The Issue
Environment
Farms and ranches cover more than half of all land in the United States. EWG works to keep the land productive and to protect soil, water and wildlife.
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The Latest on Environment
Climate Change activists should be concerned about proposed cuts to farm bill conservation programs, which would be the carbon emissions equivalent of adding 2 million cars a year to America’s roads. As a possible 2012 farm bill looms, the ag committee leaders and their industrial agriculture lobby remoras are sorting through the smoking ruins of the 2011 secret farm bill process.
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Since 1995 U.S. taxpayers have sent $194 billion in subsidies to farmers including $5 billion per year in fixed direct payments paid regardless of need or crop price. Below is a list of recent EWG staff analysis on traditional, commodity crop based farm subsidy programs.
Read MoreAdvocates of healthy food and farm policy reform have had a lot of success in 2011.
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Gulf state taxpayers help fund the creation of agriculture pollution they ultimately deal with. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a new initiative to pay Gulf Coast farm businesses in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida $50 million over the next three years to help reduce the pollution that runs off their farm fields into the public’s waters.
Read MoreIf the next farm bill gets written without input from healthy food reformers, maybe it’s time to occupy the agriculture committees?
Read MoreLobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit.
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Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit. The nation deserves a more thoughtful approach, one that recognizes that Americans want, and deserve, to live in a place where air and water are clean, where soil and natural resources are conserved for future generations, and where health and safety – not merely profit – stand atop the hierarchy of public values.
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"I came out of a sound sleep and honestly our entire house was shaking, and I said, 'What is that God-awful roar'," said Stephanie Feller, a resident of Sagewater Court in Fossil Lake Ranch (Colorado). "I thought, 'My God, we are all under attack'. " The "God-awful roar" Feller experienced came from a crop duster, not enemy aircraft, and it wasn't gunfire, but pesticides that hit her property."
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The popularity of Oscar-nominated “Food, Inc.” and writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman make it clear that consumer interest in food and farming issues is now deeply embedded in the cultural mainstream.
Read MoreFor just a little while, it looked like a great day for Iowa agriculture and the environment. On Aug. 30, delegates to the Iowa Farm Bureau annual policy conference in Des Moines passed a historic proposal to tie their heavily taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance to good conservation practices.
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The Congressional Super Committee formed to break the political gridlock over the federal deficit will fail in its goal of balancing the budget if it heeds calls to slash programs that protect Americans’ health and the environment, EWG President Ken Cook warned today. In a letter to the panel, Cook said the nation will pay a far greater price in future health costs and crumbling infrastructure if it accepts misguided thinking focused on short-term cuts to the cost of these environmental safeguards.
Read MoreKen Cook talks organic farming, big agriculture, and the Farm Bill.
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Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is moving to help out farmer in drought-striken areas by giving them the option to cut hay and graze livestock on land that had been taken out of production through the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP.
Read MoreIn discussions of the causes of cancer, environmental exposures have long been the unloved stepchild. But that's changing.
Read MoreA new study released today by the US Geological Survey shows that efforts to reduce nitrate levels in the Mississippi River Basin are having little impact. Nitrates come mostly from the over-application of chemical fertilizers on crops in the Corn Belt, fouling streams and rivers and eventually helping to swell the annual Gulf of Mexico "Dead Zone."
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When there’s trouble in the sandbox, kids are likely to point at each other and say, “He did it.” As we get older, most of us mature to the point where we’re able to accept responsibility for the problems we cause and say, “I’ll fix it.”
Read MoreLos Angeles-based author and celebrity dietitian Ashley Koff has endorsed EWG's Meat Eater's Guide To Climate Change + Health, a powerful multi-featured tool that helps consumers easily understand how their food choices affect the planet and their
Read MoreThe “Dirty Dozen” label doesn’t apply only to produce.
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On July 18, EWG released a report on how the food we eat affects our bodies and the planet. We called it a Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health. In it, we shared our findings about 20 popular foods and how their cradle-to-grave climate impacts compare. To go along with our sorta geeky lifecycle analysis, we put together some tips and tools for all the eaters out there who just want to pick the right stuff – that’s good for their health and good for the environment.
Read MoreOver the past year, industrial produce growers and pesticide makers have made much ado about EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, which assembles federal testing data on many fruits and vegetables and makes it easy for consumers to see which have the most pesticide residues – and which have the least.
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