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.
Conservation
EWG keeps you up to date with analysis of the latest news, interviews with experts and more.
It’s an understatement to say “there is real potential for a crisis in rural America,” as House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway warned before a hearing on the new farm bill.
Across the nation, Americans are seeing the price of farm pollution firsthand in contaminated drinking water, toxic algal blooms and pesticide-laden foods.
What if your neighbor poured toxic chemicals into your drinking water but only agreed to pay for part of the cleanup? Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in northeastern Wisconsin.
From Florida beaches to Lake Erie to the California Delta , algal blooms threaten human health and aquatic ecosystems. Cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, produce toxins that can make people sick and even kill pets .
Low-tech, low-cost prairie strips on farms – buffers of grass, trees or other permanent vegetation planted along the banks of rivers, streams, lakes and other waterways – can reduce toxic farm pollution runoff, clean up drinking water and reduce water bills for consumers, according to a recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists .
