Cornelius Adewale has won the 2017 Bullitt Foundation Environmental Prize for his leadership role in developing an app and web tool that can measure a farm’s carbon footprint and help farmers reduce the impact of that footprint.
The 34-year-old Nigerian, who graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University, is currently studying at the Washington State University, Pullman, where he is planning a phone app to help farmers grow more crops.
In 2011, Mr. Cornelius Adewale moved to Pullman with $6,000 in his pocket ― money he’d earned from the vegetable harvest at his farm in southwest Nigeria. Six years later, Adewale is a PhD candidate at WSU and a member of the board of directors of Washington’s Tilth Alliance.
Cornelius Adewale as winner of the 2017 Bullitt Foundation Environmental Prize is entitled to a $100,000.
Adewale plans to use the money to build a phone app that will help Nigerian farmers grow more crops, using fewer resources, with a lighter touch on the planet.
The app will be a portal to research and information about organic farming specific to Nigeria’s climate. And farmers will be able to measure the quantity of organic matter in their soil just by taking a picture of it, using their phones.
According to Denis Hayes, president and Chief Executive Officer of the Bullitt Foundation:
“Cornelius just had a magnetism and energy and charm that made him irresistible.
He came with rave recommendations from his professors, who believe he can be a transformational force in agriculture.”
For the past two years, Adewale has been working with a team of students at WSU to create a web-based tool that helps Washington farmers measure their carbon footprint, and gives them ideas for how they can reduce that footprint by adjusting the way they farm.
According to Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, an associate professor in WSU’s department of crop and soil sciences:
“The thing that is really unique and wonderful about Cornelius is his humility ― he really relates to everyone as individuals. He’s there to help, but in a way that’s about empowering the individuals, not telling people what to do … he truly is a natural leader.”
Cornelius Adewale found WSU’s organic agriculture major ― the first such major ever offered at a US university ― in an online search. He used the $6,000 from his harvest to launch his master’s degree.
When he got to Pullman and saw WSU’s organic farm, he burst out laughing. It was only 2 1/2 acres ― about half the size of his own farm in Nigeria. (WSU’s organic farm is now 30 acres.)
Still, he believed he’d come to the right place. Before his money ran out, he secured a research position at WSU to help fund his master’s degree and, later, his PhD.
Adewale thinks Nigerian farmers need more information about ways to use organic methods to build up their soil, making their farms more fertile and productive, without using chemicals.
In Washington, part of his graduate studies included helping develop the free web tool called Ofoot that Adewale wants to use as the base for his mobile phone app in Nigeria.