Star Awards Category Criteria

All entries into the Australia Star Prize awards must cover broad agricultural issues and subjects and have been published or broadcast in 2015. Entrants must be a member of the Rural Press Club of Victoria.

Specific details of each category are included below:

Rabobank Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting

There are three sub-categories within the Rural Broadcasting category:

1. Audio - the for best piece produced primarily for broadcast for radio
2. Video - for the best piece produced primarily for broadcast on television
3. Online - for the best cross-platform piece, demonstrating a combined use of at least three, but not limited to, the following: text, images, audio, video.

Please provide a file no more than 8mb or a link to the piece online through the entry portal.

Entrants into the Rabobank Star Prize for Rural Broadcasting will get into the running for a national prize worth up to $6000. The prize includes congress registration, accommodation and airfares to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists conference in Germany from 13 to 17 July 2016.

Australian Star Prize for Rural Writing

Entrants into the Australian Star Prize will go into the running for a national prize worth up to $6000. The prize includes registration, accommodation and airfares to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists conference in Germany from 13 to 17 October 2016.

Australian Star Prize for Rural Photography

Entrants into the Australian Star Prize for Rural Photography will go into the running for a national prize of $1000 cash.

There are three sub-categories within the Rural Photography category:

1. People
2. Production - this includes photos of machinery or technical aspects of farming, plant and animal production, bioenergy etc.
3. Nature/landscape

Photographs should enhance the editorial message of the associated story or technical copy. A photograph that was part of a photographic feature may also be entered, but only one photo from the feature may be entered. The entries must be sent as a jpg-file, the size must be 13 cm x18 cm at 300 dpi. The size of the file should not be larger than 1MB.

Entrants into the Australian Star Prize for Rural Photography will go into the running for a national prize of $1000 cash.

NEW - IFAJ-FAO Award for Excellence in Global Food Security Reporting

The IFAJ-FAO Award for Excellence in Global Food Security Reporting award recognizes the best agricultural journalism of the year based on a theme among journalists in IFAJ member countries.

Eligibility
To be eligible for entry, the article must:

• Be a story under the theme determined by the FAO, for 2015, the theme is 'soil'
• Be assembled by an individual or a team.
• Be a print, broadcast or electronic media submission.
• Have been published between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2015, in a print publication or online.
• Be a single story. Multiple articles that make up a series are not allowed. In such a situation, select one article from the series to enter.