This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Iranian song fuels anti-regime protests’

Marc Filippino
Good morning for the Financial Times. Today is Monday, October 10th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ukraine is accusing Russia of slowing down its grain exports. Small American farmers are struggling with big agricultural supply chains. And Iran’s government blames foreigners for fuelling massive protests, but it’s an Iranian song that’s inspiring demonstrations.

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
The song finishes with the main slogan of these protests: “Woman, Life, Freedom”.

Marc Filippino
I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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The World Bank kicks off its annual meeting today in Washington, and there’s pressure on the bank to do more on climate change. Germany is one of the countries leading the charge. It’s expected to present proposals this week. The bank is a huge lender to developing countries, and proposals may include new lending terms to encourage countries to invest in clean energy. World Bank president David Malpass has been under fire on the issue of climate change. He refused to say whether he believed in human-caused climate change, only to clarify later that he does.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ukraine is accusing Russia of slowing down its grain exports. Ships have been sailing to and from Ukrainian ports ever since the UN brokered a deal ending a Russian blockade. But the deal has led to a huge backlog of ships.

Emiko Terazono
There’s been a huge rise in the number of vessels going in and out. The inspections aren’t really keeping up.

Marc Filippino
That’s the FT’s Emiko Terazono. She says ships are backed up at an inspection centre in Turkey. Inspection teams include Russian officials and FT sources say Russia has been reluctant to send more inspectors to help reduce delays of up to two weeks. Emiko says the backlog isn’t affecting grain prices yet.

Emiko Terazono
But with the increasing military activity between Ukraine and Russia, there is a huge nervousness around whether the deal will be renewed or not. If it doesn’t get renewed, grain prices will surge, according to grain traders, and that has huge consequences for food security around the world.

Marc Filippino
That’s the FT’s commodities correspondent Emiko Terazono.

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Many American farmers are struggling to stay in business and they have for years. We’re talking about smaller, independent farmers who compete with huge agribusinesses and globalisation. A group of farmers recently went to Washington, DC to lobby the government for help. One of the things they want is more localised supply chains. The FT’s global business columnist Rana Foroohar met some of them and she joins me now to talk more. Hey, Rana.

Rana Foroohar
Hey, how are you?

Marc Filippino
So Rana, can you tell us more about the farmers you met at this event in Washington?

Rana Foroohar
Yeah, I met a ton of really interesting farmers from a number of states in the midwest and the south. One of them that really stood out to me was Wes Davis, who is a black hog farmer in Missouri. And he has got some really interesting tales of how hard it’s been to stay in business in a multigenerational farm.

Wes Davis
The local high school I went down, talked to them, you have to go through a company in Princeton, Illinois, to sell them vegetables at a school that’s six miles down the road from my house.

Rana Foroohar
So the idea that Wes, who is struggling to maintain a business, can’t even go six miles down the road and sell his produce to a local school that needs it because the market is such that that school, which is governed probably by state rules, has to buy in bulk with other school systems via a major financial intermediary that might be sitting hundreds or even thousands of miles away. That, to me, is a broken market.

Marc Filippino
Why does this matter? Who cares if the produce comes from six miles down the road across the country? What does that mean for us today in this current economy and state?

Rana Foroohar
Well, gosh, I mean, there are so many answers to that. A lot of people, not just in the farming industry, but in many industries, are starting to think about maybe we need more geographic redundancy and more localism in order to create more secure supply chains, but also cut emissions, feed people better, and enrich local communities, you know. When wealth stays in a local community, it has a knock-on effect. It increases spending, means more income growth, more job growth for the community as a whole.

Marc Filippino
Let’s go back to Wes for a second, what does it mean for him that he has to go through all these middlemen?

Rana Foroohar
Well, it means a lower profit because, you know, when you have, say, a major food production company that is taking a cut and a major financial company that is taking a cut, that means that small farmers get less. And one of the things that’s quite amazing to me is that even with commodity prices at near record highs in many areas, a lot of small farmers are still in the red. They’re still struggling to make a profit because there are so many intermediaries between them and their market.

Marc Filippino
OK. So the farmers you met are asking the Biden administration to consider breaking up some of these really large agricultural companies. Doesn’t that put the Biden administration between a rock and a hard place? Because, you know, big businesses aren’t all bad. They employ lots of people, they make money, they pay taxes. So if you’re the Biden administration, how do you help these smaller farmers without also alienating big businesses?

Rana Foroohar
You know, Marc, that’s actually a great question and a great way to frame the issue. And in some ways, you’re getting at something quite profound, which is what is our economy about? And for the last 40 years or so, we’ve had an ethos. It’s the sort of trickle-down theory that consumption is what matters and lower prices are what matters. And so big companies have been allowed to get bigger. The idea is that they create economies of scale and efficiencies that drive down prices. But does that make up for the fact that people have had flat incomes since the early 1990s? So cheaper food doesn’t make up for the fact that we have a lot of lost jobs. We have a rising cost of being middle class. And I think that that’s what the administration and what farmers, like Wes, are trying to get people to think about.

Marc Filippino
Rana Foroohar is the FT’s global business columnist. Thanks, Rana.

Rana Foroohar
Thanks so much.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Marc Filippino
Protests in Iran continue to escalate over the weekend. Demonstrations erupted last month after morality police arrested a young woman for allegedly violating Islamic dress code. She died shortly after. And protests over her death have widened into calls for a secular government. Iranian officials blame foreign influences for fanning the unrest, but music by an Iranian artist has become a theme song for protesters.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘BARAYE’ PLAYING]

It’s called “Baraye”, which means “for” or “because of”. Our Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr says the lyrics are pulled from protesters social media posts.

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
What is very interesting is Shervin Hajipour’s creativity in putting together the short and very simple posts of Iranians on Twitter, raising their dreams for a normal life. Everything starts in his song with baraye.

[CLIP FROM ‘BARAYE’ PLAYING]

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
He says, for dancing in the alley. You know that dancing in public is prohibited. For the fears when it comes to kissing. For my sister, your sister, our sisters. For yearning for a normal life. And then the song finishes with the main slogan of these protests: “Woman, Life, Freedom”.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘BARAYE’ PLAYING]

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
You can hear people playing it up loud in their cars, and protesters, university students and schoolchildren singing it. It got more than 40mn views in two days only on his Instagram page. And then authorities urge him to remove it from his page, but it had already gone viral. Considering that young protesters have neither a political leader nor a manifesto, this song, in a very simple language, echoes their demands, which is why it’s become so popular.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘BARAYE’ PLAYING]

Najmeh Bozorgmehr
Demonstrators largely come from the Arab and middle class who are obsessed with technology and know how to use it to express their views and get international attention. They have sent videos on Instagram, Twitter and used social media to say where protests happen. The Islamic Republic, of course, has banned Instagram and WhatsApp during these protests, but people use VPNs to get around limitations and keep posting their views and videos on social media.

[AUDIO CLIP FROM ‘BARAYE’ PLAYING]

Marc Filippino
That’s our Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

This transcript has been automatically generated. If by any chance there is an error please send the details for a correction to: typo@ft.com. We will do our best to make the amendment as soon as possible.

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