Research

A study of five representative Iowa counties shows that requiring simple buffer zones between crop fields and streams could get two-thirds of the way to the state's goal for reducing phosphorus...

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...

A fight is brewing over Dow's Enlist Duo, an extraordinarily potent weed-killer designed to kill the new generation of so-called “superweeds” that have mutated to withstand blasts of Monsanto's...

Ethanol's Broken Promise: Using Less Corn Ethanol Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions

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...

Congress could dramatically cut spending on the federal crop insurance program without sacrificing anything other than the political objective of propping up a crop insurance industry that only exists...

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...

Supporters of the House and Senate versions of the stalled farm bill are arguing that they represent historic reform because both would replace Direct Payments with a suite of new subsidies designed...

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 House and Senate versions of the pending farm bill are supposed to save $47 billion by repealing three subsidy programs: direct payments, counter-cyclical payments and the average crop revenue...

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...

Starting in the 1930s, U.S. farm programs focused on reducing crop surpluses and sending checks to farmers when crop prices fell.

There were two reasons that Environmental Working Group commissioned agricultural economist Bruce Babcock of Iowa State University to analyze how the heavily subsidized federal crop insurance program...

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...

The federal Specialty Crop Block Grant (SCBG) program, though tiny compared to the billions that flow to growers of commodity crops such as corn and soy, is one of the government's most important...

High crop prices and unlimited crop insurance subsidies contributed to the loss of more than 23 million acres of grassland, shrub land and wetlands between 2008 and 2011, wiping out habitat that...

View and Download the report here: Impact of Scaling Back Crop Insurance Premium Subsidies

Water that runs off fields treated with chemical fertilizers and manure is loaded with nitrogen and phosphorus, two potent pollutants that inevitably end up in rivers and lakes and set off a cascade...

As a Congressional “Super Committee” presses to meet its Nov. 23 deadline to come up with a deficit reduction proposal, powerful farm state legislators and agricultural industry lobbyists have moved...

View and Download the report here: Giving it Away Free A simple, free program to insure farmers against actual crop losses at full market price would be cheaper and fairer than today's hopelessly...

America's farmers need a safety net, but so do the rich soil and clean water that sustain not just agriculture but the entire fabric of American society.