Who Gets All the Subsidy Money

by: Jill Richardson

Mon Dec 28, 2009 at 14:23:21 PM PST

The results? 10 out of 21 members of the Senate Ag Committee comes from the top 10 farm subsidy recipient states. Go figure.

Also interesting is that the #1 rice and #2 cotton state's Senator, Blanche Lincoln, currently chairs the ag committee. Her policy advisor from 2000-2001 (Ben Noble) currently lobbies for the National Cotton Council and the USA Rice Federation. And Monsanto.

Late Night Sampler Platter

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Mar 01, 2009 at 20:59:01 PM PST

• Natasha Chart writes about a really innovative online CSA program. If I lived near this farm, I would SO sign up!

• Civil Eats talks to a few urban hen owners. Are they pets or food? Well, if I owned some they would be egg-laying pets. But my friend Jamie? His are food. He told me as a kid he'd own turkeys and name them "Thanksgiving" and "Christmas"... you can guess why he chose those names.

• Civil Eats also says that supporting farms is everyone's business. I quite agree.

• Obama Foodorama takes on the anti-Obama Tea Parties (Here's a 2nd write-up on them, also by ObFo. This one tells how the tea parties were planned - and planned to look spontaneous.). Ugh, why does the right wing even exist (other than for me to laugh at)?

• Marion Nestle takes on osteoblast milk, a new stupid food industry idea to make a kind of super-milk. They add "OMP" (osteoblast milk protein, whatever that is) to make milk extra-milky. Or something.

• Tom Laskawy wonders if the USDA fudged the numbers in the 2007 Ag Census. Remember all the excitement over the growth of small farms? Well... for the past several years, the USDA has been padding its numbers to account for farms who didn't respond to the census survey.

• Organic Consumers provides a write-up of Brooklyn's new culinary movement, which appeared to be alive and well when I visited last October.

• The USDA is tightening oversight of organic fertilizer. I assume this is in response to an incident in California in the past year in which organic farms were sold fertilizer that was labeled as organic but actually prohibited by organic standards.

• A new blog called Organic on the Green helps college cafeterias move to a more sustainable system.

• Check out this video on the National Animal ID System and why it should be rejected. We may be in the clear on some issues now that the Dems are in power, but NAIS is something several Dems actually support.

Vilsack's Speech to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Feb 25, 2009 at 13:00:00 PM PST

This is symbolic, as Vilsack pledged to end the USDA's history of discrimination against black farmers. Find out what he said below.

2007 Ag Census: Who Grows All The Fucking Corn?

by: Jill Richardson

Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 00:36:53 AM PST

Farm Size	% of Sales($) From Corn	% of Sales($) from Wheat	% of Sales($) from Soy
1-9 acres	0.2%	0.0%	0.1%
10-49 acres	0.8%	0.1%	0.5%
50-69 acres	1.5%	0.2%	0.9%
70-99 acres	3.0%	0.3%	1.7%
100-139 acres	3.9%	0.4%	2.3%
140-179 acres	5.2%	0.8%	3.5%
180-219 acres	6.2%	0.7%	3.7%
220-259 acres	7.4%	0.8%	4.4%
260-499 acres	10.9%	1.3%	6.1%
500-999 acres	16.2%	2.0%	8.8%
1000-1999 acres	21.1%	4.0%	11.2%
2000+ acres	18.2%	8.6%	8.0%
All Farms	13.4%	3.6	6.8%

Because this table is measured in sales dollars as a percent of all sales dollars, you can't tell how many acres were planted of each crop. You CAN tell whose business is more reliant on corn, wheat, and soy though. And that's obvious: the bigger you are, the more likely you are to grow corn, wheat, and soy.

2007 Ag Census!

by: Jill Richardson

Wed Feb 04, 2009 at 11:39:25 AM PST

Here are a few statistics we have now available to us about the state of farms in the U.S. over the past several decades.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one geeking out on all this great data. See another summary of the 2007 report here. And here is what the NY Times had to say about it.