The Issue
Farm Policy
EWG works hard for a farm policy that does more to support family farmers, protect the environment, encourage healthy diets and ensure better access to healthy food – all while supporting working families.
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The Latest on Farm Policy
The Environmental Working Group released a new Direct Payment Database today, giving taxpayers a look inside the complex agriculture partnerships and corporations that got the lion’s share of $4.7 billion in federal direct payments to farmers in 2009. EWG found that the ten agribusinesses receiving the biggest payouts raked in a total of $5.4 million. The biggest payments went to large agribusinesses in the southern states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Mississippi.
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Famed food writer/philosopher Michael Pollan has picked the seven individuals he considers to be the most powerful voices in the good food movement from around the world and published his list on Forbes.com.
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It’s been two weeks since EWG president Ken Cook first sounded the alarm that a “secret” farm bill was in the works. He called out the industrial agriculture lobby and a handful of their powerful Congressional allies after it became clear that they were working overtime to write a new farm bill behind closed doors and slip it into law through the congressional “Super Committee.”
Read MoreA newly released report on subsidized federal revenue insurance for industrial crop farmers shows that the government has failed to control its costs and big insurance companies and agents continue to reap billions of dollars in windfall profits. Environmental Working Group, which has long advocated meaningful reform of this misguided policy, commissioned economics professor Dr. Bruce Babcock of Iowa State University to do the analysis.
Read MoreA secret farm bill will leave out healthy food and hurt California. Nearly 70 environmental, public health, nutrition, food and farm groups – including EWG – are calling on California’s congressional delegation to take a stand in the current debate over food and agriculture policy.
Read MoreMore than 60 public health, nutrition, food, farm and environmental groups representing hundreds of thousands of California citizens are urging Gov. Jerry Brown and the state’s congressional delegation to support healthy food reforms as the Congressional super committee crafts a new five-year farm bill.
Read MoreIf the next farm bill gets written without input from healthy food reformers, maybe it’s time to occupy the agriculture committees?
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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.
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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 MoreSecretary 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 MoreIt’s a huge and comprehensive piece of legislation that drives federal spending and policies on agriculture, nutrition and conservation programs. In just one year – 2010 – farm bill programs spent $96.3 billion. How those dollars are used makes a big difference to our health and the environment.
Read MoreThe Environmental Working Group knows that you care about the affordability and availability of healthy food and clean drinking water. So we wanted to make sure you know as much as you can about the massive piece of legislation that guides federal agriculture policy.
Read MoreHere's a video from EWG's Don Carr about the farm bill.
Read MoreIt is the only important piece of environmental legislation that Congress is almost certain to enact over the next 18 months. And it’s our best chance to fix major flaws in America’s badly broken food system. By tradition, it’s called “the farm bill.”
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The ballooning national debt and Tea Party pressure has members of Congress running in the halls with their budget-cutting scissors in hand. The Senate Agriculture Committee is no exception.
Read MoreKen Cook's TEDx talk on the US farm subsidy system and the need for people to advocate for a Farm Bill that's also a Healthy Food bill.
Read MoreTuesday’s (May 31) votes by the House Appropriations Committee represented one such baby step. For the first time in years, the committee in charge of setting federal spending levels decided that government payments to absentee land owners and wealthy farm operations should be trimmed to reflect today’s budget realities. It signaled that extravagant or irrational farm subsidies might finally have to give way.
Read MoreA federal judge granted preliminary approval on May 13th of the $1.25 billion settlement for black farmers for decades of discrimination at the hands of the US Department of Agriculture. President Obama signed the funding legislation for the settlement in a White House ceremony on December 8th.
Read MoreFood prices and food scarcity are quickly becoming the hidden driver in world politics, says pioneering environmental analyst Lester Brown, sparking political upheaval in the Middle East and threatening the stability of other developing countries.
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