PANAJI
Goa's Gabriella D’Cruz, a marine conservationist, has won this year's Food Chain Global Youth Champion Award hosted by British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Radio 4’s Food and Farming Awards.
The 29-year-old D'Cruz won the award for her project for seaweed farming in Goa through the company she founded -- The Good Ocean.
Through the project, she wants to improve diets, transform livelihoods, and protect the planet using an often-overlooked marine vegetable - seaweed.
Through a pilot seaweed farm along the Goa coast set up by The Good Ocean, D'Cruz hopes to show the way to local coastal communities to harvest seaweed which she believes has immense economic potential in food production without any adverse impact on the environment.
D'Cruz was chosen for the award by a panel of three international judges including Ismahane Elouafi, who is Chief Scientist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAC) of the United Nations, Jack Monroe is a food writer and anti-poverty campaigner and Sonia Paiva, a motivational speaker and managing director of Eswatini Kitchen in Eswatini, a Fair Trade producer of natural gourmet food.
