The food we produce and the way we produce it has profound effects—good or bad—on our health, quality of life and the environment. On these pages you will learn what EWG is doing to protect your health and environment while ensuring a sustainable future for America’s working farms and ranches.
Farmers can do more than producing food and fiber. They can also produce clean air, clean water, and abundant habitat for wildlife. But farm policies are doing too little to reward good stewardship and too much to underwrite unsustainable crop and animal production by the largest and most successful farm businesses.
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.
Food should be good for you. But some foods aren’t. Pesticides are sprayed on millions of acres every year and some of them end up on your food. Our broken farm subsidy system encourages over production of the wrong food. EWG is pushing for better policy and more sustainable ways of farming that produce healthy food in a healthy environment.
Nothing is more important to your health and quality of life than safe drinking water and clean streams and lakes. Across the country, pollution from farms is one of the primary reasons water is no longer clean or safe. Agriculture is the leading source of pollution of rivers and streams surveyed by U.S. government experts, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Thankfully, if we make simple changes in the way we farm, we can take a big step toward clean water.
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Almost 28,000 U.S. farmers received taxpayer-funded federal farm subsidies or disaster relief payments for 32 straight years, according to a new EWG analysis of data from the Department of Agriculture. These recipients took in a total of more than $19 billion.
Americans have already lost faith in big food brands, and the brands are only giving consumers more reasons not to trust them. In 2015, food, farm and biotechnology companies, and their trade association, spent more than $100 million to fight consumers’ right to know what’s in their food and how it’s grown.
Anyone who has been following the debate over the House farm bill knows lawmakers are closely watching the stricter work requirements proposed for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But the same bill widens farm subsidy loopholes, so even more recipients won’t need to work or live on farms to receive their share of taxpayer dollars.
Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year, including more than 41,000 deaths from secondhand smoke. So why are American taxpayers still subsidizing farmers to grow tobacco?
