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
A new EWG analysis identifies more than 1.2 million prospective recipients of a proposed $1.5 billion crop subsidy bonus contained in HR 4939, The Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery of 2006.
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A new Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis identifies and posts online prospective recipients of a pending $1.5 billion crop subsidy bonus that is contained in an emergency spending bill the Senate will act on this week. The analysis finds that the bonus subsidy, while well intentioned as a means of helping farmers with high energy costs in 2005, is unfair to most farmers and wasteful of scarce taxpayer funds.
Read MoreA new Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis identifies and posts online prospective recipients of a pending $1.5 billion crop subsidy bonus that is contained in an emergency spending bill the Senate will act on this week. The analysis finds that the bonus subsidy, while well intentioned as a means of helping farmers with high energy costs in 2005, is unfair to most farmers and wasteful of scarce taxpayer funds.
Read MoreEach year, an average of $270 million worth of wasted fertilizer flows down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a "Dead Zone" of more than 5,000 square miles that is completely devoid of marine life.
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For over 20 years, scientists have documented the appearance of a summertime "Dead Zone" that all but obliterates marine life in what is arguably the nation's most important fishery, the Gulf of Mexico. Each year the Dead Zone grows to an area that is roughly the size of New Jersey - ranging from 5,000 to 8,000 square miles.
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AP reports that some Washington state farmers may have faked results in tests of a federal conservation program designed to reduce
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Trade ministers from over 100 nations along with thousands of negotiators gather in Hong Kong this week under the auspices of the World Trade Organization for a round of talks that was intended to boost the economic interests of the developing world by reshaping global trading rules.
Read MoreIn advance of Thursday morning's mark-up of budget reconciliation measures in the Senate Agriculture Committee, Chairman Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) proposed to extend bloated, highly controversial U.S. farm subsidy programs for an additional four years, through 2011, while slashing funds for food stamps and conservation programs.
Read MoreIf you've ever been curious about why an environmental group like EWG has such an interest in farm subsidies, yesterday's Washington Post has the answer.
Read MoreCourtesy of U.S. taxpayers, a few hundred California farms in Fresno and Kings counties annually get enough water to supply every household in Los Angeles, at pennies on the dollar of the price paid by urban water users.
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Read about an Irish executive, the Dutch Minister of Agriculture (who's appearing before Parliament on September 1 to explain) and get the full picture from the Wall Street Journal's European edition (subscription required).
Read MoreAs the New York Times editorialized on August 17, Congress will soon debate how to trim the nation's agricultural budget by $3 billion dollars. EWG agrees with the Times that Congress should not cut closely-monitored food stamp programs, but instead chop widely-abused farm subsidy programs that mostly help corporate farms, not small family farms.
Read MoreSome of America's richest agribusinesses are double dipping from U.S.
Read MoreAccording to Agriculture Online, a poll released on August 2 finds that 67 per cent of voters surveyed in Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota support limiting farm subsidy payments to $250,000 per farm. Senators Grassley of Iowa and Dorgan of North Dakota this year proposed such a limit.
Read MoreSome of America's richest agribusinesses are double dipping from U.S. taxpayers' pockets at a rate of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to an EWG investigation of federal crop and water subsidies to California's Central Valley Project.
Read MoreKen Cook and Chris Campbell [1]
June 9, 2005
A U.S. Decision Not To Comply Could
Put Other American Industries At Risk
Ken Cook [1] & Chris Campbell
Environmental Working Group
What if the United States does not comply with the WTO's broad rulings and fails to reform its multi-billion dollar cotton subsidy programs to Brazil's satisfaction? What retaliatory trade measures could Brazil possibly adopt that would force an economic giant like the United States to change a politically entrenched farm subsidy system?
Read MoreKen Cook and Chris Campbell [1]
June 9, 2005
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