AMVAC Chemical Corporation is a subsidiary of American Vanguard Corporation and they had 2 big announcements this week. To start with they announced receipt of a registration from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Impact™, a new herbicide, for use in field corn, seed corn, sweet corn and popcorn. AMVAC expects to initiate sales of the herbicide to U.S. corn growers beginning in the spring of 2006. Additionally, they announced a partnership with Pioneer Hi-Bred for a marketing program for AMVAC’s SmartBox® closed-handling system. Pioneer® brand seed customers now have the opportunity to qualify for a discount on the purchase of a SmartBox system.

I think that it was interesting to see the release sent out to general media through national news wire services. They didn’t just target this to farm reporters. Wonder why? Could it be that the relatively low cost to produce and distribute news releases is worth the money? Farmers get their news from a lot of places. I’ve always wondered why companies don’t use more public relations vehicles to deliver their message.