Farming

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.
Conservation

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.
Subsidies

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

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.
Water

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.

Our Most Recent Stories

EWG keeps you up to date with analysis of the latest news, interviews with experts and more.

Trump Cuts Food Stamps for Hungry Americans, But Handouts to Rich Farmers Keep Coming

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Just in time for Christmas, the Trump administration has finalized a rule to kick 700,000 hungry Americans off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly called food stamps – the first phase of a broader plan to deny nutrition support to 3 million low-income people.

Trump’s Hollow Promise of Trade-War Relief for Small Farms

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Last week, the Department of Agriculture announced a new round of cash payments to farmers to ease their losses from President Trump’s trade war with China, which has cut off many growers from their biggest market. Perhaps feeling the sting of Senate Democrats’ blistering rebuke of gross inequities in the so-called Market Facilitation Program, or MFP, the president tweeted: “The smaller farms and farmers will be big beneficiaries.”