The media response to our Farm Policy Analysis Database launch Tuesday has been phenomenal. Reading through the hundreds of stories, I was struck by the reactions from defenders of the farm subsidy fraternity.

First from the AP/Texas Star Telegram

Roger Haldenby, a spokesman for the Plains Cotton Growers, said the environmental group's numbers are off. The National Cotton Council has tried to verify the numbers, comparing them to figures from actual tax documents provided by the Farm Services Agency.

"And in most cases those numbers have not matched," he said. "The Environmental Working Group has got a history of not getting the numbers absolutely correct."

Two huge problems with those statements.

First, and please correct me if I am wrong, but if as Mr. Haldenby suggests in an Associated Press story the government’s Farm Services Agency (FSA) provided 1099 tax information to an agribusiness lobby, that would be illegal.

Second, how is Mr. Haldenby able to make a statement that our numbers are wrong without backing it up with facts and data of his own? Our statements and analysis are substantiated by hard data provided by the USDA (and they should be commended for the effort they put into getting us the information). In the event that the USDA data prove to be incorrect, we would correct the database immediately.

"If the department says that the data they provided to us are wrong, we'll change," Cook said.

Other industry lobbyists are critical of our database, of course. No surprise.

From Agriculture.com

McCauley [Ken McCauley, National Corn Growers Association president] said the EWG database should have no impact on the development of the 2007 farm bill.

"There's no more ammunition in this database than is already out there," McCauley said.

Maybe he’s right, maybe it’s wishful thinking on his part. We’ll know soon enough as the farm bill debate unfolds, but his observation reminds us of statements from the subsidy lobby that have appeared in hundreds of news stories over the years to the effect that there’s nothing new in our database.

How about 358,000 recipients whose total benefits are $9.8 billion whose names did not have a penny next to them for 2003-2005 in our previous database? How about the totally new lists of subsidy beneficiaries? Now that’s ammunition.

Who supports our efforts you may ask…how about a couple of US Senators?

From the same Agriculture.com story

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin Tuesday welcomed the information released by the Environmental Working Group, calling it "a tremendous tool for us to use in crafting the 2007 farm bill." Harkin unsuccessfully tried to put firm caps on farm program payments in the 2002 farm bill and has expressed an interest in doing do so again this year. Harkin said that farm program payment limits are too high and that "the system has loopholes that you can drive a combine through.

And another farm state Senator, Charles Grassley

Senator Chuck Grassley says it's a good idea and one he's been pushing for years. "I led an effort to get the USDA to cut through and to split up those corporate payments so we knew what individuals got instead of hiding it behind non-entities that nobody knows anything about that showed millions of dollars going to one entity, maybe a cooperative down in rice country in Arkansas, but you don't know what individuals were getting," he says.