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
The Mississippi River Basin supports a vast array of economic, commercial, and recreational activities. But runoff from farm fields pollutes lakes and streams in the 10 states that border the Mississippi River. Farm sediment, fertilizer runoff and livestock waste are the source of over 70 percent of the pollution exacerbating the Dead Zone in the Mississippi River-Gulf of Mexico.
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Making good on his promise to find savings in the federal budget, president Obama announced several proposed cuts today that could help reform a broken farm subsidy system. The most promising proposal centers on a total payment limit of $250,000 per person, down from the current $750,000 per person and $1.5 million per farm couple limit set in the 2008 farm bill.
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Everybody knows that using one technique to solve a diverse set of problems often doesn't work. But somebody forgot to tell that to the creators of the Green Revolution.
Read MoreSenate Budget committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) announced yesterday he would reject President Obama’s plan to cut billions in crop subsidy payments that flow mostly to large profitable farm operations and wealthy landowners.
Read MoreLetter sent by a coalition of environmental groups, including EWG, to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging that EPA not delay or significantly constrain consideration of indirect land use in the RFS rulemaking. Read the Letter
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U.S. and state fishing subsidy programs have contributed more than $6.4 billion to commercial fishing operations between 1996 and 2004, accelerating depletion of once-bountiful fish species, according to a ground-breaking study by Renée Sharp, director of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) California Office and economist Ussif Rashid Sumaila, acting director of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia.
Read MoreTaxpayers provide commercial fishing subsidies, some may contribute to overfishing
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Statement of Ken Cook President, Environmental Working Group Feburary 24, 2009 "President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Vilsack have done the public a great service by nominating Kathleen Merrigan for deputy secretary of agriculture.
Read MoreRemarks by EWG Midwest Vice-president Craig Cox to the 2009 Kansas Natural Resources Conference. Read the Remarks
Read MoreThe Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) West Coast office has written the California Air Resources Board pointing out deficiencies in its Climate Change Proposed Scoping Plan with respect to agriculture and its role in generating greenhouse gas emissions.
Read MoreIn times of tight budgets and empty federal coffers, millionaires, large profitable farm operations and wealthy absentee landlords are still receiving federal farm subsidies, despite repeated attempts at reform by fiscal watchdogs, hunger advocates and environmental groups.
Read MoreBehind the thin green gloss Congressional leaders spread across the subsidy-laden 2008 farm bill, the Democratic Congress is now hacking away at pledges to expand conservation and other environmental programs.
Read MoreBehind the thin green gloss Congressional leaders spread across the subsidy-laden 2008 farm bill, key Democratic lawmakers are hacking away at promises to expand conservation and other environmental programs.
Read MoreBehind the thin green gloss Congressional leaders spread across the subsidy-laden 2008 farm bill, key Democratic lawmakers are hacking away at promises to expand conservation and other environmental programs. Without proper conservation funding, few resources are available to mitigate the environmental damage caused by modern commodity crop agriculture.
Read MoreWASHINGTON, DC - Today a subcommittee for Congress’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened a hearing on “Management of Civil Rights at the United States Department of Agriculture”.
Read MoreBy any measure, 2007 was a banner year for farmers of grain, soybeans and cotton, as high prices for their crops earned them record net income, even after they paid skyrocketing costs for fuel, fertilizer and seed.
Read MoreOver the next few weeks, some American couples will get $1,200 of their own money back from Washington. This is the maximum, one-time tax rebate Congress provided last February in their desperate attempt to revive our faltering economy that has since been declared in recession. By contrast, in a few months some other American couples, who operate some of the largest, most profitable farms in the country or merely own huge swaths of farmland, could be receiving 100 times that amount from the government--$120,000.
Read More| The Honorable Harry M. Reid Majority Leader The Honorable Mitch McConnell Minority Leader |
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