BCFN Foundation Presents Food and Sustainability Media Award
Dr. Elena Cadel presents the Food and Sustainability Media Award
On Tuesday, March 21, 2017, Professor Margaret Kneller welcomed Dr. Elena Cadel, Consultant and Researcher at the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation (BCFN Foundation) to John Cabot University. “It’s valuable for JCU students to learn about the importance of sustainable agriculture from a major Italian think tank,” said Professor Kneller. The BCFN Foundation is a “private non-profit apolitical institution” that examines issues of food, nutrition and sustainability through a multidisciplinary approach. Its mission is to bring these issues to the forefront of public discourse and policymaking, both on a national and international level. Cadel presented the current issues in the field of food sustainability and the Food Sustainability Media Award contest.
The Food and Sustainability Media Award aims to highlight food sustainability issues, thereby engaging consumers in the “creation of a more equitable and sustainable future, starting from their food choices.” The award has three categories: photography, video and written journalism. For all three, the participation is open to both already published and unpublished works. Winners of the award will receive €10.000 for the published section and a fully-financed Thomson Reuters Foundation media training course on food sustainability for the unpublished section. The deadline to apply is May 31, 2017.
Cadel also presented the three global food paradoxes. First, while there are 795 million people who are malnourished, 2.1 billion are overweight or obese. Second, only 47% of the global crop production is used for human nutrition – 40% goes to feeding animals or producing biofuel. Finally, over 1.3 billion tons of edible food are wasted every year. This is equal to four times the amount of food necessary to feed all of those who are suffering from hunger. While coverage of food in the form of cooking shows is quite prominent in today’s media landscape, the issue of food sustainability remains marginalized. In order to draw more media attention to this issue, the BCFN Foundation, in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has launched the Food Sustainability Media Award.
“Since we get most of our information about environmental issues through the media, and the solutions for promoting sustainability are complex, we need storytellers to utilize the power of media to communicate the changes we need to make. The Barilla Foundation’s media and food sustainability contest is a good opportunity for students to explore how media can be used to help promote more sustainable ways of growing and consuming food. I really hope that students will take advantage of this opportunity, not only to work on their communication skills, but also to make positive changes in the world,” said Communications Professor Antonio Lopez, who has published extensively on the relationship between media literacy and ecoliteracy.
