2017 MEPRA Awards – Healthcare Gold Award: Memac Ogilvy

Entry Overview:

“In the most extreme product demonstration ever, scientists have grown potatoes under Martian conditions in a bid to save millions of lives.”

“World changing,” said the Wall Street Journal, as more than 100 million people tuned in live to watch our new potatoes grow, and subsequently offer life saving hope for millions around the world.

Malnutrition and hunger affect between 780 and 842 million people worldwide. As climate change rages on, the situation is only getting worse. Food insecurity and malnutrition is a major threat to giant populations across the globe.

In spite of this, there’s one humble crop that a group of people believe has the power to reverse world hunger and potentially save millions of lives. The crop is the lowly potato, the people are the International Potato Center – and unsurprisingly, their PR value is low. The group came to us with the task of raising the profile of these super crops, and to prove to the entire world that they truly hold the key to saving lives, thanks to their high yields and robustness.

In order to succeed in this mission, we needed research and insights beyond what any farming expert may have previously had access to. To get us started, NASA provided us with classified research papers and data that helped us understand the history of crop in irradiation spaceflight. We then contacted some of the world’s best scientists working in the field to help us begin studying the many thousands of genotypes of potatoes to see which would be the sturdiest and most reliable for our project.

We knew this would not only take something never done before, but something never even considered before.