Kikkoman Foods Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Kikkoman Corp., announced Friday two separate donations to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, totaling $5 million.
The Kikkoman Foods, Inc. Foundation will donate $3 million to UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural & Life Sciences and $2 million to UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Science.
The announcement was made as part of Kikkoman’s 50th anniversary celebration of the opening of its plant in Walworth. The Walworth plant is now the highest-producing soy sauce facility in the world. Both donations support research that will help protect the resources that initially attracted Kikkoman to Wisconsin, according to Friday’s announcement.
“Kikkoman is pleased to invest in a state that has become a second home to our company,” said Yuzaburo Mogi, honorary chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Kikkoman Corp. “We believe that for a company to thrive over the long run, coexistence and co-prosperity with society, and especially the local community, are essential. The time-honored traditional brewing process for soy sauce uses just four simple ingredients: water, soybeans, wheat, and salt. Through the donations to these two leading research programs, we’re providing meaningful benefit to the region, and world, by helping to ensure the sustainability of agricultural systems and natural resources that contribute to producing soy sauce into the future.”
The $3 million gift to UW-Madison will support two programs within the institution’s College of Agricultural Life Sciences. The two CALS programs that will receive funds are the Wisconsin Integrated Cropping System Trial and Grassland 2.0. Both projects serve as hubs for many researchers and outreach specialists from departments across the college including agronomy, soil science, entomology, plant pathology, and community and environmental sociology.
The $2 million gift to the UWM Foundation will support construction of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences’ research vessel Maggi Sue. It will be the most advanced research vessel ever designed for the Great Lakes.
The newly announced $2 million gift to UWM builds on a $1 million commitment Kikkoman made in 2013 to advance research at the School of Freshwater Sciences.
“The Kikkoman Foods Foundation has been a strong supporter of UWM for decades, and this gift underscores their steadfast dedication to the work being done by our faculty, staff and students,” said UWM chancellor Mark Mone. “The health, prosperity and quality of life in our region depends on the health of the Great Lakes. This gift advances our efforts to deploy a state-of-the-art vessel across the Great Lakes to inform our strategies for safeguarding our most precious resource: fresh water.”
