The Latest from AgMag

Last summer, EWG President Ken Cook dropped in on the Kickapoo Country Fair held by Organic Valley - a farmer-owned cooperative of more than 1,300 organic family farmers nationwide – in LaFarge, Wisc.  There he was interviewed by Dorothee Royal-Hedinger, the host, web video producer and blogger for OrganicNation.TV website.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment

Food

Local & Sustainable

The Center For America Progress's Eric Alterman and Mickey Ehrlich have written an interesting piece on recent legislation and the impact that campaign contributions from well-funded special interests have had on the final shape of critical bills.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Subsidies

It's tough to rattle a scientist's cage. But Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau, has found a way by scoffing repeatedly at the biblical calamities that climate change is predicted to bring down on agriculture. Stallman denies that climate change even exists and pounds the denier drum daily to the members of America's largest agriculture organization.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment

Could Byron Dorgan, the U.S. senator from North Dakota who just announced that he won't run again, be the next target for Growth Energy's New York Yankees-style spending spree for top DC talent?

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

A flurry of blog postings in the last two days have pointed out that the conservative Minnesota congresswoman, who has regularly attacked President Obama’s health care and foreclosure relief proposals as “socialism,” takes full advantage of taxpayer dollars through the dysfunctional federal farm subsidy program – to the tune of $259,332 paid to a family farm between 1995 and 2008.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Subsidies

In an unprecedented analysis of 20 million drinking water quality tests performed by water utilities between 2004 and 2009, EWG found that water suppliers had detected a total of 316 contaminants in water delivered to the public. The pollutants detected included 202 chemicals that have no mandatory safety standards for tap water, which were found in water supplied to approximately 132 million people in 9,454 communities across the country. These unregulated chemicals include the weed killer metolachlor.

Key Issues: 

Water

Tap Water

In October, EWG released a report that questioned the misguided claims made by farm lobby organizations and their patrons in Congress who are arguing that climate change legislation would cause devastating increases in the costs of production. Crying Wolf clearly demonstrated that any increases in farmers' production costs would be minimal and would be lost in the background noise of annual swings in income caused by yield variation, crop prices and the cost of seed and chemicals -- a small price to pay to protect agriculture from the crippling droughts, volatile weather and increased pest and disease outbreaks expected as the planet warms.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment

Taking steps to confront the threat of a warming planet would have the huge added payoff of making people healthier around the globe, a group of scientists have concluded in a unique package of new research papers.

The health “co-benefits” of cutting greenhouse gas emissions include significantly cutting rates of heart and artery disease, respiratory infections, strokes, various cancers, lung disease and dementia, the scientists found. They argue that the financial savings from these health gains could offset a significant portion of the economic cost of reducing emissions.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Farming

Environment

Law professor Neil Hamilton penned a harsh critique of the Farm Bureau's dangerously shortsighed  opposition to climate change legislation in a guest column in yesterday's Des Moines Register. Hamilton is director of the Agricultural Law Center at Iowa's Drake University. He and Drake students will be traveling to Copenhagen next month for the United Nations climate change negotiations as part of the Iowa U.N.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment