BusinessWeek misclassifies company

Pamela Drew takes BusinessWeek to task for classifying Monsanto as a food products company in its list of most influential companies.

Drew writes, “Monsanto listed as a food company flies in the face of reality. Not that it isn’t nice to see the makers of PCB’s and Agent Orange get a little notice in American media for their takeover of the chief commodity crops by promoting their genetically engineered seeds to sell in tandem with their herbicides that came off patent a few years ago. It’s a brilliant if nefarious marketing strategy and their success as a global force is worthy of note. But a food company? C’mon folks, get the basics right.

“Agricultural chemicals isn’t food. Even narrowing to the agricultural chemical sector omits billion in transactions and subsidiary sales for this calendar year. To take a category as simplistic as food and apply it to one of the world’s largest providers of chemicals is sloppy reporting about business by a source that claims to make its business reporting about businesses. There is a world of difference between being a divirsified agribusiness and chemical maker and a food business.”

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