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
Bakersfield Californian, Bill Walker
Published October 29, 2005
In his recent Community Voices column, the president of Westlands Water District blasted Environmental Working Group's investigation of the district's proposed federal water subsidies contract.
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September 2006
Pressure is building in Congress for pre-election enactment of the most expensive emergency agricultural disaster aid bill in history.
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Farm state senators, confronting an increasing struggle to win special disaster assistance for farmers, today will push for creation of a permanent disaster aid trust fund. The Senate Finance Committee will debate a new $6.1 billion trust fund that's been proposed by its chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
Read MoreWashington, D.C. - Some growers could get payments just to keep farming the way they already are, under changes being made to a House climate bill. Farm groups won provisions in the legislation that are intended to make it easier for farmers to qualify for a new carbon offset program that would be established by the bill.
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Associated Press (+ over 200 outlets), Sam Hananel and Mary Clare Jalonick
Published June 11, 2007
From Texas billionaires to Washington lobbyists, it's no secret that wealthy people can get federal farm subsidies.
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Argus Leader, Faith Bremner
Published September 10, 2008
Senate Democrats are about to renege on an earlier plan to give more money to programs that pay farmers and ranchers to protect wildlife habitat and water quality, a spokesman for the Environmental Working Group said Tuesday.
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Hoosier Ag Today, Gary Truitt
Published September 12, 2008
Environmental groups are not happy to see the Senate is already trying to cut spending levels for some of the conservation programs included in the 2008 Farm Bill. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program - or EQIP - would reportedly get just over one-billion dollars in 2009 under a Senate appropriations measure.
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Des Moines Register , PHILIP BRASHER
Published May 29, 2009
Washington, D.C. - Government conservation money in Iowa should be targeted to farms in areas that pollute the Mississippi River basin and cause a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental group says.
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Daily Republic, Seth Tupper
Published September 24, 2008
South Dakota stands to lose $5.268 million of federal funding that was pledged by the farm bill toward a popular conservation program, according to new estimates from an environmental watchdog group.
Read MoreHe was immortalized in Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic": a grim, hardscrabble stoic in overalls, grasping a pitchfork. Guess what? It wasn't really a farmer. It was Wood's dentist posing as a farmer.
Read MoreEnvironmental Working Group is a research and advocacy nonprofit with considerable expertise in U.S. agriculture. We are perhaps best known in agriculture policy circles for our Farm Subsidy Database, which lists all the nation’s farm subsidy recipients and their share of the $165 billion taxpayers have spent on the programs since 1995.
Read MoreDevastating floods and bad weather in the Midwest are raising the tide of opposition against the renewable fuels standard. Groups that have been pressing lawmakers to reconsider federal supports for ethanol are now pointing to flooded fields in the nation’s cornbelt as further evidence the United States may struggle to meet the standard.
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Corn grower Tim Recker says Barack Obama’s relatively strong showing in rural Iowa should provide a warning to both parties: Attack ethanol subsidies at your peril.
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The 2008 Farm Bill has barely left the lot and Congress has pulled it back into the garage for some tinkering. The U.S. Senate has proposed $331 million in cuts to a series of conservation programs designed to leave some land in its natural state rather than plowing every square inch under for crops. Last week, the Environmental Working Group — those folks who publish how much every farmer gets in Farm Bill subsidies — held a conference call to protest.
Read MoreEnvironment and Energy Daily, Allison Winter
Devastating floods and bad weather in the Midwest are raising the tide of opposition against the renewable fuels standard.
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E and E News/Greenwire, Allison Winter
Published March 26, 2009
Farmland conservation programs could take a hit in the spending blueprint under discussion in the Senate Budget Committee.
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The Hill, Jim Snyder
Published June 26, 2009
Excerpt:
The subject of offsets and which federal agency has the responsibility of determining what qualifies has emerged as a problem for some environmental groups, too.
Read MoreWhile agriculture and forestry are poised to be leaders in sustainable climate solutions, to realize this opportunity America needs policies built on sound science. Science supports the inclusion of indirect land-use change in the assessment of biofuels.
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