Arena Food & Water Network Session
Learning Lunch on January 26th 2023 from 12:00 to 13:30 CET (online).
Join a learning lunch with the Arena Food & Water Network, Farmsubsidy.org, and journalists from Süddeutsche/NDR/WDR in Germany and Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland to for a deep dive into the EU farm subsidy database. Get inspired, and leave the lunch with new story ideas and fresh data.
Every year, the EU pays more than 50 billion (yes, billion!) euros to support one sector: Agriculture. The overall design of the policy came into force in the early 1960s. Even though it has been adjusted over the decades, recurring demands to adapt the policy to today’s environmental, animal welfare, labour and climate goals still make the funds a politically hot topic. And the question still remains – where does the subsidy money actually end up and who profits from it the most?
Farmsubsidy.org is a database compiling the payment data from across Europe and making them accessible and searchable to citizens, journalists, and academics. In December 2022, the database was updated with the most recent datasets and the website with improved search options was relaunched.
Moreover, in December 2022, a group of journalists from media in eight countries joined forces, dived into the data and published the first set of stories, coordinated by FragDenStaat/Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, the organisation running Farmsubsidy.org.
At this seminar, you’ll meet two journalists who used the data for their stories published this winter, and the data journalist behind the database. You will learn how to use the database and what stories are still hidden in the data, and the journalists will present the “making-of” of their stories.
Speakers:
Daniel Drepper, journalist and author, acting head of investigations at NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung
Dominik Uhlig, Editor-in-Chief @ Data Dept (BIQdata.pl) Gazeta Wyborcza
Stefan Wehrmeyer, data journalist, founder at FragDenStaat
Moderator:
Brigitte Alfter, editorial director of Arena for Journalism in Europe, a member of the Farmsubsidy.org core team in the database’s early years