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
View and Download the report here: Revenue Insurance Boondoggle
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Former Agriculture Secretaries Dan Glickman and Ann Veneman have sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to renew the 25-year conservation compact between taxpayers and farmers, DTN’s Chris Clayton reported (subscription required).
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Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are planning to draft their version of a 2012 farm bill by the end of April, a legislative aide told The Hagstrom Report.
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A coalition of environmental groups including the Gulf Restoration Network, Prairie Rivers Network and the Iowa Environmental Council are suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency to force it to set state water quality standards and tighten pollution limits on wastewater treatment plants.
Read MoreMore than 1 million Americans are now on record demanding mandatory labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods so that consumers will know what they’re buying. The Just Label It campaign has submitted the signatures on a petition calling on the Food and Drug Administration to require labeling. Today (Tuesday) is the deadline for the FDA to respond.
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The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D reported this morning that Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.) are making legislative efforts to curb government subsidies distributed inequitably to highly profitable mega farms. An excerpt: Sen. Tim Johnson’s bill to limit federal farm subsidy payments might be the prelude to a far more ambitious effort to impose similar caps on the popular federal crop and revenue insurance programs.
Read MoreThe most troubling news this week was a report from Stephanie Paige Obgurn of High Country News, which took a comprehensive look at the alarming conversion of native prairie grassland to intensive row cropping (subscription required).
Read MoreSenators Tim Johnson (D-SoDak.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) continue their quest to steer farm program money into the hands of struggling ranchers and farmers who actually need government support. Yesterday they introduced new legislation to place hard caps on farm subsidy payments and close loopholes.
Read MoreThe Marin Independent Journal has published an in-depth interview with Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook about the upcoming farm bill.
Read MoreTwenty insurance companies in Bermuda, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, Canada and the U.S. were paid $7.1 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds from 2007 to 2011 to sell American farmers crop insurance policies, an Environmental Working Group analysis shows.
Read MoreThe highlight of the Senate Agriculture committee’s hearing on farm subsidies and crop insurance was when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Michael Scuse, the Acting Undersecretary For Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whether he considered people who participate in only two farming-related conference calls per year to be actively-engaged farmers.
Read MoreYesterday the Congressional Budget Office released its estimates of farm bill program spending over the next ten years. The Hagstrom Report, a by-subscription news service, caught up with Jim Miller, a top aide to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said the rising cost of crop insurance – $11 billion over ten years –was due to “both to the value of crops and timing shifts stemming from decisions made in the 2008 farm bill.”
Read MoreCritics of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (previously known as food stamps) have been using recent news stories of lottery winners getting SNAP benefits to demonize the program, despite its very low instance of fraud. These attacks come when more than 40 million Americans – half of them children – rely on food stamps to get through a brutal recession.
Read MoreNews on conservation problems that we currently face.
Read MoreThis week, a handful of big city mayors sent a letter to the House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders urging them to support healthy and local food initiatives.
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The National Farmers Union just voted at its annual meeting to support asking farmers to limit soil erosion and protect wetlands in return for generous premium subsidies. Those subsidies cost taxpayers $7.4 billion in 2011.
Read MoreAt this week’s Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) made his case for protecting the Conservation Title in the next farm bill.
Read MoreMultiple agriculture articles, including jobs, food safety, food stamps, subsidies and a grower trade show.
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Some commitments should be honored. In exchange for farm subsidies, farmers have for decades committed to adopt land management practices that reduce the runoff from their fields – a provision of the 1985 farm bill called “conservation compliance.”
Read MoreToday, Environmental Working Group released a new research paper by conservationist Max Schnepf that looks at the history of America’s eroding conservation compact and how farmers view the long-standing deal between them and taxpayers.
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