2023 conference brings national media attention
September 12, 2023
As the Crawford Fund’s key public awareness event, each year for our annual conference we engage in traditional and social media campaigns to raise awareness of the important issues to be addressed by speakers, as well as assisting speakers with programs of meetings with Ministers, stakeholders and partners.
“Global Food Security in a Riskier World – Diversification for Resilient Food and Nutrition Systems,” in 2023 was no different!
A set of media materials were developed with speakers as the basis of a national, targeted media outreach.
In addition, there was significant engagement through our social media outreach (check #23CFConf on our channels!) with stakeholders and sponsors making good use of our social media kit for the event and many attendees live tweeting from the event.
A big thank you to the speakers involved in TV, radio and print media interviews which attracted quality national coverage.
While we are still working on a full media report from the event, some traditional media highlights are provided below:
Our keynote speaker, Dr Cary Fowler, US Special Envoy for Food Security, was particularly helpful with our media efforts with his main message on ‘getting agriculture back to basics in a riskier world’ attracting broad coverage! In addition to a live interview on the ABC News Radio Mornings program, there was coverage in The Guardian, Radio National Breakfast program, ABC Rural including Radio National Country Breakfast program, an interview with AAP which went broadly around the country including capital cities and regional papers. You’ll find him heading the ABC TV Landline program’s news for Sunday, 10 September with the likelihood of a longer interview in the future. Interviews were also completed with the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age and with the national reporter for the rural weekly papers.
The importance of neglected and underutilised crops attracted national TV and Radio attention with Prof Kadambot Siddique, The University of Western Australia Hackett Professor of Agriculture Chair and Director of the UWA Institute of Agriculture on both the National ABC TV Breakfast program, and the National Commercial Rural News program.
Em Professor Kym Anderson’s interview on the on-going need for improving price and trade policies attracted national interest, picked up by commercial FM stations’ morning news broadcasts in every State and Territory – everywhere from Innisfail to Perth!
And our CEO, Dr Colin Chartres, was on the Country Today program in Victoria, providing a preview of the event.
There is much more to capture than highlighted here, including interviews of our two PNG Scholars, Margaret Gene and Anna Yamanea, for Radio Australia programs in English and Tok Pisin.
But great to once again get the national media attention for the significant issues covered at our conference. We will continue to send out news on our social media channels of further coverage, with additional features under development. Stay tuned!
