The Environmental Working Group released two eye-opening investigations today as the Senate farm bill teeters between passage and failure.

When the government allows oil and gas companies to avoid paying taxes, lawmakers call it a “subsidy.” But when the government pays 62 percent of the cost of obtaining crop insurance, it’s called a “discount?”

Editorial boards across the country continue deriding the lack of meaningful reform in the Senate farm bill. The Washington Post weighed in today in an editorial called, “Fertile ground for change.” Some excerpts: "The bill’s savings would have been almost twice as great if it did not offset the elimination of direct payments with a new, subsidized crop insurance program on top of the generous one from which farmers already benefit."

The New York Times’ Ron Nixon reports that the Obama administration wants to see deeper cuts to crop insurance as the farm bill debate goes forward: "The bill is expected to cost about $969 billion over the next 10 years, but cuts overall spending by $23 billion."

The Salt Lake City Tribune joined the growing list of newspapers casting scorn on the Senate Agriculture Committee’s 2012 farm bill. 

For those of us lucky enough to sit down every day to healthy, nutritious meals, it’s easy to forget that millions of American families in the grip of the recession are struggling to put food on the table and often end up consuming cheap, heavily processed food that puts their health at risk.

New York Times’ editorial board member Robert Semple penned a blistering take on the Senate farm bill for the paper’s Sunday Outlook section. Some excerpts: "Every five years or so, Congress promises a new, improved farm bill that will end unnecessary subsidies to big farmers, enhance the environment and actually do something to help small farmers and small towns."

EWG released an eye-opening report yesterday on subsidized crop insurance’s out-of-control spending. Using newly acquired government data, EWG demonstrated that crop insurance subsidies overwhelmingly benefit large agricultural operations – to the tune of more than a million dollars apiece in 2011 for 26 growers.

A new analysis of over a million government records never before made public and obtained by the Environmental Working Group through the Freedom of Information Act has found that in 2011 more than 10,000 individual farming operations have received federal crop insurance premium subsidies ranging from $100,000 to more than $1 million apiece. Some 26 farming operations received subsidies of $1 million or more last year.