SOFI 2019 July 18 2019

THE FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION IN THE WORLD 2019 – SOFI

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 (SOFI 2019) was launched on 15 July 2019, during a special event at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) in New York.

This year’s report contains:  First-time release of the estimates and related findings of the new indicator, the prevalence of food insecurity at moderate and severe levels.  Greater focus on overweight and obesity, including child overweight and adult obesity, to better understand the different dimensions of these major nutrition challenges.  In-depth analysis of the impacts of economic slowdowns and downturns on food security and nutrition.

Earned media coverage

Numbers, to 2,675 in 4 days in 2018 including 240 top tier stories, and 3,200 in 5 days in 2017 including 220 top tier stories Based on a keyword search in all official languages plus, German, Italian, Portuguese. Note that AR, RU, ZH monitoring capabilities are limited

The new edition of the annual The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World was covered widely in media outlets due to a targeted media outreach campaign, a press conference at UN Headquarters and a global press release.

The wide media coverage, with over 2050 news articles detected globally, was despite the new numbers in the report being very similar to those released in 2018, and that economic downturns had already been announced as a driver of hunger in previous years.

FAO was mentioned in the majority of reports, and no negative coverage critical of the organization was detected. Most outlets reported the story in a straightforward style focusing on the number of hungry people, with some outlets also picking up on the obesity issue and the new FIES estimate.

General coverage Most coverage came from news wires, such as , Bloomberg, AFP, EFE, who covered the main findings and messages of the report.

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Wires: Reuters quoting DG Graziano da Silva and Cindy Holleman, EFE quoting Marco Sanchez Castillo, UN News, China’s Xinhua, ’s RIA Novosti, Italy’s Ansa, Mexico’s Notimex, UPI, Iran’s IRNA and Mehr, and several others.

Leading outlets such as The Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel also generated their own coverage, again in line with the main messages.

Top tier outlets: The Economist, Washington Post/Gulf News (with Cindy Holleman “We need to look beyond hunger”), The Guardian, Bloomberg (a second article quotes Maximo Torero “At the current trend we won’t be able to achieve the Zero Hunger”), El País (with Marco V. Sánchez “El hambre y la inseguridad alimentaria pueden llevar a obesidad y sobrepeso”).

Then also Le Monde (tweet) and Liberation, Germany’s Der Spiegel (tweet) and Sud Deutsche Zeitung, China’s CGTN, CCTV, China Daily and People’s Daily. The Hindu, Italy’s La Repubblica & La Stampa (front page), Brazil’s O Globo (AFP) and Jornal do Brasil, The National (UAE), Australia’s The Age (Reuters), UK Daily Mail (tweet). The Vatican’s Osservatore Romano and Vatican News, Egypt Independent and Masrawy, Gulf News, Kenya’s The East African; Russia’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta Rambler News; Manila Bulletin (AFP), Tele Sur, Japan Times, Times, Gizmodo.

Effective coordination and collaboration with DPI’s UN News service also generated online and radio interviews in a number of languages, and the story featured prominently on their homepage. Here’s a video and audio interview with Graziano da Silva by UN News PT.

Regional and country focus: Latin America

The SOFI report resonated strongly in Latin America. Coverage includes: EFE/Gestion (quoting Marco Sánchez Cantillo), CNN Espanol, CNN Chile, Notimex (quoting FAO RR Julio Berdegue), People’s Daily (quoting FAO RR Julio Berdegue). Voice of America on Venezuela, Colombia’s El Tiempo and EL Universal on the Caribbean, Los Tiempos (Bol) on LatAm and on Venezuela, AVN and EL Nacional on Venezuela; El Caribe on the Dominican Republic; Proceso on obesity in Mexico.

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Other regions and countries Asian and African outlets also carried the story widely, while focusing on the respective region or on signle countries. sBusiness Insider and Deccan Chronicle on the food security situation in India, UPI and Korea Herald: “Nearly half of North Koreans are undernourished”; The East African: Why a newborn is more likely to die in than in rural areas, Inquirer (Phil) on Bangladesh.

Other Interviews with FAO experts (Cindy Holleman), El País (Maximo Torero), CNN Espanol with FAO’s Ricardo Rapallo, CNN Chile (Eve Crowley), Italy’s RAI TG1 and Vatican Radio (Valentina Conti), Dire News (Carlo Cafiero).

Interview opportunities and story angles were pitched in advance to a range of national and international broadcasters, which garnered good pick-up. Radio coverage included (DW), SABC, RFI (Ana Paula DelaOcampos).

FAO’s radio team also produced and disseminated interviews in English and Spanish with FAO experts.

Video coverage The video news clip of the SOFI launch event in New York was aired 34 times by 14 TV channels including Press TV, French, TRT Al Arabiya, Portugal’s RTP, CCTV, Vietnam’s VTV, Netherlands’s NPO, Malaysia’s BNC and RTM (monitoring period: 15-17 July 2019). SOFI expert interview on Twitter.

Op-eds The Op-Ed by the Director-General provided a follow-up to the main news story and was published by Reuters, El Pais, All Africa, Asharq Al-Awsat (pan Arab), AlAhram (Egypt, print), Brazil’s Valor Economico, ONU Brasil, La Prensa (Panama), AfricActu & Agence Ivorienne de Presse (AIC), News Ghana, Italy’s La Stampa, Ethiopian Monitor

OCC’s regional networks are currently engaged in pitching the piece locally.

For the first time, a joint OpEd by the Director-General and the ES-ADG was published on the SDG2 Advocacy Hub and disseminated on social media which further helping raise awareness about the report.

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Extra coverage Several outlets and organizations picked up on the story and provided their own commentary which helped prolong coverage of hunger and malnutrition issues during the week: El Pais: ¿Tienen los Estados algo que decir sobre alimentación?; Oxfam: Hunger is spiralling, but has fallen off the political agenda. Thea East African: Why a newborn is more likely to die in Nairobi than in rural areas. The Gurdian: Wiping out hunger in Africa could cost just $5bn. What are we waiting for?; Bloomberg: If you're poor in america, you can be both overweight and hungry; Bloomberg: Feeding 10 Billion People Will Require Genetically Modified Food; Vatican News: “las cifras del informe de la ONU son desalentadoras” – Card. Chica Arellano. Modern Ghana: Are you food insecure or simply hungry? Dawn (Pak): Empty stomachs, hollow speech; The National Geographic: How to feed the world without destroying the planet; Japan Times OpEd by Danielle Nierenberg: The fork is mightier than the wall; Vanguardia (Mex): Fácil acceso a la comida chatarra sería la causa del sobrepeso mundial.

Graphs

Figure 1 Coverage flow

Figure 2 potential reach

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Figure 3 Coverage of FAO in general (blue) vs FAO and SOFI (green)

FAO.org The FAO content was shared on all corporate channels. The SOFI 2019 material included:

In preparation for the launch:

 Revamped FIES video  The updated FAO hunger page;  The updated FAO project website Voices of the Hungry, in EN, FR and ES;  FAO at HLPF event page;

On July 15th

 SOFI publications: o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5249en/ca5249en.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5162en/ca5162en.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5302en/ca5302en.pdf

o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5162fr/ca5162fr.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5302fr/ca5302fr.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5249fr/ca5249fr.pdf

o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5162es/ca5162es.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5302es/ca5302es.pdf o http://www.fao.org/3/ca5249es/ca5249es.pdf  The digital report (more detailed information is available below);  The FAO story Measuring hunger in all languages;  SOFI 2019 updated page in EN, FR and ES;  The dedicated Press release in all languages;  THE SOFI 2019 video;  The podcast TZH 48 - Why is hunger still on the rise?

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 Food and Agriculture Microdata Catalogue, in all languages (with FIES data released);  The SOFI 2019 webcast page;  The Members Gateway SOFI 2019 news, in EN, FR and ES;  Social media assets, in AR, EN, ES, FR and ZH.

The total external page views across these assets between July 15 and July 18 – 26 363

Digital report The digital report was also published online on 15 July 2019 (in English only).

The data below show the trends on the web traffic and the users’ behaviour during the period 15 July 2019 – 18 July 20191.

The digital report had a total of 10 288 users that visited the page. Some users viewed the page more than a time, cumulatively getting over 14 385 page views. Each user spent an average of 6:30 minute in visiting the page.

10 288 6:30 14 385 users minute page views

Usage by device The most used device to navigate on the SOFI 2019 digital report is the desktop device, 62%, and users that navigate with their mobile devices are 38% of the web traffic.

6 379 users 3 909 users 62% 38%

Usage by country The following table shows the top 10 countries from where the web traffic on the digital report was originated.

1 All the data on the web traffic are referred only to the traffic coming from external sources. The traffic originated from FAO HQ users is excluded.

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Traffic Sources Most of the traffic comes from direct sources 58.4%, like for example when a user digits the URL directly in the browser. 16.6% of the traffic comes from organic search; it means searches of related keywords by using web search engines like Google Search. 22.8% of the traffic comes from social media.

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Social Media FAO promoted all the related content on the corporate channels that cumulatively received over 68 million views.

389 4,420 68 million posts mentions potential views

For the social media campaign, FAO produced multilingual digital content in Arabic, Chinese, English, French and Spanish featuring key messages on prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity and impact of economic slowdowns and downturns. All social media assets were shared by the over 100 FAO Twitter account managers. A key piece of the campaign was a video used at the launch ceremony.

Nearly 400 posts in Arabic, English, Chinese, French and Spanish were sent out with the key hashtags #SOFI2019 and #ZeroHunger from various FAO social media accounts, receiving about 4,420 mentions from non-FAO accounts and cumulatively reaching 68 million accounts in their feeds.

The campaign assets were shared on the main corporate channels including @FAO @FAOnews @FAOknowledge @FAO4Members @grazianodasilva @FAOStatistics @FAOSDGs @FAOenEspanol @FAOenFrancais @FAOarabic, @FAORussian, WeChat, Weibo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Here is a full list of tweets. The content pieces were also shared on other thematic and regional accounts including @FAOClimate @FAONewYork @FAONorthAmercia @FAOAfrica @FAOWHOCodex and @FAOAmericas. The launch event was also covered via live tweeting, primarily by @FAONewYork.

The most successful post was published on Twitter, receiving over 2 000 likes and shares. The video was promoted on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, in addition to YouTube and has so far over 32 200 views.

SOFI-related social media content was picked up by many accounts including United Nations, SDG2AdvocacyHub, Gates Foundation, Farming First, Alliance to end Hunger, Action Against Hunger, Neven Mimica, Thomson Reuters Foundation News, Europe Aid, IFPRI, Vatican News, UNFCCC, UN Environment, David Nabarro, UN News, Patricia Esponosa (UNFCC Executive Secretary), Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (BMEL) and many other accounts with a large following.

FAO tweets were quoted in Huffington post (Spanish) and (Spanish). Key tweets are highlighted in Annex A.

An important matrix to measure impact is the “Share of Voice” (SoV) or the percentage of the conversation an organization has on a specific topic.

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Overall, FAO had over 77% of the share of voice compared to other agencies, namely the UNICEF, WHO, WFP, and IFAD.

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Annex A: Selection of best performing posts

Facebook @FAO

@FAOenEspanol José Graziano da Silva

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