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.
In much of America’s farm country, nitrate contamination of drinking water, largely caused by polluted runoff from crop fields, poses a serious health risk – and the problem is getting worse, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis of data from 10 states.
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EWG News Roundup (5/29): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend
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In almost all of Minnesota’s farm counties, the combination of manure plus commercial fertilizer is likely to load too much nitrogen or phosphorus or both onto crop fields, threatening drinking water and fouling the state’s iconic lakes and rivers, according to an Environmental Working Group investigation.
Read MoreThis week the Department of Agriculture unveiled a pandemic relief initiative that will give farmers $16 billion in direct payments. Just like the Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, which gave $23 billion in subsidies to farmers in response to President Trump’s trade war, most of the money won’t go to small family farmers but to the largest and wealthiest farms, which need the money the least.
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Counties with or near meatpacking plants have almost twice the rate of known COVID-19 infections as the national average, according to a geospatial analysis by the Environmental Working Group.
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (5/8): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreCongress should direct the Department of Agriculture to use COVID-19 relief funds to ensure that farmworkers –not big farmers – have protections, free testing and paid sick leave.
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As the coronavirus pandemic continues, farmworkers are risking their lives to feed us. So why are some officials in the Trump administration and some Republicans in Congress trying to cut farmworkers’ pay?
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (3/27): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreAfter issuing back-to-back reports highlighting the increasing threat nitrate pollution from agriculture poses to Minnesotans’ sourcing of drinking water from private wells, the Midwest office of the Environmental Working Group today released a letter in support of Minnesota House File 3950. H.F. 3950 requires water testing of private wells for bacteria, nitrate and arsenic before the sale or transfer of real property.
Read MoreNitrate contamination of drinking water has increased across Minnesota’s farm country, an Environmental Working Group analysis of state data has found.
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The number of large concentrated animal feeding operations, or large CAFOs, in Iowa increased nearly fivefold in the past two decades, a new study from Environmental Working Group reveals, with almost all of the growth from big hog-feeding operations.
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An estimated half a million Minnesotans are drinking tap water contaminated with elevated levels of nitrate, a chemical associated with cancer and other serious health problems, according to a report released today by the Environmental Working Group.
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (10/18): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreEWG has found 508 news reports about algae blooms in the country’s lakes, ponds and rivers so far this year – 18 percent more than the 429 we found in the same period last year.
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EWG News Roundup (10/4): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (9/27): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (9/20): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
Read MoreEWG News Roundup (9/13): Here’s some news you can use going into the weekend.
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