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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.

Key Issues:

Local & Sustainable

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.

Key Issues:

Local & Sustainable

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.

Key Issues:

Local & Sustainable

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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When Are Antibiotic-Resistant Microbes "Superbugs?"

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Our report struck at nerve at FDA. The agency issued a statement calling it “misleading” and “alarmist.” You can read our full response here. Essentially, the FDA argued that antibiotic-resistance to only one drug is not that big of a deal because there are still some other antibiotics that could treat bacterial infections – for now.

The FDA glossed over the reality that scientists know well: antibiotic-resistance traits can spread like wildfire as genes pass freely from one microbe to another. Microbes that have adapted to defeat antibiotics designed to kill them can share this ability -- and create more superbugs.

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Better Bug Killers Through Farm Bill Reform

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Could the Farm Bill be an opportunity to promote better bug killers?

Key Issues:

Chemicals in Food

Where is the Scrutiny of Crop Insurance Fraud?

Monday, April 22, 2013

Minnesota Congressman Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) struck a nerve this month when he said that “there is five times as much fraud” in the federal crop insurance program as there is the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.

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EWG Pushes Food Issues up the Hill

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

For EWG and its legion of supporters, last week was all about food on Capitol Hill.

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Farm Bill Reform Can Help Defeat Superbug Surge

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

EWG argues for reform of farm programs to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in livestock production after analysis of recent government tests reveal more and more supermarket meat harbors antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Key Issues:

Chemicals in Food

EPA Study Points to Ag for Pervasive River Pollution

Thursday, April 4, 2013

A March 26 report by the Environmental Protection Agency has found that 55 percent of the nation’s stream and river miles are in poor condition, mainly because of industrial agriculture.

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Mother Nature’s Perfect Storm

Monday, April 1, 2013

Mother Nature has good news for people who love bad news.

According to the long-term spring weather forecast produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the drought in the Great Plains and Southwest will continue, temperatures will be warmer than average nationwide, and potential for floods will rise.

Key Issues:

From Kernel to Grave

Thursday, March 14, 2013

For years the federal government wrongly sent millions in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies to dead farmers – a black eye for subsidy defenders and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now it seems farmers are paying the dead back for all that bad publicity by bulldozing historic prairie cemeteries.

Key Issues:

Fix the Broken Biofuels Mandate

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

It’s time to face facts: the biofuels mandate Congress established in 2005 is creating too much bad biofuel and not enough good biofuel. This year, that mandate requires American refiners to use 13.8 billion gallons of corn ethanol – more than they can actually blend into their gasoline. By contrast, fuel makers are expected to generate only a little more than 5 million gallons of non-food-based biofuels that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many doubt whether the industry can hit this target.

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Where Does All That Corn Ethanol Come From?

Thursday, March 7, 2013

In recent years, millions of acres of America’s native grasslands have been plowed under to grow corn for ethanol to blend into gasoline. And new research is clearly pointing to the federal ethanol mandate as a main driver of this tsunami of land conversion in the Midwest.

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Setting a Place at the Table

Friday, March 1, 2013

If you’ve ever wondered how hunger and obesity manage to exist side by side, go see A Place at the Table, a powerful new documentary that unwinds the knotty problem of hunger in America. It opens nationwide today (March 1).

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Satellite Study Documents Vast Loss of Midwest Grasslands

Monday, February 25, 2013

America’s Midwest and Great Plains are often derisively described as fly-over country. And now unblinking, data-collecting satellites soaring over the western Corn Belt have recorded a devastating manmade environmental disaster.

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Cover Crops Shouldn’t Force Coverage Loss

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

One of the better tools that conventional row crop farmers can use to increase the environmental health of their land is to plant “cover crops” of legumes and grasses. These help control erosion, sequester carbon, improve soil health, fight weeds, add nitrogen to the soil and make soil nutrients more available, reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.

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The Questions That Won’t Be Asked

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Agriculture will hold a hearing titled “Drought, Fire and Freeze: The Economic Disasters for America’s Agricultural Producers.”

The ultimate purpose of the hearing remains unclear, but the committee’s website notes that:

This hearing will examine the toll weather disasters have taken on American agriculture – which employs 16 million Americans – and what steps can be taken to safeguard the economy from future catastrophes.

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