News Coverage
SF Chron: Large farms' crop insurance subsidies criticized
Published June 1, 2012
Washington -- An unidentified farm in Kern and Kings counties received $1.64 million in government subsidies to buy crop insurance last year, according to data released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group, an organization that opposes such payments to large farms.
In 2000, Congress prohibited public disclosure of the names of farmers who receive subsidized crop insurance, a program that has quadrupled in size since 2002, to $9 billion last year. The Congressional Budget Office projected the program will cost $90 billion in the next decade.
The environmental group obtained more than a million insurance records under a federal Freedom of Information Act request. Each record specified the amount of the subsidy, the location of the farms and the crops insured.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/31/MNT91OQ7LC.D...