Research

Against the backdrop of the deepening climate crisis, the Department of Agriculture recently added 15 Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, practices to its climate-smart conservation...

The federal Crop Insurance Program is known for paying billions of dollars every year to farmers when they experience reductions in crop yield or revenue. But the Department of Agriculture program...

The 13-state Mississippi River Critical Conservation Area, or MRCCA, has millions of environmentally sensitive acres that are full of opportunity to adopt conservation practices that can improve water...

EWG’s newly updated Farm Subsidy Database shows that federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2021 totaled $478 billion. This huge amount of taxpayer money does almost nothing to help farmers reduce...

Farmers received almost $7.4 billion in payments from two of the largest federal agricultural conservation programs between 2017 and 2020, but only a small proportion of these payments went to...

Farmers both contribute to the climate crisis – they’re responsible for producing at least 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions – and they can also be devastated by its harmful effects, with...

The Environmental Working Group presents an innovative “water atlas” tracking phosphorous and nitrate pollution in four Upper Mississippi River Basin states.

The Department of Agriculture has known for almost a century that planting cover crops between growing seasons benefits soil, water and air quality. Now the USDA, heartland politicians and the...

In the summer, millions of lush green acres of corn and soybeans blanket the Midwest. Come fall, many harvesters scrape crop fields until they are black and barren, exposing large swaths of vulnerable...

The federal farm bill is scheduled for reauthorization in 2018. The conservation title of a new farm bill is a remarkable opportunity to jump-start progress toward clean water, clean air and a better...

The environmental, public health and natural resources problems plaguing American agriculture are daunting and getting worse. Shifting environmentally sensitive land out of row crop production is one...

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USDA's conservation programs are the single largest investment of federal taxpayer's dollars to encourage farmers to adopt practices that improve natural resources and the...

Drinking water, lakes and rivers in Iowa and across the Corn Belt are in serious trouble because of polluted farm runoff. To tackle the problem, for decades we've taken the approach favored by...

The cost to taxpayers of providing crop insurance to farmers has more than tripled since 2001, rising from an average of about $3 billion a year in 2001-2003 to more than $10 billion a year in 2012...

The so-called “prevented planting” component of the federal crop insurance program is wasting billions of dollars while encouraging growers to plow up wildlife-sustaining wetlands in the iconic...

Defenders of genetically engineered crops regularly claim that these varieties cut erosion by encouraging farmers to use tillage practices that enhance soil conservation.

In 2013, an Environmental Working Group report titled “WASHOUT” documented that soil erosion across Iowa farm land during that spring's heavy rains had been far worse than previous estimates – in some...

Water pollution from farmland is a major problem in southern Minnesota and wherever row crops dominate the landscape across the United States. Much of this pollution can be prevented by the...

The federal government paid out $11.3 million in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies to 50 billionaires or farm businesses in which they had an interest between 1995 and 2012, and changes to the farm bill...

Many California farmers produce food in ways that protect public health and the environment, but too many others use practices that take a serious toll on the state's water resources. A slew of...

Across America's heartland, in county after county and state after state, the landscape-devouring machinery of modern agriculture has been churning through millions of acres of irreplaceable wetlands...

Media attention has understandably focused on flooding, especially given the devastating floods that have repeatedly struck the region in recent years.This year, it looks as if the Midwest will dodge...

The reality is that the nation's primary prairie and wetlands protection program – the USDA's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) – was not designed to meet the environmental challenges being created...

Forty years after the Clean Water Act became law, the data are clear: Iowa's rivers and streams are still murky. The pollution that continues to degrade them has become a case study on the...