By Roger Jeal
Food is such a major business news story in so many ways.
Of course, we all need it just to live. Such a subject that can be related so easily to everyday life offers the chance to write business stories in which people will take a real interest. In many countries agriculture is a major export earner and source of jobs, too.
In an age when business is keen to show how 'green' it is (see here for a story from the recent World Economic Summit on this), farming also raises a variety of environmental questions, some positive and some negative. Farmers are often portrayed as the guardians of the countryside, but they can also have a bad impact with large-scale production and heavy use of chemicals.
The production of genetically modified food is a controversial question, offering hope of abundant wonder crops but raising fears for many about food safety. Is organically produced food the answer, but will consumers pay more for it and can you trust all the businesses who sell it? Flying food from Africa to stock my local super market in London may boost poorer countries' economies and give me more choice, but how is it contributing to climate change? There is pressure now to consume more local food, which might have a big impact on buying patterns.
A current bird flu scare in the UK involving a giant turkey farm could change what consumers buy, although supermarkets have so far said there has been no slump in poultry sales. See this BBC special report on bird flu.
Fighting over subsidies to farmers in rich countries, who have political influence, has been holding up negotiations to open up world trade.
The charity Panos, whose reports on globalization and trade we have highlighted elsewhere on this site, has published a package of media resources exploring food security, which you can find here. A lot of information on development issues, including communication, the environment, globalization and HIV/AIDS, can be found on the Panos website.
As Panos says, "Hunger hits the headlines during times of famine, yet chronic food shortages are part of everyday life for millions of people in Africa and Asia." According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 600 million people worldwide will regularly go hungry by 2015 unless there is a major change in policy.
The media resources include free-to-reproduce print and audio features, a briefing to help editors and journalists cover the complex issues raised by research, details of useful websites and a challenge for the media!
Panos says we in the media have a crucial role in highlighting food security: "According to IFPRI’s Klaus von Grebmer, governments listen to the media more than anyone else. Some international development experts believe that newspapers and radio stations in Africa need to debate alternative policies and feel safe criticising government policy. But the media often only engage with the debate when there is a crisis, and selective reporting among the international press – guided by their political position – often portrays famine as apolitical. Journalists can spot trends and act as an unofficial early warning system: if journalists had covered reports of early warnings for Niger in 2003, governments and aid agencies might have acted earlier."
Why not tell us your views on these comments in the Panos briefing? Add your comments below on how journalists can and should contribute to the debate.
Not everyone agrees completely on what the media’s role should be, as you can see here about globalization issues. Perhaps we can continue such a debate on this website!
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