The budget-busting farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee late Wednesday night is quite simply the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades. The bill will feed fewer people, help fewer farmers, do less to promote healthy diets and weaken environmental protections – and it will cost far more than congressional bean counters say.

Today, the Environmental Working Group thanked 11 senators for leading the fight for true food and farm policy reform in the 2012 farm bill that passed in the Senate. These Senate champions displayed their leadership on issues that will impact consumers, improve the environment and reduce hunger.

EWG issued the following statement by Scott Faber, Vice President for Government Affairs, on the Senate's failure to pass Senator Gillibrand's amendment to reduce subsidies to crop insurance companies to restore proposed cuts to feeding assistance programs and to increase funding for the fresh fruit and vegetable snack program.

A diverse coalition that included farmers, urban residents and conservation and business groups called on the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency yesterday to hold farm operations accountable for their share of run-off pollution flowing into Minnesota waterways and the Mississippi River.

NPR’s Diane Rehm Show hosted a panel discussion this morning featuring Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Jerry Hagstrom of The Hagstrom Report, Chandler Goule of the National Farmers Union and Environmental Working Group’s own Scott Faber.

Now that Senate floor action on the 2012 farm bill is looking likely in early June, food policy reformers are weighing in. Grist’s Food Editor, Twlight Greenway, quotes Steph Larsen at Nebraska’s Center for Rural Affairs on the need for urgency on the part of good food advocates: "Say it’s 6 p.m. on election night, or the top of the eighth inning. Of all the moments to walk away, is that the one to pick??"

In June 1993, the Environmental Working Group released a report titled “Pesticides in Children’s Food.” In the very first line of the forward to that study, EWG President Ken Cook had this advice for parents:

Don’t toss out those fresh strawberries, mom.  Don’t dump the lettuce, don’t pitch the tomatoes, don’t throw out the bananas, and don’t pour that apple juice down the kitchen drain.

The Los Angeles Times describes the Senate Agriculture Committee’s proposal to subsidize deductibles on crop insurance under the farm bill as “a deal most businesses would relish.”

From the heart of Corn Country, the Des Moines Register editorial board weighed in today on the badly flawed Senate farm bill.  An excerpt: "The Senate bill would also eliminate the link between crop subsidies and compliance with conservation programs that protect against soil erosion and field runoff that fouls rivers and lakes and contributes to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico."