EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database Updated With Latest USDA Records

List Includes Big Winners of $20 Billion in Farm Aid in 2001

For Immediate Release
March 27, 2002

Contact:   

Laura Chapin
202-667-6982 x 3005

WASHINGTON — Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) web site, which has played a central role in this year’s farm bill debate, has been updated with the subsidy payment records for the latest available year – 2001.

The new numbers show that taxpayers’ money continued to flow to mostly the very biggest operations in a handful of states. Taxpayers spent $20 billion on farm programs, much of it to subsidize producers of just eight crops in 2001, increasing to $92 billion the total paid out from 1996–2001.

The bulk of this money was devoted to commodity crop programs for which only growers of grains and cotton are eligible, excluding 60 percent of farmers nationwide who grow other crops or raise livestock. Among those eligible for commodity subsidies, the average assistance check was $11,000 in 2001 (only $36,300 over the last six years).

In contrast, the top one percent of recipients collected $200,000 in 2001 alone ($705,000 over the last six years). Not surprisingly, EWG found that 69 percent of payments went to the top 10 percent of the largest farming businesses in the country. The searchable, free database, available at www.ewg.org, shows the top 100 national recipients of 2001 subsidies and each state’s top recipients. More than a half million unique visitors have conducted 35 million searches since the site was launched last November.

The updates come as House and Senate negotiators are poised to finalize a farm bill that would cut billions from critical farmland conservation assistance for farmers. The programs pay farmers to farm and manage their lands to fight sprawl, cut pollution of drinking water and maintain wildlife habitat on their lands. Often, they are the only access most farmers have to federal assistance, with their popularity far outstripping the scarce resources allocated to them in recent years.

“USDA records once again suggest that taxpayers are funding the biggest agribusinesses that can then buy out their smaller neighbors – and help collapse rural economies. The negotiators of the final farm bill should, at a bare minimum, adopt the Dorgan–Grassley amendment to cap payments at $275,000 per farming couple,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Most Americans would have a hard time calling that a ’cap,’ but agribusiness lobbyists want no limits at all.”

Farm bill negotiators have so far ignored broad public support for much higher conservation funding, allocating only 22.5% of its $171 billion total to these programs. The legislators plan to pour $46 billion more into the widely criticized crop subsidy programs, raising spending on them to roughly 70% of the bill’s total cost.

The payments EWG has added to its site were made to more than 1.88 million recipients during the 2001 calendar year and include a $5.5 billion subsidy increase Congress provided in the form of “emergency payments” last summer.

EWG is a nonprofit research organization that uses the power of information to protect public health and the environment.

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