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.
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The Latest on Subsidies
Today (Feb 15th) may be the President's Day holiday, but for the president of the National Black Farmer's Association (NBFA) it's the culmination of a remarkable push to bring justice to thousands of black farmers and their families.
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Trimming profit-ensuring farm subsidies to the largest growers of cotton, corn and rice continues to be a hot topic since president Obama announced his intentions to reform the wasteful programs. First in our roundup is this piece in the San Jose Mercury News where subsidy recipient John Vidovich is holding onto the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer assistance he so despises.
Read More“The less we spend on food, the more we spend on health care,” author and food activist Michael Pollan said on Oprah. Today, Americans spend almost 20 cents of every dollar managing disease -- diabetes, allergies, asthma, cancer, obesity -- and only 10 cents of every dollar on food. The jury is still out on what exactly may be causing all these epidemics, but genetics don't change that quickly. The environment does. And increasing evidence points to the role that diet is playing in the onset of disease.
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Tonight, President Obama will announce a budget freeze as part of his State of the Union address. The New York Times' Jackie Calmes described today (Jan. 27) what specific programs will be hit: "The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks."
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog interviewed Minnesota Twins' President Jerry Bell (subscription required) and asked him about the Twins' new taxpayer-funded stadium.
Read MoreThe American Farm Bureau convention irresponsibly passed a resolution opposing climate change legislation on January 12th. Laughably, at the same time they threw down the gauntlet on climate legislation, the Farm Bureau also created a Budget Deficit Reduction Task Force.
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Reliable Big Ag accomplice Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, made clear last week that he plans to vote NO on the pending climate bill, after signaling as much this spring. Peterson's move comes after he extracted lucrative concessions in the bill for Big Ag -- concessions that were sold as crucial to securing agriculture's support for the legislation.
Read MoreThe Center For America Progress's Eric Alterman and Mickey Ehrlich have written an interesting piece on recent legislation and the impact that campaign contributions from well-funded special interests have had on the final shape of critical bills.
Read MoreThe CBS Evening News with Katie Couric aired a piece on Thursday (Jan. 8 ) called Where America Stands on Obesity. The report cites many factors for the nation's current obesity epidemic, including some that haven't gotten much attention.
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Michael Pollan made an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night to promote his latest book, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. He came out swinging at Big Ag and the subsidies doled out to commodity crops such as corn and soybeans that are artificially cheap and have "a very high cost in terms of health and terms of the environment."
Read MoreA flurry of blog postings in the last two days have pointed out that the conservative Minnesota congresswoman, who has regularly attacked President Obama’s health care and foreclosure relief proposals as “socialism,” takes full advantage of taxpayer dollars through the dysfunctional federal farm subsidy program – to the tune of $259,332 paid to a family farm between 1995 and 2008.
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The Cato Institute's Sallie James has an eye-popping post on Cato's Liberty blog: Well, here’s an interesting, if three-weeks-old, story. Apparently the North Dakota Farm Bureau’s annual convention recently passed a policy calling for the elimination of all agricultural programs.
Read MoreLast night, Stephen Stock -- lead investigative reporter for Florida's CBS-TV 4's I-Team -- aired a report on people collecting taxpayer-funded farm subsidies for years after they've died. Stephen's story is a timely follow-up to a Government Accountability Office report two years ago that showed how $1.1 billion in those federal subsidies went to the estates or companies of dead farmers over the course of 7 years.
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Brazil announces retaliatory trade sanctions on U.S. products after World Trade Organization targets U.S. cotton subsidies. Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Freedman writes that: "The WTO gave Brazil permission in August to impose $294.7 million in sanctions against U.S. goods -- the second-highest amount ever permitted by the Geneva-based trade arbiter -- and Brazil’s government earlier this month released a list of 222 products that may be subject to increased duties."
Read MoreDue in part to EWG’s heavily searched farm subsidy database, the Huffington Post nominated EWG president and co-founder Ken Cook as one of
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A Prairie Home Companion, the long-running radio variety show, Robert Altman movie and purveyor of powdermilk biscuits,usually broadcasts from St. Paul, Minnesota. Last week's performance originated from Des Moines. During the show's the Lives of the Cowboys segment, the following exchange transpired.
Read MoreAll corn, all the time. Good Magazine's YouTube channel has had this punchy, short video up since January, illustrating how corn permeates American life. EWG's work tracking the billions of dollars in taxpayer funded subsides to corn and corn ethanol laid the foundation for artful stuff like this.
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Fresno Bee, Mark Grossi
Published March 17, 2005
The federal government is promising 43% more water for California farmers in new irrigation contracts, meaning new dams would have to be built in the next two decades, a new environmental report warns.
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