The Environmental Working Group today released a letter signed by more than 70 American food and health leaders who urged Congress to cut crop insurance subsidies and redirect that money into vital investments in nutrition, healthy food and conservation programs. Signers include Michal Pollan, Bill McKibben, Marion Nestle and celebrity chefs Mario Batali, Tom Collichio, Alice Waters and Rick Bayless.

New York Times’ editorial board member Robert Semple penned a blistering take on the Senate farm bill for the paper’s Sunday Outlook section. Some excerpts: "Every five years or so, Congress promises a new, improved farm bill that will end unnecessary subsidies to big farmers, enhance the environment and actually do something to help small farmers and small towns."

EWG released an eye-opening report yesterday on subsidized crop insurance’s out-of-control spending. Using newly acquired government data, EWG demonstrated that crop insurance subsidies overwhelmingly benefit large agricultural operations – to the tune of more than a million dollars apiece in 2011 for 26 growers.

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??"

E&E’s Amanda Peterka reports (subscription required) on the sad state of reform efforts in the farm bill hearings held this week by the House Agriculture Committee: The new farm bill is unlikely to return to a policy from the late 1980s and early 1990s that required farmers to abide by certain conservation requirements in order to receive crop insurance subsidies from the government.

An Environmental Working Group analysis highlights the skewed priorities and gross inequities in federal spending under the nation’s most far-reaching food and farm legislation.

The Tri-State Neighbor, which covers agriculture in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, reports that the Izaak Walton League of America convened a conservation forum for South Dakota ag officials, producers and conservationists.