MINNEAPOLIS — Cargill on Sept. 10 announced it is committing $550,000 to support the World Food Program’s (WFP) Innovation Accelerator, which is a program designed to identify, nurture and scale solutions to address global hunger.

Cargill, along with the WFP, will host an Innovation Bootcamp in Munich, Germany. The Bootcamp will gather start-ups and companies to discuss solutions to address childhood hunger, improving farmer prosperity and emergency hunger relief. After the Bootcamp, Cargill said it will fund a select number of teams to pilot their solutions in the field.

“Cargill’s commitment to nourishing the world can only be accomplished through partnerships like this WFP Accelerator, which brings together public and private sectors to address the serious challenge of food insecurity around the world,” said Joe Stone, Cargill’s executive vice president and chief risk officer and a member of the WFP USA board. “This includes financial support but also hands-on work to mentor participants and apply Cargill’s 153 years of agriculture expertise to enable the Accelerator to foster a more food secure world.”

Cargill is the first private sector company to join the Bootcamp. The company’s commitment to the Innovation Accelerator builds on several other programs Cargill and WFP have launched jointly since their partnership began in 2001. To date, Cargill has provided more than $12 million to WFP to improve the health and nutrition of people in need around the globe, with specific emphasis on Africa, Central America, South America and Asia.