2025 conference brings national media attention to food security issues
August 26, 2025
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 networking and meetings with stakeholders and partners.
This year’s conference, “Progress and Prospects for Climate-Resilient Agrifood Systems: Actionable Recommendations for Policymakers and Practitioners,” 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 #25cfconf on our channels!) with stakeholders and sponsors making good use of our social media kit for the event and many attendees live tweeting.
It was also great to have ABC TV Landline, ABC Rural and Reuters International attend the event.
A big thank you to the ten speakers involved in around 30 TV, radio and print media interviews which attracted quality national coverage.
While we are know there is more coverage to come (and to find), some traditional media highlights are provided below:
Our keynote speaker, Glenn Denning, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University, was particularly helpful with our media efforts and attracted broad coverage. His main message focused on how food insecurity threatens regional peace and prosperity, and that Australia has a unique geo-political opportunity to emerge as a regional leader in advancing food security.
Glenn featured across Radio National Breakfast, NSW Country Hour (@33m55s), Pacific Beat, National Community Radio The Wire, Country Today on ACE Radio (11 August), and National Commercial Rural News (13 August @ 2m50s). Glenn was also to be heard across the national in morning news bulletins. And we look forward to the DevTalk podcast recorded with Glenn.
This year’s Sir John Crawford Memorial Address delivered by the Hon Joel Fitzgibbon also achieved coverage across major news platforms including Sky News Business, the Australian Community Media/Farm Online papers nationally, The Australian and The Weekly Times.
Influential climate scientist and leader in carbon farming research, Richard Eckard, Professor of Carbon Farming at the University of Melbourne and Zero Net Emissions Agriculture CRC Program Leader was interviewed for an upcoming ABC TV Landline program, featured in The Weekly Times, ABC Country Hour (@39m36s) and Country Today (14 August).
Also speaking about climate change, this time from a legal perspective, Caitlin McConnel, a sixth-generation farmer, legal strategist, and prominent agribusiness leader, outlined
how one of the greatest emerging risks of current policies, aimed at assisting government or business to achieve ‘net zero’ in accordance with our obligations under international law, is an ongoing failure to consider human rights, and the fundamental role of food security in the context of environmental protection. Caitlin featured in an interview on Country Today (@7m22s on 12 August), and in The Weekly Times.
The CSIRO Asia-Pacific Climate intelligence team has been studying the effects of temperature on crops, and may have found a good alternative for agriculture in Vanuatu with cocoa – which likes the warmer temperatures. This was some of the research presented by Dr Leanne Webb, science lead for the CSIRO Asia-Pacific Climate intelligence team, when she spoke to The Wire and Pacific Beat.
Dr Tyron Venn, Senior Research Fellow from the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability at the University of Queensland featured on Country Today (@5m45s on 13 August) talking about the carbon and financial performance and opportunities for silvopastoral systems.
The Crawford Fund’s outgoing Chair the Hon John Anderson AC also featured on ABC Country Hour (@8m33s) talking about how food security should be about helping our pacific neighbours and stockpiling fertiliser and fuel, and on Radio National Country Breakfast (@43m09s).
While our incoming chair, Ms Su McCluskey, continued with the conference message urging Australia to take an even larger role in reports in Beef Central.
Prof Graham Sem, Environmental Science & Geography Discipline Lead at the University of Papua New Guinea and Ms Selane Tairea, Research Officer, Te Puna Vai Marama – Cook Islands Centre for Research, University of the South Pacific were both in the interview on the national ABC Pacific Beat.
And we look forward to the second DevTalks Podcast, featuring Dr Aditi Mukherji from the CGIAR.
It was fantastic 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!
