News

We've all heard of pink slime. Now, there's green slime too.

Last week, the Environmental Working Group released a report analyzing antibiotic resistance of bacteria detected in supermarket meat. We unearthed data buried deep in the annual report of theNational...

Could the Farm Bill be an opportunity to promote better bug killers?

EWG argues for reform of farm programs to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in livestock production after analysis of recent government tests reveal more and more supermarket meat harbors antibiotic...

A March 26 report by the Environmental Protection Agency has found that 55 percent of the nation's stream and river miles are in poor condition, mainly because of industrial agriculture.

Mother Nature has good news for people who love bad news.

For years the federal government wrongly sent millions in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies to dead farmers – a black eye for subsidy defenders and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now it seems...

In recent years, millions of acres of America's native grasslands have been plowed under to grow corn for ethanol to blend into gasoline. And new research is clearly pointing to the federal ethanol...

The South Dakota researchers, Christopher K. Wright and Michael C. Wimberley, focused on grassland conversion in areas close to wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region – a critical Midwest flyway for...

One of the better tools that conventional row crop farmers can use to increase the environmental health of their land is to plant “cover crops” of legumes and grasses. These help control erosion...

Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Agriculture will hold a hearing titled “Drought, Fire and Freeze: The Economic Disasters for America's Agricultural Producers.”

By driving up the price of food and gas and causing costly engine damage, corn ethanol has been bad news for consumers. And by driving up the price of food, corn ethanol is also costing all of us...

Faster is better, right? So is it a good thing that it now takes only 59 days for an Iowa lake to undergo a change that once took 631 days? No. Not when we're talking about how long it takes for a...

The top environmental health stories of 2012 were all about everyday hazards that are right in our backyards. They have to do with the unintended consequences of chemical pollution that could harm the...

Congressional leaders in search of a compromise to avoid plunging off the “fiscal cliff” are under growing pressure from the agriculture subsidy lobby and its friends in Congress to attach a subsidy...

A New York Times headline this month (Nov, 13) read: “The Problem is Clear: The Water is Filthy.” It should have read: “The Problem is Clear: Agriculture Granted the Right to Make the Water Filthy.”

Democrats in Iowa tried hard to turn Congress' failure to pass a federal farm bill into a political liability for their Republican opponents. It didn't work.

With the elections finally behind us, Congress has returned to Washington to try to wrap up a slew of unfinished business. Among other things, lawmakers are grappling with how to revive the expired...

The following op-ed appeared in the Des Moines Register on Monday, November 12, 2012. It's too late for Congress to pass a good farm bill this year. The coming lame duck session of the 112th Congress...