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
Former Agriculture Secretaries Dan Glickman and Ann Veneman have sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging them to renew the 25-year conservation compact between taxpayers and farmers, DTN’s Chris Clayton reported (subscription required).
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Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are planning to draft their version of a 2012 farm bill by the end of April, a legislative aide told The Hagstrom Report.
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The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D reported this morning that Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.) are making legislative efforts to curb government subsidies distributed inequitably to highly profitable mega farms. An excerpt: Sen. Tim Johnson’s bill to limit federal farm subsidy payments might be the prelude to a far more ambitious effort to impose similar caps on the popular federal crop and revenue insurance programs.
Read MoreThe most troubling news this week was a report from Stephanie Paige Obgurn of High Country News, which took a comprehensive look at the alarming conversion of native prairie grassland to intensive row cropping (subscription required).
Read MoreSenators Tim Johnson (D-SoDak.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) continue their quest to steer farm program money into the hands of struggling ranchers and farmers who actually need government support. Yesterday they introduced new legislation to place hard caps on farm subsidy payments and close loopholes.
Read MoreThe chairman of the House Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), is proposing to cut $5 billion a year from the farm subsidies commonly referred to as “direct payments” and an additional $30 billion over 10 years from the heavily subsidized federal crop insurance programs.
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The Environment Working Group today released startling new research showing that companies owned by foreign insurance companies are paid billions in tax dollars through the U.S. crop insurance program. Most of the testimony from farm groups in yesterday’s Senate farm bill hearing centered on the heavily subsidized crop insurance program.
Read MoreTwenty insurance companies in Bermuda, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, Canada and the U.S. were paid $7.1 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds from 2007 to 2011 to sell American farmers crop insurance policies, an Environmental Working Group analysis shows.
Read MoreThe highlight of the Senate Agriculture committee’s hearing on farm subsidies and crop insurance was when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Michael Scuse, the Acting Undersecretary For Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture whether he considered people who participate in only two farming-related conference calls per year to be actively-engaged farmers.
Read MoreCritics of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (previously known as food stamps) claim some recipients are wrongly receiving benefits after winning lottery jackpots. SNAP fraud is serious. Those who are not in need and improperly receive benefits are taking precious resources from people desperate to feed their families in our slowly healing economy. Thankfully, according to the US Department of Agriculture, SNAP fraud is limited.
Read MoreThe National Farmers Union just voted at its annual meeting to support asking farmers to limit soil erosion and protect wetlands in return for generous premium subsidies. Those subsidies cost taxpayers $7.4 billion in 2011.
Read MoreMultiple agriculture articles, including jobs, food safety, food stamps, subsidies and a grower trade show.
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Some commitments should be honored. In exchange for farm subsidies, farmers have for decades committed to adopt land management practices that reduce the runoff from their fields – a provision of the 1985 farm bill called “conservation compliance.”
Read MoreToday is the annual US Department of Agriculture Outlook Forum. The department announced projections for the next crop year with 94 million acres devoted to corn - up 2 million acres from 2011, 58 million acres in wheat, 75 million acres in soybeans and just 13 million acres of cotton. But how much of the extra acreage will come from plowing up conservation land that protects water, soil and wildlife while sequestering carbon?
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Welcome to EWG’s Policy Plate, where we plan to serve up a daily helping of food and farm news during the 2012 farm bill debate. Today the Senate Agriculture Committee held its first hearing on what the members hope will become the 2012 farm bill.
Read MoreFor too long, funding provided by the United States’ most far-reaching food and farm legislation has primarily benefited agri-business and large scale industrial-scale commodity farms that aren’t growing food. Instead, they’re growing ingredients for animal feed, fuel and highly processed food -- at a high cost to our nation’s health, environment and rural communities.
Read MoreClimate Change activists should be concerned about proposed cuts to farm bill conservation programs, which would be the carbon emissions equivalent of adding 2 million cars a year to America’s roads. As a possible 2012 farm bill looms, the ag committee leaders and their industrial agriculture lobby remoras are sorting through the smoking ruins of the 2011 secret farm bill process.
Read MoreSince 1995 U.S. taxpayers have sent $194 billion in subsidies to farmers including $5 billion per year in fixed direct payments paid regardless of need or crop price. Below is a list of recent EWG staff analysis on traditional, commodity crop based farm subsidy programs.
Read MoreAdvocates of healthy food and farm policy reform have had a lot of success in 2011.
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Gulf state taxpayers help fund the creation of agriculture pollution they ultimately deal with. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched a new initiative to pay Gulf Coast farm businesses in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida $50 million over the next three years to help reduce the pollution that runs off their farm fields into the public’s waters.
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