Agriculture
Farming practice, yields, and regenerative land use.
Criteria & scope →
Focus
WHAT WORLD SEED
FUND SUPPORTS.
Seven funding verticals, each with its own areas of work and its own criteria for qualifying an idea.
Category 01
NATURAL RESOURCES & REGENERATIVE SYSTEMS
Ideas concerned with the resources people depend on — how they are reached, used, restored, and governed — and with the resilience of the living systems around them.
Food
Food systems, nutrition, and getting food to people.
Criteria & scope →Water
Access, quality, stewardship, and resilient water systems.
Criteria & scope →Soil and land
Soil health, restoration, and land stewardship.
Criteria & scope →Forests
Forest protection, restoration, and forest livelihoods.
Criteria & scope →Oceans and fisheries
Coastal livelihoods, fish stocks, and marine stewardship.
Criteria & scope →Biodiversity
Species, habitat, and living with the wild.
Criteria & scope →Energy
Cleaner, affordable, reliable power close to where it is used.
Criteria & scope →Circular resources
Waste, reuse, recovery, and keeping materials in use.
Criteria & scope →Climate resilience
Adapting to heat, flood, drought, and changing seasons.
Criteria & scope →Category 02
HOUSING, MATERIALS & THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Ideas about how people are housed and what they build with — materials, methods, and knowledge that make shelter affordable, durable, and appropriate to place.
Community-led housing
Housing designed, built, and held by the people who live in it.
Criteria & scope →Regenerative building materials
Materials that are local, low-carbon, and durable.
Criteria & scope →Construction and material innovation
Better ways to build, at cost, with local labour.
Criteria & scope →Culturally relevant architecture
Buildings that fit how people actually live.
Criteria & scope →Indigenous and traditional building knowledge
Building knowledge held by communities, kept in use.
Criteria & scope →Green and energy-efficient homes
Homes that cost less to run and are healthier to live in.
Criteria & scope →Climate-resilient construction
Building for flood, heat, wind, and fire.
Criteria & scope →Local manufacturing
Making things near where they are needed.
Criteria & scope →Adaptive reuse
Putting existing buildings and structures back to work.
Criteria & scope →Community infrastructure
The shared structures a place needs to function.
Criteria & scope →Category 03
HEALTH & COMMUNITY WELL-BEING
Ideas that improve how people stay well — the environment they live in, the food and water they rely on, and the care that reaches them where they are.
Environmental health
Air, water, waste, and contamination where people live.
Criteria & scope →Nutrition and food security
Enough food, of the right kind, reliably.
Criteria & scope →Water and sanitation
Safe water and safe sanitation, in use.
Criteria & scope →Community health
Care that reaches people where they live.
Criteria & scope →Occupational health
Safety and health in the work people actually do.
Criteria & scope →Mental well-being
Support for mental health, on people's own terms.
Criteria & scope →Traditional health knowledge
Health knowledge held in communities, respected and kept.
Criteria & scope →Accessible health systems
Removing what stands between people and care.
Criteria & scope →Climate-related health resilience
Health services and households ready for heat, flood, and disease shifts.
Criteria & scope →Category 04
EDUCATION, KNOWLEDGE & HUMAN CAPABILITY
Ideas that widen who gets to learn and what they can do with it — trades, science, enterprise, local knowledge, and pathways for young people.
Blue- and green-economy skills
Training for the work of restoration, energy, and marine trades.
Criteria & scope →Agricultural and environmental education
Learning that stays close to land, water, and food.
Criteria & scope →Skilled trades and construction
Apprenticeship and trade skills that lead to work.
Criteria & scope →Scientific and technical training
Technical capability built where it is needed.
Criteria & scope →Entrepreneurship
Support for people starting and running enterprises.
Criteria & scope →Indigenous and local knowledge
Knowledge held by communities, kept in living use.
Criteria & scope →Research and knowledge exchange
Research that answers local questions and returns to those who asked.
Criteria & scope →Youth pathways
Routes from school to work, study, and standing.
Criteria & scope →Digital access
Devices, connectivity, and the skill to use them.
Criteria & scope →Lifelong learning
Learning that continues through working life.
Criteria & scope →Category 05
MOBILITY, ENERGY & ESSENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Ideas that close distance and keep essential systems running — transport that reaches people, power and networks that services and enterprise can rely on.
Sustainable transportation
Moving people and goods with less cost and less harm.
Criteria & scope →Water transportation
Boats, ferries, and river and coastal movement.
Criteria & scope →Rural and last-mile mobility
The final stretch between people and everything else.
Criteria & scope →Renewable and community energy
Power owned and run close to the people using it.
Criteria & scope →Digital connectivity
Networks reaching places the market has skipped.
Criteria & scope →Water and sanitation infrastructure
The pipes, plants, and systems behind safe water.
Criteria & scope →Resilient public infrastructure
Public works that survive what is coming.
Criteria & scope →Local distribution systems
Getting goods the last stretch, reliably.
Criteria & scope →Access to markets and services
Closing the distance between people and what they need.
Criteria & scope →Category 06
CULTURE, ARTS & LANGUAGE
Ideas that keep living culture in use — languages spoken, knowledge passed on, places cared for, and creative work that sustains those who make it.
Language preservation
Languages kept spoken, taught, and written.
Criteria & scope →Oral traditions
Spoken knowledge carried between generations.
Criteria & scope →Cultural documentation
Recording practice, place, and memory, on community terms.
Criteria & scope →Expressive and performing arts
Music, dance, theatre, and visual work with a place to happen.
Criteria & scope →Traditional ecological knowledge
Long-held knowledge of land, water, and season.
Criteria & scope →Cultural landscapes and waterways
Places that hold meaning as well as function.
Criteria & scope →Crafts and regenerative materials
Making by hand, with materials that renew.
Criteria & scope →Cultural exchange
Encounters between communities that leave something behind.
Criteria & scope →Creative livelihoods
Making a living from creative work.
Criteria & scope →Intergenerational knowledge transfer
Older and younger people learning from each other.
Criteria & scope →Category 07
LIVELIHOODS, ENTERPRISE & COMMUNITY PROSPERITY
Ideas that strengthen how people earn and what a place keeps — producers, small and family enterprises, cooperatives, and community-held wealth.
Farmers, fishers, builders, artisans, and makers
The people who produce, build, and make things.
Criteria & scope →Small and family-run enterprises
The businesses that employ most people.
Criteria & scope →Cooperatives
Enterprises owned by their members.
Criteria & scope →Community-owned businesses
Enterprises held for and by a place.
Criteria & scope →Informal and neighborhood economies
The trade that most people actually live on.
Criteria & scope →Creative and cultural economies
Culture as a working part of the local economy.
Criteria & scope →Local manufacturing
Small-scale production that keeps value nearby.
Criteria & scope →Responsible tourism
Visitors that leave more than they take.
Criteria & scope →Market access
Reaching buyers who pay a fair price.
Criteria & scope →Community wealth building
Keeping value, assets, and ownership in a place.
Criteria & scope →Who can participate
FORMAL AND INFORMAL
PARTICIPATION.
World Seed Fund recognises both. An idea does not need an institution behind it, and an institution does not exempt an idea from the criteria.
Formal participants may include
- Governments and municipalities
- UN bodies and NGOs
- Universities and research institutions
- Registered enterprises
- Cooperatives and foundations
- Public agencies
Informal participants may include
- Individual innovators
- Farmers and fishers
- Artisans and traditional builders
- Culture and language keepers
- Community organizers
- Family enterprises
- Unincorporated teams
- Neighborhood networks
- People holding valuable lived or inherited knowledge