Monsanto gets a lot of attention in one bundle today, including gift for agricultural communications chair

The Society of Environmental Journalists gathered a few stories about the multinational biotechnology firm Monsanto Corp. in its headline digest today. In the roundup, the journalism group highlighted current reportage from international and domestic sources. The topics range from the St. Louis-based company saying it has new herbicides for "superweeds," to its funding of a University of Illinois agricultural communications chair, to revealing details about how much the company spends lobbying Washington to approve genetically modified seeds and other decisions that help it.

Monsanto and the university say the goal of the endowed chair "is to help graduates better convey the challenges and technologies of modern farming -- which, the agriculture business believes, aren't reaching the American public," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. "The university's new position comes as the agriculture industry is going on the offensive, waging a public relations campaign to win the hearts of American consumers who are increasingly distrustful of large-scale agriculture and concerned about the lack of transparency in the food system."

The university said the company won't influence who is hired and what is taught, but Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group, who spoke at the univresity's first agricultural communications symposium last year, told the Post-Dispatch, "If you're concerned about presenting a view from a corporate standpoint, the demise of journalism is great news. My fear is that this is another way for Monsanto and big companies to begin to influence, quote, 'ag communications.' I didn't speak to any student while I was at that conference who was interested in becoming a journalist."

"Too often, 'agricultural communications' does not mean journalism, but public relations for agribusiness, sometimes masquerading as journalism," said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog. The institute is based at the University of Kentucky, one of many schools with a major in ag communications. It's in the UK College of Agriculture, not the School of Journalism and Telecommunications, where Cross works. At Illinois, the chair "will run a recently formalized degree program between the university's College of Media and College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences," the Post-Dispatch reports.

Here's another Monsanto link: our story reporting that Derry Brownfield, who founded and sold a radio network for Midwest agricultural and rural news, was taken off the network and sister networks because of repeated rants against Monsanto's restrictive seed-corn patents and fears by the network's owners that the company would reduce its advertising. "He thought they were bad for farmers, too big for their britches and generally bad for America," said Clyde Lear, who co-founded the network with Brownfield and fired him. Brownfield's obituary is here.