The Latest from AgMag

Power Drain

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Every year, the Central Valley Project moves more than 2 trillion gallons of water - about 18 percent of California's fresh water supply - to thousands of farms in the state's arid heartland. Massive pumps push the water through 1,437 miles of canals.

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Needlessly Pitting Kids Against Conservation

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark) today (March 17) unveiled legislation to reauthorize child nutrition programs and increase nutrition funding by $4.5 billion over 10 years. Of the total, $1.2 billion would increase the number of children who receive food and $3.2 billion would go toward delivering higher quality meals intended to fight childhood obesity.

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Farm Policy

After Two Decades of Agricultural Disaster Aid A Chronic Dependency Takes Root

Monday, September 25, 2006

This year millions of dollars of emergency agricultural disaster aid will go to the very same farmers and ranchers who have collected it every other year, or more frequently, for decades.

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Bonus Subsidy

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

A new EWG analysis identifies more than 1.2 million prospective recipients of a proposed $1.5 billion crop subsidy bonus contained in HR 4939, The Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery of 2006.

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Dead in the Water

Sunday, April 9, 2006

For over 20 years, scientists have documented the appearance of a summertime "Dead Zone" that all but obliterates marine life in what is arguably the nation's most important fishery, the Gulf of Mexico. Each year the Dead Zone grows to an area that is roughly the size of New Jersey - ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 square miles.

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National Tap Water Quality Database

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Tap water in 42 states is contaminated with more than 140 unregulated chemicals that lack safety standards, according to EWG's two-and-a-half year investigation of water suppliers' tests of the treated tap water served to communities across the country.

Key Issues:

Toxics

Tap Water

After Hong Kong, Redraw America's Farm Subsidy Map

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Trade ministers from over 100 nations along with thousands of negotiators gather in Hong Kong this week under the auspices of the World Trade Organization for a round of talks that was intended to boost the economic interests of the developing world by reshaping global trading rules.

Key Issues:

Soaking Uncle Sam

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, a few hundred California farms in Fresno and Kings counties annually get enough water to supply every household in Los Angeles, at pennies on the dollar of the price paid by urban water users.

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Double Dippers

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

Some of America's richest agribusinesses are double dipping from U.S. taxpayers' pockets at a rate of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an EWG investigation of federal crop and water subsidies to California's Central Valley Project.

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Cotton and Accountability

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

What if the United States does not comply with the WTO's broad rulings and fails to reform its multi-billion dollar cotton subsidy programs to Brazil's satisfaction? What retaliatory trade measures could Brazil possibly adopt that would force an economic giant like the United States to change a politically entrenched farm subsidy system?

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Virtual Flood: Virtual Water, Real Profits

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The federal government has promised Central Valley agribusinesses that it will increase the amount of taxpayer-subsidized irrigation water by 44 percent over the next 25 years, well beyond what the state's infrastructure can reliably supply, according to Bureau of Reclamation documents obtained by EWG.

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Taking From the Taxpayers

Thursday, February 10, 2005

The Bush administration is paying some of the biggest and richest agribusinesses in America $17 million for cutbacks in their taxpayer-subsidized water supply. But an EWG investigation found that these same California agribusinesses — including the world's biggest cotton producer and the largest farm in America — already get hundreds of millions of tax dollars from other federal farm subsidy programs.

Key Issues:

Obstruction of Justice

Monday, July 19, 2004

A new investigation by the Environmental Working Group and the National Black Farmers Association reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture withheld nearly three out of every four dollars in a $2.3 billion landmark civil rights settlement with black farmers.

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Consider the Source

Tuesday, January 8, 2002

The first ever nationwide assessment of chlorination byproducts in drinking water, released by the Environmental Working Group and U.S. Public Interest Research Group, shows that more than one hundred thousand women are at elevated risk of miscarriage or of having children with birth defects because of chlorination byproducts (CBPs) in municipal tap water.

Key Issues:

Tap Water

Into the Mouths of Babes

Wednesday, June 30, 1999

Atrazine, the most heavily used herbicide in the United States, is a cancer-causing weed killer applied to 50 million acres of corn each year. After it is applied each spring, it runs off cornfields and through drinking water plants into the tap water of millions of Midwestern homes.

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Nitrate Contamination of Drinking Water

Thursday, February 1, 1996

An Environmental Working Group review of nearly 200,000 water sampling records found that over two million people -- including approximately 15,000 infants under the age of four months -- drank water from 2,016 water systems that were reported to EPA for violating the nitrate standard at least once between 1986 and 1995.

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