Big Agra allies kill university film screening

The corporate clout of industrial farming has claimed another victim. This time it’s the cancellation of a planned screening of a new documentary that focuses on the impact on Big Agra on the Mississippi River.

The Twin Cities Daily Planet [no relation to my former Berkeley employer] has been reporting on the killing of a 5 October screening of Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story scheduled for the University of Minnesota’s Bell Library.

Reporter Molly Priesmeyer discovered that UM Vice President of University Relations Karen Himle had censored the showing, declaring the film needed “scientific review.” With a little digging, Priesmeyer discovered that Himle’s spouse is

John Himle, president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council. The Council is a strong proponent of ethanol and industrial farming, both of which are critiqued in the film. John Himle was also president of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council from 1978 to 1982 and his organization currently serves as a “member” of the Council.

>snip<

Himle Horner has also been in the news for coordinating publicity for the gigantic Big Ag bash at the 2008 GOP convention and, more recently, as co-founder Tom Horner launched an Independence Party candidacy for Minnesota governor and got favorable numbers from a poll conducted by a firm that Himle Horner also uses.

Hmmm. . .

The film paints an unsparing picture of BigAgra impacts, including research that implicates commercial fertilizers with the creation a massive pre-BP disaster dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it gets deeper. A second force behind the cancellation turns out to be Al Levine, dean of the university’s School of Agriculture, who claims the film “vilified agriculture.”

But the film, it turns out, doesn’t vilify agroecology or organic farming. It’s criticisms focus on chemically dependent Big Agra, and on the rush to turn crops into engine fuels.

David Brauer, who writes for the MinnPost in Minneapolis, followed up on Priesmeyer’s reporting and discovered another aborted instance of work critical of Big Agra. This time the subjects were corn- and soy-based agrofuels, two crops dominated by Agra giant Monsanto [the same company which has partnered with firms started by UC Berkeley agrofuel researchers]:

In January 2008, the alumni magazine “Minnesota” asked local writer Greg Breining  to report on U-funded energy research. He says he turned in a story that “wasn’t an investigative or highly critical piece by any means.” Among his subjects: David Tilman, a University ecologist who has criticized crop-based ethanol’s environmental effects, and who appears in “Troubled Waters.”

Breining had profiled Tilman for a 2007 “Minnesota” story entitled “Five Reasons Corn Ethanol Won’t Save the Planet.”

That unsparing and extensive piece included passages such as:

Corn … is addicted to chemicals. … Trouble is, these chemicals don’t stay put … Runoff of soil and phosphorus causes algae blooms in nearby lakes. Nitrogen and phosphorus from the Midwest Farm Belt flow down the Mississippi River, feeding algae growth and decomposition that create “hypoxia” — an oxygen-depleted “dead zone” roughly the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico.

After the story ran, Breining says, “From what I understand, there were unhappy people at the U, though I never dealt with any fallout directly.”

Breining received his the energy-research assignment in January 2008. The following month, the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council announced they would suspend $1.5 million in grants; they cited a new Tilman study critical of ethanol and soy-based biodiesel.

The group vowed to relent only after meeting with Levine, who now criticizes the documentary that includes Tilman.

Breining says when he filed the energy-research piece, “I also included a few grafs about a paper Tilman and associates had just published. The research undermined corn ethanol on an even more fundamental basis than Tilman’s previous work. It seemed like important research that had garnered a lot of play nationally. I couldn’t very well ignore it; nor did I want to.”

In Breining’s story, Tilman also specifically referenced soy.

Breining says after he submitted the piece, he “heard there were big discussions about it. Eventually, it was spiked. To my knowledge, scientific accuracy was not an issue.”

Breining — who still writes regularly for “Minnesota” — emphasizes that he never heard the specific objections, nor does he know who was responsible for killing the story.

Priesmeyer’s latest story, which includes her own viewing of the censored film, is here.