Midwest
EWG’s mission is to empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. In the Midwest we pursue our mission by working to move agriculture in a more sustainable direction. Farmland dominates the landscape and watersheds in the Midwest. The way that land is used and managed has profound effects on our health through the water we drink and the food we eat.
Farming can actually make water cleaner and the environment healthier. Farms doing exactly that are scattered across the Midwest. We bring a unique combination of remote-sensing, big data and landscape analysis to bear to build pressure to change policy to heal the damage done by poor farming practices and to build excitement about how much healthier the environment could be through often simple changes in the way we farm.
A new report from the Environmental Working Group, reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is failing to enforce a key farm bill provision, with dire consequences for drinking water in the Midwest.
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The 1985 federal farm bill created a conservation compact between farmers and taxpayers. In return for generous farm subsidies, farmers agreed to take steps to cut erosion and polluted runoff from their most vulnerable cropland, and to not drain wetlands unless they mitigated the loss.
Read MoreA new federal farm subsidy program for cotton growers could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
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In December 2015, the 1,500 residents of Erie, Ill., received a warning that the community’s tap water should not be given to babies under 6 months old, or used to mix formula or juice for those infants.
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The Raccoon River in central Iowa runs through one of the most intensely farmed regions of the nation. Agriculture is vital to the area’s economy, but polluted runoff from farms poses an acute threat to residents’ tap water – and a daunting challenge to utilities struggling to keep the water clean.
Read MoreWhen Trump appears before the Farm Bureau today, he will be not speaking to America’s farmers – he’ll be preaching to his base.
Photo courtesy of AP Photo
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Once again, Congress is attempting to provide more subsidies to cotton farmers – this time in a bill designed to provide disaster relief to Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico.
Read MoreA new report from the Department of Agriculture confirmed what EWG has been saying for years: Farm subsidies overwhelmingly go to the largest and most successful farm businesses, instead of to struggling family farms that need them the most.
Read MoreBetween 2014 and 2015, three federal farm subsidy programs paid farmers multiple times for the same loss in crop yield or decline in crop price.
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Through federal farm programs, American taxpayers are routinely paying thousands of wealthy mega-farms twice for the same "loss," according to a new EWG report.
Read MoreAfter a decline in crop prices in 2014 and 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture boosted farmers' income by more than $13 billion through two newly enacted subsidy programs. But during the same period, another USDA program paid out nearly as much to “compensate” the same farmers for the same decline in prices. In all, this double-dipping cost American taxpayers almost $23.9 billion.
Read MoreDuring the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the federal government planted 220 million trees to stop the blowing soil that devastated the Great Plains.
Read MoreFarming operations directly received more than $14 billion in taxpayer-funded commodity subsidies in 2015 and 2016, according to the latest analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data obtained by Environmental Working Group.
Read MoreDrinking water supplies for millions of Americans in farm country are contaminated with a suspected cancer-causing chemical from fertilizer, according to a new report by the Environmental Working Group.
Read MoreMore than 3 million acres of soybeans and other crops were damaged when a herbicide called dicamba drifted onto their fields, according to a just-published report in The Washington Post on the “arms race between ever-stronger weeds and ever-stronger weed killers.”
Read MoreLead has been detected at high levels in Chicago’s tap water, but that doesn’t mean residents of the Windy City have to drink it.
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What would it take to make the 2018 federal Farm Bill the best ever for public health and the environment?
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Rural Americans were key to President Trump’s election, but the president’s proposed budget would reward their support by allowing more animal waste, toxic pesticides and fertilizer pollution in their drinking water, said EWG.
Read MorePresident Trump’s budget request managed to do something few could have imagined: unite farmers and foodies.
Read MorePresident Trump’s proposed budget would slash vital programs at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture that help farmers and rural communities reduce their exposure to farm pollution, including dangerous pesticides and pathogens from animal waste, said Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs.
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