additives, edible coatings or bioplastics.

Each semi-finalist will receive 100 thousand dollars and move on to the prototype development stage of the challenge.

Over the next eight months, semi-finalists will build or complete an existing prototype of their technology and report on the effectiveness.

A total of six finalists for the Novel Technologies streams will be selected, each receiving an additional 450 thousand dollars, with finalists competing to win one of two grand prizes of up to one million dollars.

Of the 18 semi-finalists, there are 3 from Alberta and one from Winnipeg with the remainder from Eastern Canada.

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