The T&T Guardian has copped four awards in the Me­dia Awards for Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism, or­gan­ised by the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co-op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (CAR­DI). Awards have gone to Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son for Best Busi­ness Fea­ture, Shal­iza Has­sanali for Best Hu­man In­ter­est Sto­ry and Dilip Singh for Best News Pho­to­graph. In ad­di­tion, the T&T Guardian won the award for Over­all Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism for con­sis­tent­ly ad­dress­ing the is­sue of agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis.

Dick­son's win­ning en­try was "De­clin­ing pro­duc­tion, high food prices," a cov­er sto­ry in the Busi­ness Guardian pub­lished on March 17. Has­sanali won her award for a re­port in the Sun­day Guardian of March 14, "Food short­age looms." Win­ners of the dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories will re­ceive their awards at a func­tion next month. The theme of the 2010-2011 awards was "Agri­cul­ture-Root­ing for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment" which the spon­sors be­lieve re­flect the cen­tral role of the me­dia in high­light­ing the is­sues of agri­cul­ture which can con­tribute to the coun­try's GDP, in­crease em­ploy­ment, re­duce pover­ty, slash the high im­port food bill and re­vi­talise com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rur­al ar­eas.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of IICA Trinidad and To­ba­go, Gregg Rawl­ins and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CAR­DI, Dr Ar­ling­ton Ches­ney, ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion over the high qual­i­ty of en­tries that came from the print and elec­tron­ic me­dia and from dig­i­tal and in­ter­net blogs. He added: "I am ex­treme­ly pleased with the lev­el of re­sponse this year which has turned out to be well in ex­cess of what we re­ceived last year, the first year of the com­pe­ti­tion. "The fact that there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70 en­tries across all cat­e­gories demon­strates that the com­pe­ti­tion is grow­ing and we are en­cour­aged by this. "From this ex­pe­ri­ence, since the in­cep­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion in 2010, we have seena high­er suc­cess rate of par­tic­i­pa­tion from the me­dia which on­ly en­cour­ages the In­sti­tu­tions to ex­pand fu­ture com­pe­ti­tions to a re­gion­al lev­el," added Dr Ches­ney.

Both hoped the awards com­pe­ti­tion could de­vel­op in­to an an­nu­al event through which recog­ni­tion could be paid to jour­nal­ists who pro­duced sto­ries and fea­tures and used var­i­ous me­dia to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on de­vel­op­ments in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and is­sues re­lat­ing to food pro­duc­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty.

The win­ners of the 2010-2011 Awards for Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism are:

PRINT

Best news sto­ry-Aabi­da Al­la­ham-Ex­press News­pa­per;

Best busi­ness fea­ture-Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son-T&T Guardian; and,

Best hu­man in­ter­est sto­ry-Shal­iza Has­sanali-T&T Guardian.

TELE­VI­SION

Best news sto­ry-Na­dine Hack­ett-CN­MG; and,

Best fea­ture/doc­u­men­tary-Kar­ma Bal­lah-Boyke-GIS.

PHO­TOG­RA­PHY

Best news pho­to­graph-Dilip Singh-T&T Guardian; and,

Best fea­ture pho­to­graph-Kr­ish­na Ma­haraj-Ex­press News­pa­per.

NEW ME­DIA

Web-based and dig­i­tal me­dia-Pao­lo Ker­na­han.

Over­all Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism win­ner, award­ed to the me­dia house that con­sis­tent­ly ad­dress­es the is­sue of agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis-T&T Guardian.

IICA/CAR­DI Spe­cial Award to a colum­nist who reg­u­lar­ly writes on agri­cul­ture and food se­cu­ri­ty is­sues-Pro­fes­sor John Spence, a colum­nist in the Ex­press News­pa­per.