The food crisis, mass media and the political economy of policy analysis and communication

Few years ago, the widely shared view was that low food prices were a curse to developing countries. The dramatic increase in food prices in 2006–2008 appears to have fundamentally altered this view. The vast majority of analyses and reports in 2008 and 2009 state that high food prices have a devastating effect on developing countries. In this paper, we (i) document these changes in perspective; (ii) develop a model of policy communication to explain the cause of the change in views; and (iii) review the policy recommendations of the organisations that shifted their communication.