The Latest from AgMag

Delta Farm Press, David Bennett

Published May 4, 2006

In what could be the first significant shot fired in the 2007 farm bill debate, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released a report on how Mississippi River Basin (MRB) fertilizer run-off is contributing to a massive oxygen-depleted hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Environment

Water

United Press International, Staff Published January 15, 2006

BIG SKY, Mont. -- Environmentalists, fishermen and city officials are challenging the farmers and ranchers who have long controlled water resources in the West.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Water

Traditional Favoritism to Agricultural Interests Is Challenged as Demand Increases

Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin

BIG SKY, Mont. -- A hundred years after the city of Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley farmers battled neighboring Owens Valley for control over water from the Owens River, there's a new kind of water war in the West. From Montana to Arizona to California and beyond, alliances of environmentalists, fishermen and city dwellers are challenging the West's traditional water barons -- farmers and ranchers -- who have long controlled the increasingly scarce resource.

Key Issues: 

Farming

Water

How well a rewrite of an important federal law related to environmental uses of water is working was expected to be aired Friday, March 24, at a Central Valley workshop. The Water and Power Subcommittee was to examine the impacts of the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act, which reallocated water from agricultural uses and reserved it for environmental purposes as well as setting up a fund to restore fish and wildlife.

Key Issues: 

Farm Policy

Capital Press Agricultural Weekly, Chip Power

A handful of the Central Valley’s influential agricultural interests pleaded with a congressional panel to roll back portions of a 14-year-old federal law that elevated environmental uses of water to the same priority as crops. The law in question, known as the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, was amended in 1992 to give environmental uses of water more emphasis.

Key Issues: 

Farm Policy

A slideshow on several key environmental issues.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Farming

Devastating floods and bad weather in the Midwest are raising the tide of opposition against the renewable fuels standard. Groups that have been pressing lawmakers to reconsider federal supports for ethanol are now pointing to flooded fields in the nation’s cornbelt as further evidence the United States may struggle to meet the standard.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Subsidies

Corn grower Tim Recker says Barack Obama’s relatively strong showing in rural Iowa should provide a warning to both parties: Attack ethanol subsidies at your peril.

Key Issues: 

Energy

Biofuels

Subsidies