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
WASHINGTON, March 3 – Last week, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials ordered auditors from the Government Accountability Office out of their offices, and ordered USDA employees not to speak with them.
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EWG has developed this interactive map of the more than 450 pro-reform Farm Bill editorials published in the past year from across America. Few issues have garnered as much editorial page criticism of Congress, which by and large has acceded to the subsidy lobby’s preferences for unlimited taxpayer support for the largest commercial farming operations in the country.
Read MoreCharles Lane uncorked this beaut last week, after the Dorgan-Grassley and Klobuchar amendments went down.
Read MoreAfter weeks of haggling, the Senate is set to deliberate on the 2007 Farm Bill. The Environmental Working Group, along with a diverse coalition of groups, is advocating for reform of wasteful government spending in farm programs.
Read MoreToday, the Environmental Working Group sent the attached letter to Congressional leadership expressing opposition to the reported Renewable Fuels package in the Energy Bill.
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Members of the media are invited to join Indiana Senator Richard Lugar and EWG president Ken Cook on Thursday, November 1st for a press conference announcing the launch of the EWG report on Direct Payments: Subsidies on Autopilot.
Read MorePlans for a permanent trust fund to compensate farmers and ranchers for weather-related losses will send even more agricultural subsidies to the very regions that already receive the lion’s share. Based on their historical share of ad hoc disaster spending, of the twenty states represented on the Senate Finance Committee, just four stand to gain over half (55 percent) of the committee’s allocation of disaster aid expenditures under a permanent fund: North Dakota, Kansas, Iowa and Montana.
Read MoreA bid to establish a dedicated trust fund to compensate farmers and ranchers who suffer weather damage to crops and livestock would direct most of the funds to a handful of states where agricultural disaster “emergencies” are in fact routine, virtually annual occurrences, primarily because of low rainfall.
Read MoreThe concentrated, predictable, repetitive nature of agricultural disaster aid among a few states with perennially poor growing conditions raises the question of whether the time has come for states to assume a primary role in providing agricultural disaster assistance within their borders.
Read MoreTake a tour of the farms of six major US cities: New York City ($4.2 million in subsidy dollars), Hollywood ($2.9 million), DC ($3.1 million), Atlanta ($7 million), Tampa ($4.3 million), and San Francisco ($7.4 million).
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As the five major commodity crops reap billions in taxpayer dollars each year, nearly 70 percent of farmer requests for voluntary conservation assistance go unfunded and soil erosion rules for subsidy recipients are barely enforced.
Read MoreWashington, July 27 — House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, Ranking Member Bob Goodlatte, members of their committee, and their staffs, are to be commended for working long and hard to produce the Farm Bill passed by the House of Representat
Read MoreOn balance, this House farm bill will be remembered as a missed opportunity for reform of federal farm policies that are broken at their core. It also represents a failure of House leadership to serve the broader needs of the nation, instead of taking their cues at every turn from the farm subsidy lobby.
Read MoreBlack farmers receive between one-third to one-sixth of the benefits under major federal crop subsidy programs that other farmers receive, and the “subsidy gap” has widened over the past decade.
Read MoreBlack farmers receive between one-third to one-sixth of the benefits under major federal crop subsidy programs that other farmers receive, and the “subsidy gap” has widened over the past decade.
Read MoreYou may have heard a thing or two about a little bill that the House is scheduled to vote on at the end of July. Of $76 billion in subsidies in the current Farm Bill, organic farmers would receive less than one percent (Who is getting all that money? Have a look at the Farm Subsidy Database).
Read MoreGlen Martin, one of the best environmental reporters in California, has written his last story for the San Francisco Chronicle. Glen was one of EWG's favorite journalists. He dug deep into our Farm Subsidies Database and found that billionaire stockbroker Charles Schwab received more than half a million dollars in 2000 – for a rice farm he used as a private duck-hunting club.
Read MoreFarmers, conversation and food, EWG takes on the challenge.
Read MoreFor decades, the farm subsidy lobby has claimed that if the producers it represents could earn their living in the marketplace, support provided by taxpayers through periodic "farm bills" could be invested instead in such perennially sho
Read MoreFor the first time, USDA has tracked subsidy benefits as they pass through tens of thousands of farm business entities—agribusiness cooperatives, partnerships, joint ventures and corporations—and has assigned virtually all farm subsidy 'benefits' to individuals.
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