Food speculation: the media coverage

Date: 28 January 2014

A popular media campaign on commodity derivative trading?? Well, yes!

From its launch in the summer of 2010, to the long-awaited victory earlier this month, the World Development Movement’s food speculation campaign was never out of the news for too long. Here are some of the highlights.

In July 2010, the new campaign attracted headlines across the UK media – helped by the ‘choc finger’ incident, in which hedge fund Armajaro used the futures market to buy up almost the entire European cocoa supply, pushing prices to a 33-year high.

In December that year, we showed how speculation was pushing up the price of Christmas turkey, and on Shrove Tuesday the media reported how banks were making pancakes more expensive.

We targeted Barclays, the biggest UK player in food speculation, outside its AGM in 2011, getting the issue reported across the mainstream media again.

Through the summer of 2011, record food prices kept food speculation on the media agenda. Increasing numbers of studies confirmed the fact that speculation was contributing to price spikes and global hunger, and analysts discussed the role of food prices in the protests leading to the Arab Spring.

That autumn, our surreal online comedy series, The Real George Osborne, appeared in several big papers, highlighting the Chancellor’s responsibility for the UK’s attempts to block curbs on speculation.

At the start of 2012, we nominated Barclays for the Public Eye corporate shame award – and Barclays, deservedly, won.

The press loved our ‘evil eagles’ on Barclays hire bikes outside the Barclays AGM that spring.

But it wasn’t all about silly costumes. The Guardian published a report in June 2012 based on evidence, uncovered by WDM, that the UK’s Financial Services Authority was lobbying on behalf of the food speculators it is supposed to regulate.

The financial media were a key target in this campaign, so it was great that the FT reported on the retreat from food speculation by some of the big banks.

That autumn, food speculation made the headlines across a range of papers, from the Daily Mail…

… to the Metro

… to the front page of the Independent.

And Al Jazeera interviewed our food campaigners three times in the space of a couple of months.

Throughout the campaign, local World Development Movement groups around the UK worked hard to get the issue into the local media, with much success. The Brighton and Hove group did some ‘Bankers Anonymous’ street theatre in March 2013. ‘Bankers need our help to quit gambling on food’, group member Vicki Lesley told the Brighton Argus.

Over 50 letters from our supporters about food peculation were published in local papers up and down the country in the spring of 2013, making it clear to MPs and MEPs that this was an issue of real public concern. Meanwhile, from the office, we wrote letters in response to stories on food prices in the national press.

Our ‘evil eagles’ were back once again to haunt the 2013 Barclays AGM.

Later that year, we drew the media’s attention the involvement on pension funds in speculating on food prices.

With the regulation to curb food speculation facing delay after delay, we sometimes wondered whether the day would ever come. But in January 2014 we were finally able to tell the press the campaign had been won!