By Craig Cox, EWG midwest vice-president, and Nils Bruzelius, executive editor.
You hear plenty of talk about the ballooning federal deficit created by tax cuts, two wars and the effort to dig out of the economic meltdown, but precious little about the funding gap that’s hollowing out federal programs designed to protect America’s soil and water.
An economic recovery and prudent fiscal policies will...
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How threatened is Agribiz by the baby steps the Department of Agriculture has taken recently in support of organic and local agriculture? Threatened enough that one big grower personally castigated USDA Undersecretary Katherine Merrigan last month at the department’s Outlook Conference. Here’s the account that ran in the Des Moines Register:
Tim Burrack, an Arlington, Iowa, corn and soybean...
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Today (Feb 15th) may be the President’s Day holiday, but for the president of the National Black Farmer’s Association (NBFA) it’s the culmination of a remarkable push to bring justice to thousands of black farmers and their families. Since February 6th NBFA president Dr. John Boyd has been barnstorming the South rallying support to convince Congress — specifically the Senate...
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Trimming profit-ensuring farm subsidies to the largest growers of cotton, corn and rice continues to be a hot topic since president Obama announced his intentions to reform the wasteful programs.
First in our roundup is this piece in the San Jose Mercury News where subsidy recipient John Vidovich is holding onto the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer assistance he so despises.
Vidovich on...
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Guest blog posted by EWG Action Fund board member Robyn O’Brien
“The less we spend on food, the more we spend on health care,” author and food activist Michael Pollan said on Oprah.
Today, Americans spend almost 20 cents of every dollar managing disease — diabetes, allergies, asthma, cancer, obesity — and only 10 cents of every dollar on food.
The jury is still out on what exactly may...
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