Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., center, and his country-rock band the Second Amendments entertained at Monday night’s North American Agricultural Journalists dinner-dance, which raises money for the NAAJ-Hillgren Memorial Scholarship Fund. (Charles E. de Bourbon/The Hagstrom Report)

The North American Agricultural Journalists has raised nearly $67,000 for the NAAJ-Sonja Hillgren Memorial Scholarship at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Chuck Abbott, head of the fund drive, announced at the NAAJ annual awards banquet and dinner-dance Monday evening.

Abbott is editor of the Food & Environment Report Network’s Ag Insider.

With this endowment, the university is now able to award three scholarships of about $2,500 per year to journalism students. The award is named after the late Sonja Hillgren, who was editor of Farm Journal and a longtime UPI agriculture reporter.


Enjoying the North American Agricultural Journalists awards dinner Monday night, from left, Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obama Foodorama, Jerry Hagstrom of The Hagstrom Report, Matt Paul, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's communications director, and Ben Becker, the press secretary for Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. From left, Jim Johnson of the U.S. Beet Sugar Association, Vicki Hicks of Agribank, Mary Kay Thatcher of the American Farm Bureau Federation and Tom Buis of Growth Energy at the NAAJ dinner.