The Latest from AgMag

Due in part to EWG’s heavily searched farm subsidy database, the Huffington Post nominated EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook as one of its 10 “Ultimate Green Game Changers” and put the final choice up to the web site’s many readers. For two months, readers weighed in, casting 1.7 million votes.

Key Issues: 

Toxics

Subsidies

The Great Recession is being felt in America’s stomachs, the government reports.

Nearly one in seven American households had trouble putting enough food on the table at some point in 2008, according to the annual report on food (in)security by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): Household Food Security in the United States, 2008.

Key Issues: 

Food

Healthy Eating

A Prairie Home Companion,  the long-running radio variety show, Robert Altman movie and purveyor of powdermilk biscuits,usually broadcasts from St. Paul, Minnesota. Last week's performance originated from Des Moines. During the show's the Lives of the Cowboys segment, the following exchange transpired.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Subsidies

Environment

All corn, all the time. Good Magazine's YouTube channel has had this punchy, short video up since January, illustrating how corn permeates American life. EWG's work tracking the billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsides to corn and corn ethanol laid the foundation for artful stuff like this.

Key Issues: 

Biofuels

Farming

Subsidies

Hearings began in the Senate last week on the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. This bill, the companion legislation to the Waxman-Markey climate change bill passed by the House, aims  for a 20 percent cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment

Last week saw the launch of a new web property by a coalition of environmental and business groups who take a dim view of plans to raise the ethanol content of gasoline to 15%. The site, Follow the Science, marshals the overwhelming scientific evidence to deliver a focused message to the Obama Administration and Congress to not raise the corn ethanol blend limit by 50%.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Whoops.

A study in the journal Science today got widespread news coverage by pointing out a major flaw in the way the world has been calculating the impact of biofuels use on the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas buildup and global warming.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced legislation today aimed at reducing pollution that has endangered the Chesapeake Bay watershed for over 25 years. The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act will give state and federal governments more power and funding to clean up pollution from agriculture sources and metropolitan storm run-off.

Key Issues: 

Farm Policy

Water

When we talk about California and climate change, agriculture matters.  California's agriculture sector faces two major challenges:

1. Reduce its contribution to climate change.
2. Arm itself against the threats a warming planet poses to agricultural production.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment