For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Politics and Democracy page, Genetic Engineering page, and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

National Public Radio is presently under attack by listeners critical of a May 4 Marketplace report titled “The Non-Organic Future,” which featured an interview with Pedro Sanchez of Columbia University. Sanchez’s views mirror the corporate strategies of Monsanto for feeding the world-i.e., rejecting organic farming and heirloom crops in favor of large-scale agribusiness: fertilizers, pesticides and GMO crops.

Marketplace, a radio program produced by American Public Media for NPR stations, received corporate sponsorship from Monsanto for two years. APM spokesperson Bill Gray tells the Bohemian that “Monsanto has not been a sponsor of Marketplace since April of 2010.”

Yet outraged critics suspect a lingering Monsanto influence over Marketplace’s seemingly pro-corporate report, which made no mention of a five-year study the United Nations published in 2009 called “The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development” (IAASTD). In the IAASTD, some 400 experts advised just the opposite for feeding the world-i.e., relying on smaller farms and old-fashioned sustainable farming practices.