Building on Intensive Media Coverage of International Agriculture


A steady stream of news story promotions is communicating the relevance and success of CGIAR research in addressing major development challenges

Over the last 2 years or so, CGIAR-supported research has received fairly intensive media coverage. This reflects heightened media interest in agriculture, fueled by multiple crises impacting the sector, especially climate change and food price inflation.

Increased coverage is also the result of stronger media outreach at individual Centers, bolstered by a steady stream of (more or less monthly) news story promotions carried out jointly by Centers and the CGIAR Secretariat through Burness Communications, a private firm with which the CGIAR has a longstanding partnership.

Summarized below are the four most recent story promotions. They form part of an ongoing effort to maintain a high international media profile for the CGIAR, emphasizing the relevance and success of its research in addressing development challenges.

Another collection of news story ideas was identified during a CGIAR communications workshop held last March at the WorldFish Center in Malaysia. This will help maintain the momentum of CGIAR media outreach through the remainder of 2009, culminating in a major effort surrounding the ninth conference of the parties (COP9) to the Kyoto accord on climate change, which will take in December at Copenhagen, Denmark.

AGM08 in Mozambique

The CGIAR’s 2008 Annual General Meeting (AGM), held in December at Maputo, Mozambique, once again provided an important focus for media outreach.

A key theme of the coverage was a set of “best-bet” options, on which the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had recently conducted impact analysis. Its purpose was to determine the potential magnitude of impacts that could be expected from increased investment in key areas of international and national agricultural research.

Media outreach by Burness Communications also included the CGIAR Science Awards as well as placement as an op-ed of the foreword to a new CGIAR book, Passion Beyond Normal: How Farmers and Researchers are Finding Solutions to Africa’s Hunger, which was launched at AGM08.

As a result of the outreach, at least 18 interviews were arranged before or during the event, mainly with CGIAR spokespersons. More than 15 journalists (some of them participants in media training offered at AGM08 for journalists from lusophone countries in Africa) attended a press briefing on the event’s opening day. Others took part in several field visits.

Highlights of the media coverage included 14 stories from key news agencies, including Agence France Presse, Portugal’s Agencia Lusa, China’s Xinhua, United Press International as well as the regional African Press Agency and Africa Science News Service. Several leading African newspapers ran stories, such as Nigeria’s Business Day, Kenya’s Daily Nation and the Ghanaian Chronicle. Various online stories were posted as well, including one in Nature News. In addition, BBC World Service, Radio France Internationale and South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Channel Africa aired stories, which reached millions of radio listeners across Europe and Africa.

Launch of the African Soil Information Service

Working closely with the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility (TSBF) Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the CGIAR Secretariat, Burness Communications promoted with media the launch of a new initiative (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) to provide Africa with a comprehensive soil information service. A press briefing held at the launch event, held in early January at the Nairobi headquarters of the World Agroforestry Centre, was attended by more than 20 journalists from leading Kenyan and international media outlets.

Media outreach resulted in about 40 news agency, print, broadcast and online stories, including original stories by Kenya’s Business Daily, Time magazine, Nature, Science and Reuters. Also among the highlights were interviews aired by BBC’s English and French to Africa services, SABC’s Channel Africa and Radio France International, which reached millions of listeners across Africa.

Fisheries and Climate Change

In February, a WorldFish Center study was promoted, which dealt with the expected implications for the poor of climate change impacts on fisheries worldwide. Nearly 50 news stories resulted, including coverage by Agence France Presse, Bloomberg, BBC News, Reuters, New Scientist, Nature Reports Climate Change, Voice of America, and Radio France Internationale’s Quotidien de la Mer program. Journalists commented on the value and effectiveness of the WorldFish spokespersons and expressed a desire to know more about the links between fisheries, poverty and the environment.

Containing Wheat Stem Rust

The CGIAR’s most recent story promotion with Burness Communications centered on a workshop held during March in Mexico by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, US government and others, the initiative is coordinated by Cornell University in the USA, with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) playing major roles. Workshop participants reported on advances in monitoring the spread of a new race of the stem rust pathogen (Ug99), in developing wheat germplasm with durable rust resistance to the pathogen and in gearing up national seed systems to replace susceptible varieties with resistant ones and thus ward off a rust pandemic in the Middle East and South Asia.

Media outreach gave rise to major coverage, consisting of more than 40 stories prepared by nearly a dozen news services (e.g., Spain’s EFE, Agence France Presse, Associated Press and Reuters), an equal number of print publications (such as the Guardian and New Scientist in the UK, the Hindu in India, and El Universal and La Jornada in Mexico) as well as various online outlets (e.g., Discovery Channel Online: Sustainable Blog, Nature News, New York Times: Dot Earth Blog, Islam Online and Scientific American).