2024 BGAJ journalism award winners revealed
Journalists and freelancers have been recognised for their contribution to agricultural print and broadcast media at the 2024 British Guild of Agricultural Journalists (BGAJ) Harvest Lunch.
Judged by a panel of independent experts, the winners and runners-up of the three journalism awards, livestock and grassland, arable and environmental and rural, were commended on the quality of their entries.
Livestock and grassland journalism award
Freelancer, Aly Balsom, was announced as this winner of this year’s livestock and grassland award for her article published in Farmers Weekly’s dairy update cashflow and budgeting special.
This piece highlighted the role continuous budgeting has in reviewing and improving business performance and the judges recognised that this was a well-crafted article packed with information with a clear ‘can-do’ message throughout.
Runner-up of this category was Farmers Weekly’s Philip Clarke for a piece assessing the growth opportunities for lamb by the expanding Muslim population.
Arable journalism award
For her article published in Crop Protection Magazine (CPM), Janine Adamson was this year’s winner of the arable award. Her article detailed the opportunities within industrial hemp as a sustainable break crop.
Judge, Catherine Linch, managing director of Pinstone, commented on this entry by saying: “This is an excellent deep dive into a new crop opportunity, exploring markets and technical feasibility and drawing on a number of commentators.”
Mike Abram was the runner-up for this category with his article published in Farmers Weekly with a story which took an in-depth look at five use cases of gene editing in various states of development. This was commented on by the judges as a “super article, very readable and well written”.
Environmental and rural journalism award
The final journalism award was won by Farmers Weekly’s deputy editor, Abi Kay, for her article which details the issue of sexual assault at young farmers’ parties.
Amy Jackson, owner of Oxtail Media, judged this award and said: “This is a very hard-hitting and brave piece, using a range of voices to ask questions of the culture of those involved with – if not YFC itself, then ‘young farmers movements’.
“This article certainly generated some of the most lively discussion in farming circles this year.”
Farmers Guardian’s chief reporter Rachael Brown was the runner-up of this award with a piece which featured the widow of a farmer who took his own life following a difficult farm inspection, and calling for an overhaul of the entire regime.
The BGAJ would like to thank all of those who look the time to enter these awards and to the judges for their time in reading, interpreting and assessing each of these pieces.
The journalism awards are one of the Guild’s most prestigious awards. If you would like to sponsor this award next year, please contact awards sectary Liv Midgley awards@gaj.org.uk.
