The Latest from AgMag

Common-Sense Reforms Will Strengthen, Not Weaken, Crop Insurance

Monday, May 20, 2013

Opponents of crop insurance reform contend that common-sense reform designed to level the playing field for family farmers and protect taxpayers and the environment will “weaken” the farm safety net.

These defenders of the status quo have it exactly wrong.

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Why Environmentalists (and Every American) Should Reject the House Farm Bill

Friday, May 17, 2013

The budget-busting farm bill approved Wednesday night (May 15) by the House Agriculture Committee and its leaders – Reps. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) – is nothing but bad news for the environment. Here’s why:

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Tea For Me, Not For You

Thursday, May 16, 2013

A day after the Senate Agriculture committee passed its version of the 2013 farm bill, the House committee did the same. The Senate wrongly trimmed nutrition and conservation programs while boosting crop insurance subsidies. The House version, voted out of committee late last night, supercharged these cuts by chopping a draconian $20 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps.

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Cut Crop Insurance, Not Conservation and Nutrition

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

This ought to be simple.

While farm income is at record levels, 47 million Americans are struggling with hunger and millions of acres of wetland and prairie are being lost forever.

So, naturally, the farm bill proposals being debated this week would cut subsidies for the largest and most successful farms and provide more assistance for the hungry and the environment.

Right?

Some things are not so simple.

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Many Farmers Seeking Conservation Help Get Turned Away

Monday, May 13, 2013

Two out of every five farmers who seek assistance in reducing water pollution from their fields or the amount of pesticides and antibiotics they use are being turned away because USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service lacks sufficient funding.

That’s according to new EWG analysis of applications for federal programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which provides incentives to help farmers and ranchers meet public health and environmental challenges.

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Food

Reject Farm Bill Bait and Switch

Friday, May 10, 2013

Here’s the bottom line: Both farm bills proposed this week (May 13) by the House and Senate Agriculture committees would cut funding for the hungry and the environment to help boost subsidies for the largest and most successful farm businesses.

That’s despite the fact that farm income is near record highs and the average household income of a large commercial farm is more than $200,000 a year.

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Balancing Act Would Protect Food, Farms and Families

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Americans have never been more interested in their food and how it’s grown. And the disturbing reality is that the way most of our food is grown today hurts families, threatens future generations of farmers and squanders our natural heritage.

Across the nation, food and drinking water is being polluted with fertilizers and pesticides, antibiotics are becoming less effective and millions of acres of prairie and wetland are being lost forever.

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Conservation Success Story: The Grotberg Farm

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Dick and Linda Grotberg began their transition to sustainable farming largely by accident.

In 2004, the North Dakota farming couple got out of the confined-hog raising business when the often unstable hog market was strong and decided instead to buy cattle to graze their Barnes County land.

They discovered that the soil on Bethany Prairie Farm began getting all the nutrients it needed without applying chemical fertilizers, which often washed off the land into nearby rivers and streams.

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Policy Plate: Conservation Reforms Needed to Protect Environment and Drinking Water

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Today, Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a new analysis that underscores the need to reform the nation’s primary land restoration program for long-term protection of wetlands, prairies and other lands that protect drinking water and wildlife habitat.

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Hail to the Chiefs

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Six former chiefs of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service today (May 7) urged the leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees to once again require farmers to adopt basic conservation practices in exchange for crop insurance subsidies.

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Environment

Policy Plate: “Worth Protecting” Campaign Calls for Conservation Funding in the Farm Bill

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Environmental Working Group (EWG) today launched the Worth Protecting social media and advocacy campaign to underscore the need for federal farm bill reforms that protect public health and the environment and support future generations of family farmers.

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Worth Protecting

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Today, on the eve of farm bill consideration by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, EWG is launching an unprecedented campaign to remind Congress that our land, our food, our families, and our farms are all worth protecting.

The goal of our campaign is simple: to persuade Congress to require basic environmental protections in exchange for subsidies, to fully fund U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs, and to reform these critically important conservation programs to make every dollar count.

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Conservation Success Story: The Ingram Farm

Monday, May 6, 2013

A smart man learns from his mistakes, Terry Ingram likes to say, but a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

“I’ll never claim to be a wise man, but I’m at least a smart man. Once you experience what it’s like to farm organic, your eyes open to how abundant nature is. I am blessed to see it every day. I feel privileged to be able to farm this way.”

Terry and his wife, Alyson, their two small children, his parents and his brother all live on and work the Virginia farm where he was born and raised.

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Policy Plate: Chef Tom Colicchio and EWG to Launch Food and Farm Campaign

Monday, May 6, 2013

As Congress gets ready to mark up the federal farm bill, chef Tom Colicchio and EWG will launch the “Worth Protecting” initiative tomorrow (May 7) to push lawmakers for serious reforms.

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Taxpayers Get Soaked to Prop Up Farm Income

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Federally subsidized crop insurance is now the most expensive program supporting farm income, so it’s no surprise that it will be at the center of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s deliberations on the 2013 farm bill, starting later this month. And as it happens, last year’s epic drought, which decimated crops across a wide swath of America, afforded a unique opportunity to assess the effectiveness of a program whose costs have ballooned to $9 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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EWG 2013 Farm Bill Platform

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

As Congress gets to work again in 2013 on renewing the farm bill, it has the opportunity to do more to support family farmers, protect the environment and encourage healthy diets, while ending wasteful and unnecessary subsidy payments that flow to profitable growers and the crop insurance industry. Here is the farm bill platform EWG announced early in 2013.

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Does Crop Insurance Expand the Racial “Subsidy Gap?”

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Every American should be angry over the false claims being made against a fund designed to help black farmers who were the victims of long-standing discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which were reported last week by The New York Times.

But the Times story, if accurate, shouldn’t distract the public from focusing on long-ingrained patterns at USDA that are even more egregious.

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Green Slime

Friday, April 26, 2013

We’ve all heard of pink slime. Now, there’s green slime too.

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