Jack Majeres doesn’t think producers have been doing nearly enough to conserve natural resources in the past few years.

Addressing a Farm Bill Conservation Forum in Sioux Falls on May 2, the Dell Rapids farmer and second vice president of the National Association of Conservation Districts said the erosion he sees “tears my heart out.” In some instances, the chairman of the Moody County Conservation District sees it as “greed.” Many of the megafarmers of today, he said, are “gobbling up every piece of ground they can get.”

“Are they doing a good job of farming it? When I see the erosion coming from some of these acres, it tears my heart out,” he said.

With the large farm implements of today, many grass waterways simply are disappearing, he said, as the producers roll right through them.

And as more farmers tile their land, “it’s creating a huge amount of sedimentation in our streams,” he said.

With land and commodity prices going up, Majeres said he also has had some producers tell him they can’t afford to keep land in grass or establish buffer zones for the tile discharges.

“We need to get back to the basic conservation and stewardship ethics”

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader poses five questions for Jeff Zimprich, incoming South Dakota state conservationist:

Q: Why should people care about conserving natural resources?

A: So much of South Dakota’s economy depends on the bountiful natural resources that were placed in the state. For that economy to continue long-term, even to expand in the future, we need to protect our soil so it remains productive. We need to protect our water so it remains clean — not only for drinking but for our livestock, for recreation.

And Stacey James of Prairie Rivers writes in the Chicago Tribune:

In Illinois, there are abundant reasons why farmers should be held to some pollution standards. Illinois water suppliers in Springfield, Decatur, Bloomington and Danville have had to invest millions of dollars in technologies that remove agrochemicals from drinking water.

 

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Table Scraps:

-       3,800 people have weighed in so far on EWG president Ken Cook’s “Farm Bill Litmus Test for the Food Movement.”

-       Western Farm Press reports that with the historic organic trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union set to take effect June 1, the organic food industry can now join chemical and GMO agriculture in claiming to “feed the world.”

-        The Santa Monica Times asks, “How do green groups feel about the new 2012 Farm Bill draft recently released by the Senate?”

-       Stanford researchers have serious concerns about U.S. ethanol policy and point to production mandates as the catalyst for ethanol’s unintended consequences.

-       The industrial food and agriculture PR machine Truth in Food laments how “the well-funded, professionally crafted PR responses from agriculture begin to take on an air of quiet desperation.”

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I’ll lead with the sliver of good news in the bill: Direct farm subsidies are on their way out. Subsidies are something many people—me included—have been attacking for years.

But what should be cause for celebration is instead just a case of shifting billions of taxpayer dollars from one needless federal agricultural scam to another. For as billions in direct subsidies die a worthy death, bipartisan efforts in Congress (mainly via the powerful Senate Ag Committee) could hand farmers billions of new dollars in indirect subsidies—in the form of taxpayer-funded crop insurance.

Though crop insurance isn’t new, it’s ballooned in size recently as support for subsidies has waned.

And Washington Post opinion columnist Robert Samuelson writes that high commodity prices are creating a “boom on the farm”:

Congress is writing a new farm bill and is struggling with how much to trim subsidies. But why should prosperous grain farmers and absentee owners receive special treatment and windfalls?

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Table Scraps:

-  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that chemical ag giant Monsanto has made a $250,000 gift to the University of Illinois for an endowed chair in agricultural communications.

- Reuters reports a forum discussing super-weed resistance to modern herbicides produced by companies like Monsanto.

- A concerned Iowan writes to the editors of the Des Moines Register imploring that “Something has to change to force farmers to reduce erosion because too many will not do it themselves.”

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‏ @billl_murry How many serving of vegetables are there in a bag of cool ranch Doritos.

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“Buy an insurance policy to cover losses or falling prices, and the government will foot most of the bill,” the Times writes. “The farm bill now before Congress includes a provision — estimated to cost about $3 billion a year — that would help cover the losses farmers suffer before their crop insurance policies kick in. Those losses, termed deductibles, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars for a typical mid-size farm.”

The story quotes Craig Cox, EWG’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources, as saying: “It’s obvious why a farmer would like this, but it’s not at all obvious why the taxpayer should pay for this.”

And John Crabtree, media director at the Center for Rural Affairs, which represents small and medium-size family farms, told the Times, “There’s no rationale to say the largest and wealthiest landowners need taxpayer assistance at that level.”

Table Scraps:

EWG is saddened by this morning’s news of the passing of Stewart Doan, senior editor at Agri-Pulse. He was a great journalist.

The farm bill headed to the Senate floor contains only $150 million a year to provide a nutritious fruit and vegetable snacks for children in 4,500 schools. We can do better. Vote for a healthier bill: http://bit.ly/JiCljS.

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Here’s a simple proposition to test whether the food movement can stand up to Big Ag. We’re asking readers who care about providing healthier food to schoolchildren to take a stand by voting on our resolution – A Farm Bill for Healthy Kids:

Be it resolved: Notwithstanding the need for full funding of conservation and nutrition programs, along with other essential reforms, the “farm bill” now before Congress shall reduce subsidies for industrial commodity crops by $1.5 billion per year and shall use those funds to serve fresh fruits and vegetables daily to the 30 million-plus kids enrolled in more than 100,000 schools now served by the federal school lunch program.

You can vote on the resolution here.

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Table Scraps:

-       The Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board joins the growing list of media outlets voicing disappointment with the Senate farm bill, saying: “The latest farm bill would be another boon for special interests and a bummer for everyone else.”

-       A must-read: Open Secrets investigates Monsanto’s deep influence with Washington D.C. lawmakers.

-       Cashing in on $4 million in federal farm subsidies is making for a tough Congressional campaign for one California conservative.

-       Chris Clayton, editor of Progressive Farmer, reports on American Farm Bureau Federation’s efforts to derail EPA’s goal of reducing nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. EWG recently released a report examining the damage that agricultural pollutants do to America’s drinking water.

-       The corn ethanol industry often claims that its product is misunderstood; yet the CEO of an ethanol trade group says in an interview with WJBC radio in Illinois that using a15 percent ethanol blend fuel (E15) produces “60 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline.” Really? The National Academy of Sciences concluded not long ago that corn ethanol production and use increases greenhouse gas emissions.

-       And the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star reports on the pointed words that Jay Keasling, CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute, had for corn ethanol.

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By Ken Cook, president, Environmental Working Group

Here’s a simple proposition to test whether the food movement can stand up to Big Ag.  We’re asking readers who care about providing healthier food to schoolchildren to take a stand by voting on our resolution – A Farm Bill for Healthy Kids:

Be it resolved: Notwithstanding the need for full funding of conservation and nutrition programs, along with other essential reforms, the “farm bill” now before Congress shall reduce subsidies for industrial commodity crops by $1.5 billion per year and shall use those funds to serve fresh fruits and vegetables daily to the 30-plus million kids enrolled in more than 100,000 schools now served by the federal school lunch program.

I voted yea.

What will it be, America? What’s on your shopping list for the farm bill?

How do you want your money spent on the food system over the next 5 years?

Do you want to throw another $140 billion into subsidies, including a brand new $33 billion “shallow loss” entitlement program that guarantees business income for a few thousand agribusiness operations growing industrial commodity crops?

If you want to see what that version of your farm bill investment portfolio will look like through 2017, take a gander at EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database.

Most of the very same big winners we spotlight will hoover up billions more over the next five years under the bill passed last month by the Senate Agriculture Committee.  What’s more, that bill also proposes to cut conservation programs and nutrition funds by more than $10 billion.

Is the Senate ag panel’s bill the best we can do?

Or do you want to reclaim a fraction of your money and use it to give tens of millions of kids a shot at forming a healthier eating habit by serving them fresh fruits and vegetables at school?  You’ll support farmers who grow that food in the bargain.

The farm bill headed to the Senate floor contains only $150 million annually to provide school children with a healthy fruit and vegetable snack– only enough for children in 4,500 schools.

Is offering a healthy snack the only idea in the farm bill that should matter to the food movement?  Of course not. The farm bill should also provide incentives for low-income consumers to purchase fruits and vegetables, support local and regional food sales, invest in organic food, fully fund conservation and nutrition programs and reform farm subsidies.

But the farm bill drafted by the Senate Agriculture Committee fails to deliver the recipe consumers are demanding.  The committee wants to bestow $140 billion on agribusiness, leaving crumbs — roughly $200 million – for healthy food programs.

Doesn’t it make more sense to encourage a new generation of kids to crave fruits and vegetables – and to pay for that effort by cutting subsidies to highly profitable corporate farmers and insurance companies?

I ask for a recorded vote, America: Yea or Nay?

Or will the food movement pick one of the other two options?

Absent?  Or Not Voting?

However, since Washington subsidizes 60 percent of the premiums for crop insurance, it seems that taxpayers should have a say on which activities we are paying for. For example, I do not want my tax dollars subsidizing wetland drainage, destruction of native grasslands and soil erosion.

—

Table Scraps

-          Former Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) lost his primary election last night. Lugar, a true ag policy reformer, will be missed by EWG. He was one of the few farm-state senators to consistently attempt to direct subsidy payments away from profitable mega-farms and into the hands of farmers who truly need the assistance.

-          Public radio’s WAMU in Washington interviews Alex Bolton, a reporter for The Hill newspaper, on why the farm bill could cut funding for Chesapeake Bay.

-          On the heels of the pink slime/lean-finely-textured-beef controversy, ag giant Cargill Beef is turning to NASCAR for PR help.  The coal and corn ethanol industries have both looked to NASCAR for PR assistance.

-          But Cargill won’t go so far as to use the drug Zilmax to help supersize its beef. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a story about the entanglements between universities’ agriculture schools and pharmaceutical companies, which created Zilmax and other drugs that are being used to transform cattle “into bovine Schwarzeneggers.”

-           Libertarian-oriented Reason magazine interviews sustainable farming advocate Joe Salatin, who says the modern farm subsidy system “continues to push American agriculture toward a simplistic, non-diversified handful of genetics and products, rather than the cornucopia nature enjoys.”

-          Grist asks, “Will this farm bill do enough for young farmers?”

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I once saw a very conservative member of Congress, someone I respect and with whom I have worked on many issues, tell a room full of free-market activists that he considers himself 99 percent free market capitalist and 1 percent socialist – when it comes to agricultural subsidies.

This is a pretty common mentality in Washington, so I was disappointed but not surprised last week when the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a massive $480 billion farm bill on a 12-4 vote – with all four no votes opposing the bill because they wanted to spend even more.

Quite simply, ag subsidies have become a third-rail entitlement and are out of control.

And Jim DiPeso, vice-president for policy and communications for Republicans for Environmental Protection, penned an opinion piece on the Senate farm bill for Gannett:

The committee’s bill would dump a couple of bad subsidies, but would add another and leave crop insurance subsidies mostly unreformed. Farm subsidies cost a pretty penny — far more than the reviled TARP bailout for Wall Street.

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Table Scraps

-     Oxfam America’s Jim French writes of the Senate farm bill: Oxfam has long argued that US cotton subsidies damage lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in developing countries at a high cost to American taxpayers(see also this study). Unfortunately, subsidies for US cotton producers included in the Senate Farm Bill proposal continues this trend rather than reverses it.

-     The Chicago Tribune reports “Black farmers’ quest for justice draws to a close.” EWG has released two reports on the plight of black farmers.

-     The Hill newspaper reports that EWG’s hiring of a lobby firm could “lend heft to what has traditionally been an uphill slog to reform federal farm spending”

-     The Senate Agriculture Committee released a summary last night of the farm bill. The Conservation Title lead sentence reads “Our rapidly growing population demands that America’s farmers double their production over the next few decades and use fewer acres to do so.” Five paragraphs later the document details how seven million acres of conservation land will be converted into production.

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The bill slashes at least $23 billion from some farm subsidies and other programs, meaning lawmakers are living up to their pledge to stop making direct payments to farmers for crops they don’t grow. That’s progress. However, in a political sleight-of-hand, the senators want to pour money back into the farmers’ pockets with over-the-top crop insurance subsidies.

Who loses in this scenario? Small and beginning farmers, American taxpayers and rural communities, in part because the federal subsidies are paid regardless of income. The nation’s farmland would also suffer because the senators aren’t requiring qualitative land stewardship practices as a condition for payment.

And Farm and Food File columnist Alan Guebert gets right to the point with concerns about crop insurance in the farm bill. An excerpt:

The Senate’s Farm Bill is like trading sugar water for Kool-Aid. It’s a sweet deal for farmers, but it’s just more empty spending by Congress.

The Lincoln Nebraska Journal Star, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Des Moines Register have also weighed in recently with criticism of the Senate farm bill.

—-

Table Scraps

– Brent Sohngen, a professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics at Ohio State University lays the blame for water pollution by farm chemicals on high demand for chemical-intensive crops such as corn and soybeans. The federal corn ethanol mandate forces 40 percent of the US corn crop to be burned in gas tanks and has put unprecedented pressure on corn stocks.

– Related to the pressure on corn stocks from ethanol, Clean Air Task Force’s Conrad Schneider writes in today’s National Journal that,  “If all of the corn grown in the United States in 2011 had been used to make ethanol, it would have offset national gasoline consumption by just 18 percent.”

– And the Chicago Tribune editorial staff also hammers corn ethanol in an editorial titled, “Ethanol, steak, lawnmowers.”

– The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports on conflicts between Midwest and Southern farmers that threaten progress on the farm bill.

– The United States Healthful Food Council “aims to improve Americans’ health by offering incentives and assistance to restaurants and foodservice providers.”

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The Senate bill would also eliminate the link between crop subsidies and compliance with conservation programs that protect against soil erosion and field runoff that fouls rivers and lakes and contributes to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Senate’s bill would replace direct cash subsidies with federally subsidized crop insurance. Farmers love this insurance. The federal government picks up 60 percent of the cost of premiums, and the insurance protects farmers not only from catastrophic losses due to weather but due to an unexpected drop in prices. What business would not love to have a deal like that?

Farmers who sign up for crop insurance, however, are not required to participate in soil and water conservation programs. In other words, taxpayers protect farmers from risk of participating in the market economy while people who live downstream must accept the consequences of those irresponsible farmers who push their land to the limit.

Farm organizations and their supporters insist that great strides have been made in protecting soil and water quality. But while many farmers are good stewards of the land, the evidence in the aggregate is that we are, to coin a phrase, losing ground. The federal government plays a major role in agriculture, and in exchange it is not too much to ask that all farmers who benefit should be good stewards of the land.

The damage production agriculture and government farm policies do to the environment is worsening.  Outdoor television host and writer Greg Howey catalogs in his column this week the unfathomable amount of conservation land converting to industrial cultivation.

The total acres in the Northern Plains states that will be coming out of CRP is more than 3 million acres, or 4,687.5 square miles which is about the size of Connecticut.

We’re talking “big” numbers here as nationwide there will be 10,156 square miles of acres of CRP coming out, more acres than in the states of Vermont (9,615 square miles), New Hampshire (9,283 square miles), Massachusetts (8,262 square miles), New Jersey (7,790 square miles) Hawaii (6,459 square miles), Connecticut (5,006 square miles), Delaware (2,026 square miles and Rhode Island (1,213 square miles).

Table Scraps

-     Senate Ag Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) says shopping at farmers markets can boost Michigan economy.

-     Clare Leschin-Hoar writes about 5 Food Risks Bigger Than Mad Cow

-     A story in the Billings Gazette paints a stark picture of farmers forgoing conservation for high crop prices.

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The Bloomberg News editorial board published a humdinger of an editorial today criticizing the Senate Agriculture committee’s farm bill. An excerpt:

In place of fixed payments the committee added a new subsidy in the form of expanded crop insurance. Why this was needed is hard to fathom, because existing crop-insurance programs will cost taxpayers as much as $90 billion in the coming decade, according to the Congressional Research Service.

What makes this new benefit so troubling is that it might even be more expensive than the fixed payments. It certainly can’t be justified based on the health of the farm economy. Farm net income last year reached a record $98 billion, mostly because prices for commodity crops such as corn and soybeans were near record highs.

It also points out that Environmental Working Group’s call for a free insurance policy that would “cover 70 percent of a farmer’s crop and eliminate the inefficiencies of multiple private insurers might save as much as $18.5 billion during the next 10 years.”

Table Scraps:

Clean Energy reports House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is crafting an alternative bill to the E15 liability measure recently introduced by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).

The Village Farmers Market Association, a California group “dedicated to fostering a locally-based food system,” says crop insurance and farm subsidies “have been driven off course of their intended goal by greed, mismanagement, and backdoor deals.”

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@GrowinCities Very well written RT @EWGFoodNews ‘Healthy food’ bill should replace #farmbill http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/27/IN8C1O8LBD.DTL via @sfgate

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