Meet the winners of this year's IEAT Cook-Off Competition

Our purpose of Feeding the Future drives us daily, addressing global food security and other focus areas through thousands of community partnerships worldwide. Collaborating with partners like the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago helps us create better communities now and for future generations.

We are proud to lead and support IEAT 2024 with participation of over 70 schools in the school garden competition and 20 secondary schools in the cook-off component. The IEAT 2024 Cook-Off Competition was held on Tuesday, June 11th at the Preysal Secondary School. We sponsored the event in collaboration with the Ministry of Education's "Adopt a School" policy. Preysal High Secondary's Food Technology lab was renovated, teaching stations updated, kitchen equipment repaired, and the school garden refurbished.

Students were provided with mystery ingredients to make their dishes from the Nutrien Model farm and emphasis was placed on originality, creativity and the use of local produce. The cooking competition was open to secondary schools only. The top 5 schools moved on to the final cook-off competition.

This competition formed a part of the larger IEAT competition, which included the establishment of a kitchen garden, creation of an innovative product, and the creation of two or more value-added products. The main objectives of the IEAT competition were as follows: to encourage students to grow their food, to inspire innovation in agriculture, to expose students to entrepreneurship possibilities in agriculture, to promote agro-processing and the production of value-added products, and to stimulate the development of culinary skills. It is well aligned to CARICOM's goal to reduce food imports by 25% by 2025, starting with changing cultural food preferences and reaching the next generation.