McGill students win $1M for urban food security project

The Desautels team from left to right: Mohammed Ashour, Zev Thompson, Shobhita Soor, Gabriel Mott and Jesse Pearlstein. / Photo courtesy of the Hult Prize

A group of McGill students has been awarded $1 million to help create a company that will farm insects.

The Hult Prize was awarded to McGill University's Aspire team by former president Bill Clinton Monday evening at an event in New York City.

The McGill crew, which consisted of MBA students from the Desautels Faculty of Management, beat out some 10,000 colleges and universities from 150 countries in the running for the prize.

The goal was to address global food insecurity in urban slums. The McGill team put a special emphasis on using insects as a food source, and their prize money is supposed to go toward creating a company that will promote insect farming.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization reports that insects are eaten seasonally by 2.5 billion people worldwide.

The team’s project promotes innovations in insect farming to provide year-round access to nutritious foods that include insect ingredients.

Watch the video below for more information on the project and the prize: