Before the Workshop, a short questionnaire was sent to the five African rural radio broadcasters, in order to identify the needs and expectations of their listeners, as well as their own documentation needs on food security.
The reader will find in Annex I the questionnaire form and here below the analysis of the answers.
The five radio broadcasters have kindly answered the questionnaire, which allowed FAO to identify better the information and communication needs of their listeners, to prepare the relevant technical content for the Workshop, and to ensure that adequate documentation on food security is available.
Radio broadcasters expressed main interests of their listeners: human rights, gender issues, land rights and farmers security (as regards South Africa, where farmers are the most victims of crimes).
With regard to agriculture and food, radio broadcasters spontaneously mentioned the following topics as most interesting to their listeners (open question): food security, agrometeorology and early warning system.
In answer to a closed question, radio broadcasters classified ten technical topics according to a decreasing order of preference/interest. The topics they are the most interested in are:
1. Market Prices
2. Nutrition
3. Early Warning
4. Food Security
5. Special Programme for Food Security
Before the Conference and in order to prepare their venue, the radio broadcasters received significant FAO publications, like The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) and The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI).
With regard to the issues mentioned in these FAO publications, radio broadcasters feel concerned about hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Their main themes of interest are: hunger and malnutrition, nutrition and vulnerability, actions against under-nutrition and poverty, the cost of hunger and the impact of under-nutrition on children, on health, on school performance, on labour productivity and on economic growth.
Radio broadcasters were looking for answers to the questions they are concerned about:
How to alleviate food insecurity in times of war
How to manage information in times of food shortage, especially in the areas where cultural values often oblige people to conceal their suffering
How to sensitize decision-makers so that they could organize aid and anticipate food crisis - for instance by creating integrated economic areas.
Among other topics covered by FAO publications and that interest radio broadcasters, are: water (shortage of water, water supply for domestic and livestock consumption, safe supply of drinking-water for all), plant pests and animal diseases.
Radio broadcasters wanted these themes, of hunger and malnutrition to be discussed during the Workshop.
Other topics to cover and develop during this encounter:
Economic issues: Market access, export competition and multinational role of agriculture;
Agricultural issues: The importance of biodiversity, potential complementarity between breeding and agriculture, the link between cereal production and healthy nutrition;
Issues that are more related to their job as radio broadcasters: Broadcasters need to have resources to facilitate the listeners’ needs - special programmes; Engaging listeners to participate physically, especially the farmers and imaging ones; Thinking about the role of local radio in early warning, in managing cereal reserves and in food security.
Consequently, during the opening of the Workshop, FAO technical experts were encouraged to develop these themes in particularly during the technical sessions and the interviews they would have with the radio broadcasters.
We thank the radio broadcasters for having filled in these questionnaires and hope the Workshop answered their questions.
We hope that the contents and handouts which they collected here at FAO, would answer needs and expectations rural radio listeners in terms of information-communication on food security.
