By Jim Meadows
The University of Illinois’ Soybean Innovation Lab has resumed its work on helping developing countries develop their soybean economies.
Lab director Peter Goldsmith said that’s thanks to a private donation.
The Trump administration had permanently canceled funding for the Soybean Innovation Lab (SIL), and other Innovation Lab projects at universities around the country. They were all part of the Feed the Future Initiative, launched by the Obama administration to address global hunger.
Nearly all of the Feed the Future projects lost their funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development. But, as first reported in the Daily Illini, Goldsmith said they received a $1 million anonymous donation, which allowed them to resume their work on a reduced scale.
Instead of government-funded projects in several countries, the donation will pay for a year’s work on adapting soybean farming and processing techniques to the hot, low-elevation environment of the Lower Shire Valley in the east African nation of Malawi.
Goldsmith said that project is a good choice considering their reduced funding. He said it makes use of recent World Bank irrigation investments in the area and encompasses several facets of soybean production at once, from cultivation to processing to developing necessary machinery.
“So all the various features are in miniature, and that was intentional,” said Goldsmith. “We thought that would be helpful to maximize the potential that we would be able to find additional funding in the future.”
The anonymous gift was sent through Founders Pledge. The London-based non-profit administers charitable giving from wealthy entrepreneurs. Goldsmith said they worked with the University of Illinois Foundation to restart the Soybean Innovation Lab’s work.
“They seem just intrinsically mindful of the need to address poverty and malnutrition in a very pure and philanthropic way,” he added. “And they saw that we were very effective at doing that.”
The donation allowed SIL to hire back about eight of its approximately 30 employees. While most are based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Goldsmith said one is based at the University of Missouri, and one is in Nairobi, Kenya. He said some of the U of I-based staff traveled to Malawi to work on the project.
Goldsmith said he doesn’t know of any other Innovation Lab projects which have received outside donations since their federal grants were canceled — though he said some of the projects are continuing with funding from their host universities.
Goldsmith acknowledged he was more public about the SIL funding crisis compared to other Innovation Labs, and the resulting media attention may have helped attract interested donors.
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