Anne Schechinger explores agriculture’s impact on the environment and analyzes how government policies can reduce agricultural pollution. As an undergraduate, Schechinger researched the economics of natural resource valuation. In graduate school, she studied the commercial feasibility of growing environmentally sustainable crops.
This part about the money going to agents and companies is especially important because that’s billions of dollars every year not going to farmers.
There's nothing wrong with the USDA testing these practices this year and seeing if they can quantify how much they reduce emissions, if at all. But we just don't think the IRA money should be going to them until they have proven emissions benefits.
Only 20% of farms in the U.S. actually participate in the crop insurance program. The majority of crop insurance money goes to just four main crops: corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton. And a lot of the money — 65% —goes to the farmers in just 10 states.
Farmers don’t need more sources of revenue. They’re already getting subsidies and crop insurance, not to mention we have high farm incomes generally.
These algae blooms can be toxic, and once it gets into the water, it’s really hard to remove.
We know the last 20 years aren’t the next 20 years.
It’s true, this water is being used to grow alfalfa so that people can have hamburgers. But there’s so much more water going to alfalfa in the West than people drink and use in their house. At what cost are we willing to have burgers every day?
I don’t know any other governors that have a bunch of CAFOs. Legislation he might pass through about CAFOs will directly benefit him.
Right now farmers qualify for farm subsidies, as long as their annual income is below $900,000 per person, so that's a really large amount of money to still qualify for payments. So if you lower this income limit, it can stop millionaire farmers from receiving payments, and it would provide a larger pool of money for these smaller farmers.
