Des Moines ag reporter laid off

Philip Brasher, the agriculture reporter for the Des Moines Register, was laid off earlier this week as part of the Gannett trimmings.

Paula Crossfield of CivilEats.com writes, “Uniquely, however, Brasher wrote for a Midwestern audience about food policy. It has become increasingly rare for a Midwestern paper to keep an agriculture reporter in Washington, and in fact he was one of the last reporters left reporting solely on national food and agriculture policy for a major media outlet.

“Brasher was one of the only reporters who was not working for agriculture industry-sponsored outlets in the room at Senate and House Agriculture Committee hearings, and played a key role in informing the public about these as well as the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For the most part, the agriculture industry will now have a free reign over coverage of national food policy issues in the Midwest.

“As Thomas Pawlick writes in his book on the death of farm news, The Invisible Farm, ‘The paucity of resources made available by the major media to cover agriculture and rural affairs, and the ignorance of most journalists regarding rural issues, has rendered the farming and food distribution systems that feed the people of the globe effectively invisible.’ This invisibility has allowed corporations to get ever bigger and call the shots in Washington.”

Read more here.