The Issue
Subsidies
EWG’s renowned farm subsidy database reveals that taxpayer support goes mostly to large, profitable operations, not to sustainable family farms that truly need the help. We’re working to change a badly broken system.
Sign Up
The Latest on Subsidies
Here in Washington, the so-called “Super Committee” on deficit reduction is continuing to scour the federal budget in search of $1.5 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years. The House and Senate committees that normally draft legislation authorizing federal programs and agencies have a looming deadline of October 14 to make recommendations on what could be cut.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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 More
The current focus on deficit reduction has government leaders scrambling to find places to make significant cuts. Congress and the President are currently grappling with what to do about farm subsidies – namely the nearly $5 billion direct payment program that pays farmers and landowners year after year regardless of circumstances, and the federal crop insurance program that costs taxpayers between $6–to–$8 billion a year.
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.
Read More
Yesterday (Sept 19), president Obama unveiled his plan to cut the federal budget.
Read MoreKenneth A. Cook, president and co-founder of Environmental Working Group, has applauded President Obama’s plan to reform the nation’s wasteful agriculture policy in his drive to reduce the nation’s debt.
Read MoreAt a time when the agriculture economy is white-hot, sending government checks to mega-farms that don’t need the money is indefensible. But that hasn’t kept leaders of the agricultural community from arguing against cuts in farm subsidies now that those inequitable handouts are, at last, squarely in the federal budget cutters’ cross-hairs.
Read MoreAsk almost anyone engaged in US agriculture policy, and the consensus is that the current budget crisis makes it all but inevitable that the suite of taxpayer-funded programs authorized under the federal farm bill is headed for dramatic cuts. The subsidy lobby is worried that the newly minted “Super Congress” might actually decide which programs have fat to trim or are non-essential.
Read MoreBy Craig Cox and Sheila Karpf The corn lobby has persistently sold misguided subsidies and mandates for corn ethanol as a bridge to the "next generation" of so-called "advanced" biofuels. The conventional wisdom was that infrastructure built to support inefficient and environmentally damaging corn ethanol would eventually benefit the nascent advanced biofuels industry.
Read MoreLobbyists are swarming the offices of the Congressional super committee in an attempt to protect their pieces of the federal budget pie. The farm subsidy lobby is part of the pack.
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 More
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 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 MoreFor almost two decades, the Environmental Working Group has advocated for protecting vulnerable people from toxic contaminants, ending crop subsidies that encourage environmental harm and investing instead in conservation and sustainable development.
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 MoreAs the Senate Agriculture Committee meets today to discuss accountability and spending on farm programs, new data washes away the gloss of reform used by the subsidy lobby and its champions in Congress to pass the 2008 farm bill. The new data clearly proves that little has changed in America’s misguided and broken farm subsidy programs.
Read MoreRemember the last time you were smack in the middle of downtown Chicago or walking down a bustling street of Manhattan? Did you notice the sweeping farm vistas, the rich fields of corn and wheat?
Read MoreThe 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 MorePages
