Australia’s international food security collaboration features on ABC’s Landline

March 11, 2025

Australia is free of African swine fever, but some of our nearby neighbours are affected, including Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), with Canada’s International Research Development Centre, has partnered with the University of The Philippines Los Banos to help pig farmers control outbreaks, aiming to eradicate the disease, and stop it from spreading to other countries, including Australia.

This vital food security collaboration was one focus of a recent journalist visit to the Philippines organised by the Crawford Fund. With financial support from the DFAT Australia-ASEAN Council, the winner of the Crawford Fund Food Security Journalism Award, Pip Courtney, the well-known presenter of ABC TV Landline, travelled to the Philippines with our Director of Outreach, Cathy Reade and a Landline crew.

We are proud to report that the first story from the Philippines visit featured on the ABC’s Landline program on 02 March, Disease Defence: Keeping ASF out of Australia.

“The disease could devastate our pork industry and with no vaccine, keeping it out is now a national biosecurity priority. I recently visited the Philippines, to see how Australia is helping Filipinos control and prevent future outbreaks,” said Pip introducing the story.

“The visit to cover this important work would not have been possible without on-the-ground assistance by ACIAR Philippines, project staff and collaborators with the University of the Philippines Los Banos, and especially farmer Rogelio Bonares and his family for allowing us to visit his farm,” said Cathy Reade, the Crawford Fund’s Director of Special Projects.

“The Crawford Fund would also like to thank the DFAT Australia-ASEAN Council for support for the visit. We are now focussed on the remaining two journalist visits they are supporting, to Indonesia and Vietnam,” said Cathy.

After seeing the program, Dr Yusuf Sucol, the ASF Project Leader told us, “We are excited to share this with our project partners and collaborators, including the local livestock and poultry farmers, field researchers and technologists, government veterinarians and agriculturists, and the animal farming communities we are working with in the municipalities and provinces.”

The time in the Philippines also included visits to the headquarters of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to learn about work underway to improve the resilience of rice in a changing climate, and to produce more varieties of rice with greater nutritional value. We look forward to sharing the next Landline feature soon!

For over 30 years, the Crawford Fund has been arranging visits by Australian journalists to experience and report on agricultural research for development projects, as part of efforts to spread good news stories about the impact and mutual benefit of work to improve food and nutrition security.

The Crawford Fund has launched it’s 2025 Food Security Journalism Award. This award enables the winning journalist to undertake a ‘seeing is believing’ visit to a developing country, interacting with passionate researchers and local farmers, and then sharing their stories with the Australian public.

If you are a journalist who has reported in Australia in the last year on a food and nutrition security issue, and you are you keen to experience first-hand some agricultural projects that are changing lives for the better in a developing country, then this opportunity is for you!