The Monsanto Years corporations criticized on the album, including Monsanto, whose representative said: "Many of us at Monsanto have been and are fans of Neil Young. Unfortunately, for some of us, his current album may fail to reflect our strong beliefs in what we do every day to help make agriculture more sustainable. We recognize there is a lot of misinformation about who we are and what we do—and unfortunately several of those myths seem to be captured in these lyrics." Notably all the corporations mentioned in album lyrics except for Chevron provided their responses for the request to comment on the album
Monsanto are suing Monsanto in numerous state courts for failure to warn the public about the risk of cancer associated with the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup after the IARC report in 2015 linking glyphosate to cancer in humans. Monsanto denies that Roundup is carcinogenic. In March 2017, 40 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit at the Alameda County Superior Court, a branch of the California Superior Court, asking for damages caused by the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, and demanding a jury trial. On August 10, 2018, Monsanto lost the first decided case. Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was initially awarded $289 million