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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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The majority of federal farm subsidies already go to the wealthiest farmers: The top 10 percent of recipients received 77 percent of subsidies between 1995 and 2016. But a provision in the House Agriculture Committee’s proposed farm bill would make it even easier for millionaire farmers to receive subsidies.
Our farm safety net is already so filled with loopholes that the top 3 percent of farms – or about 60,000 farms – receive roughly 40 percent of all farm subsidies.
The negative health and environmental impacts of pesticide use and exposure are well established: They range from increased cancer risk, to damage to children’s brains and nervous systems, to lower sperm counts, to acute effects like nausea, dizziness and vomiting.
