On Friday Vanessa Carmichael posted on the Huffington Post a piece entitled The Payoff Patriots.

The CBO estimates the House's health care bill, H.R. 3200, would cost approximately $239 Billion over 10 years, so it seems remarkable that our country's rural constituency and their government representatives are raising so much hullabaloo over the cost of public option health care when they accepted $177 billion in farm subsidies in ten years. Again more than half of that money went to the benefit of just eight states. Meanwhile national health care is an expenditure that would benefit all states. The central issue of the conflict over health care becomes a matter of priorities when one considers the difference between the farm subsidies budget and the estimated national health care budget is $70 billion over ten years -- that's $7 billion a year, substantially less than what California spends annually on its prisons.

Local growers, small and medium-sized farms that produce fresh produce and meat don't make the cut for big money subsidies. American taxpayers subsidize commodity crops not so we can eat healthier but so that traders on Wall Street have something to play with and corporate farmers can keep prices so low on these crops that they underbid farmers in developing countries. It appears this is one aspect of socialism that heartland America can agree with Europe on.

Read it all here.

Robert Bryce, Managing Editor of Energy Tribune, penned a column in today's Wall Street Journal focusing on the amount of subsidies ethanol receives compared to the oil and gas industry (which has its own set of handouts).

The U.S. gets about 98 times as much energy from natural gas and oil as it does from ethanol and biofuels. And measured on a per-unit-of-energy basis, Congress lavishes ethanol and biofuels with subsidies that are 190 times as large as those given to oil and gas.

Those numbers come from an April 2008 report by the Energy Information Administration: "Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy Markets 2007.

Recall that EWG's Craig Cox issued a report in January of 2009 using data from the EIA report detailing how the ethanol industry receives two thirds of all federal subsidies for "renewable" energy, including those for wind, solar and geothermal.

With the possible exception of the ski industry, it's hard to think of any sector of the economy that will be hit harder by global warming than agriculture. A report out last week from scientists at 13 government agencies found that climate change is happening more quickly than we thought and that by the end of the century, many farmers will face scorching summer weather, severe storms, prolonged drought and swarms of new insects.

Given those prospects, you might expect the farm lobby to be in the vanguard of those pushing for enactment of legislation to cap the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere.

and

All of these concessions were hammered out last weekend among Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and fellow Democrats Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, the chief sponsors of the climate-change bill. The House leadership and the White House acquiesced; the press conference was duly held. And what was the result?

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the self-proclaimed "voice of agriculture," yesterday urged all House members to vote against the climate-change bill, claiming it would "result in a net economic cost to farmers with little or no environmental benefit."

The next time the world's most selfish lobby comes to Washington demanding drought relief, someone ought to have the good sense to tell them to go pound sand.

Read it all here.

It's been a hectic, heady week in Washington DC for proponents and opponents of federal support for ethanol. First you have the EPA moving toward a science based analysis of ethanol production's total contribution to green house gas emissions, and then Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson's rant and pouting position on climate change legislation.

Today sees the release of a new Friends of the Earth report, Boon to Bad Biofuels, that estimates subsidies to ethanol and biodiesel totaled $9.5 billion in 2008. These subsidies will climb to $60 billion by 2022 if current, flawed policy stays in place.

In January, the Environmental Working Group issued a related analysis detailing how corn-based ethanol has accounted for fully three-quarters of the tax benefits and two-thirds of all federal subsidies allotted for renewable energy sources in 2007. Meanwhile, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have struggled to gain significant market share with modest federal support.

"The much touted new investment--$14.5 billion over ten years--in renewable energy in the recently passed stimulus package pales in comparison to the amount of subsidies the FOE report reveals are still going to ethanol. In two years we will spend more on corn-ethanol than we will invest over the next decade on solar, wind, and other renewable energy option. It is clear that current policy is taking America in the opposite direction of a true renewable energy policy," said Craig Cox, EWG Midwest Vice President from Ames, IA about the FOE report.

Special to Mulch from EWG's California office and EWG senior analyst Kari Hamerschlag.

Subsidies distort the market. That's economics 101.

The Environmental Working Group has long contended that subsidies for commodities and Western water have discouraged efficient water use by encouraging farmers to grow alfalfa, rice, cotton and other thirsty crops in arid places.

A 2004 EWG study, California Water Subsidies, concluded that the large agribusiness operations -- not small family farmers -- were reaping a windfall from taxpayer-subsidized cheap water. The next year, a second EWG study, Double Dippers -- How Big Ag Taps Into Taxpayers' Pockets - Twice, found that one in four Central Valley Project farms received both water and crop subsidies for at least a year.

Today, with the federal government's deficit soaring to mind-boggling levels and the West gripped by a third year of drought, it's clear that decades of double-dipping have made a bad situation far worse. In the last few weeks, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has announced major water cutbacks in California, with many farmers denied federal irrigation water during the spring planting season.

The Associated Press reported last week that the federal government has subsidized California and Arizona farmers to the tune of nearly $700 million in the past two years to plant thirsty crops like alfalfa, rice and cotton on arid land.

The AP reporter made highly conservative assumptions, resulting in a subsidies estimate at the low end of the range calculated by EWG. But even AP's numbers show that taxpayers have paid huge amounts to double-dippers - and for what? Countless farm communities are facing disaster.

So we have to wonder -- what if just half of that money had gone towards supporting farmers to implement water conservation practices?

Cotton Isn't Green.

Subsidies do more than promote wasteful water use. Cotton demands vast quantities of insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers that end up polluting our rivers and streams. Taxpayers have subsidized this environmental damage, paying out more than $600 million in cotton subsidies from 2003 to 2005.

That¹s 10 times what the federal government spent during that period to help farmers improve their conservation practices in California.

It's not too late to turn the situation around.

There are many water conservation and land management practices farmers can implement NOW that would significantly reduce water pressures on the Sacramento delta and avert the need for building costly and environmentally-risky new infrastructure to expand supply. These include:

· Drip irrigation and more efficient pumps

· Farm water storage

· Cover cropping

· Mulching

· Conservation tillage

Certainly, some small percentage of farmers is already implementing many of these practices.

But where is the incentive for farmers to change, if cheap, subsidized water and commodity payments are available even to those who make no attempt to conserve?

Rep. George Miller, D-CA, told the AP:

With our weather patterns, with climate change, and our population growth, we¹ve got to look at how we use every drop. We need to take a serious look at policies that encourage economically inefficient and unsustainable uses of our limited clean water supplies.

We couldn't agree more.

That's the sub headline for Tom Philpott's recent article on Grist, Don't Suffer Biofuels Gladly. Tom covered the recent release of a comprehensive biofuels platform developed by a coalition of environmental groups, including EWG.

Whether or not you agree with their analysis, it's hard to see how any sane person could object to their policy proposals, which I've pasted below the fold. Their suggestions amount to safeguards to ensure that federal biofuel policies actually reduce greenhouse gas and don't contribute to a food crisis.

Under the previous regime, such standards seemed too high. Few assumed that President Bush promoted biofuels because he thought they might reduce gas consumption (never much of a priority) or mitigate climate change (which he never took seriously).

After all, as Dennis Keeney, emeritus professor of agronomy at Iowa State, recently wrote, "money, not science, has driven ethanol fuel policy." Keeney's assessment applies to U.S. biofuel policy since its inception under Jimmy Carter.

From Jeff St. John at Greentech Media:

It's been tough times recently for companies seeking to make commercial quantities of "next-generation" ethanol made from non-food sources like wood chips, switch grass or municipal waste.

and

The slow going for cellulosic ethanol companies could stymie the federal government's goal of getting 100 million gallons of the stuff by 2010, according to research firm ThinkEquity, which estimates that only 28.5 million gallons will be available by then.

Read it all here.

The downturn in the ethanol industry is no longer limited to the Midwest. The Syracuse NY Post-Standard editorial board wrote this weekend about a NY state ethanol refinery declaring Chapter 11, and the ethanol industry's attempts to secure more federal assistance.

Just in 2007, the corn-based ethanol industry received nearly twice as much in subsidies and three times as much in tax breaks as solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy producers.

The diversion of so much corn to ethanol production helped push food prices up worldwide, worsening food shortages in many countries and contributing to global hunger. Ironically, this also hurt the ethanol plants, which had to pay higher prices for their main ingredient.

When the price of ethanol plummeted with gasoline and credit tightened, many ethanol companies went under. About 9 percent of all ethanol plants in the United States have filed for bankruptcy, and some say that could soon exceed 20 percent.

Now, the industry is asking for a federal bailout. The answer should be no.

Read the whole piece here.

Last week, EWG released the report Ethanol's Federal Subsidy Grab from our Midwest office in Ames, IA. Here's a roundup of some select media reaction to the report:

The Hill - Obama Faces Key Decisions About Ethanol

But Cox said ethanol mandates have led to more corn production, which has further polluted streams and rivers with fertilizer runoff. A better way to spend the money that now goes to support ethanol would be to increase support for solar and wind power to produce electricity, Cox said.

Grist - Straight Talk on Ethanol

This is scandalous. Ethanol subsidies promote the expansion of industrial corn agriculture -- an environmentally ruinous process. Conservation programs try to mitigate industrially ruinous agriculture -- by, say, leaving buffer strips between chemical-drenched corn fields and streams, or taking marginal land out of production.

In other words, ethanol subsidies and conservation programs are directly at odds (strange, given that ethanol is sometimes sold as an "environmental solution.") It's telling that government largess flows more generously to ethanol than to conservation.

Reason - Big Corn Muscles Aside Solar, Wind and Geothermal Subsidies (Via Andrew Sullivan)

The Environmental Working Group has just issued a report that finds that 75 percent of all renewable fuels tax subsidies in 2007 went to environmentally damaging corn-ethanol production. In addition, the corn ethanol industry, teetering on the edge of collapse despite billions already wasted in subsidies on it, now wants additional billions for a bailout.

From today's EWG report release:

WASHINGTON, January 8, 2009 - As Congress and the incoming Obama administration plan the nation's next major investments in green energy, they need to take a hard, clear-eyed look at Department of Energy data documenting corn-based ethanol's stranglehold on federal renewable energy tax credits and subsidies.

An Environmental Working Group (EWG) report released today uses data from a little noticed analysis buried in an April 2008 report from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA). The information unearthed by EWG shows that solar, wind and other renewable energy sources have struggled to gain significant market share with modest federal support. Meanwhile, corn-based ethanol has accounted for fully three-quarters of the tax benefits and two-thirds of all federal subsidies allotted for renewable energy sources in 2007.

The corn-based ethanol industry received $3 billion in tax credits in 2007, more than four times the $690 million in credits available to companies trying to expand all other forms of renewable energy, including solar, wind and geothermal power.

"With America facing an exploding federal deficit and the crisis of climate change," report author and EWG Midwest Vice President Craig Cox said, "it defies common sense to continue to lavish billions of tax dollars on corn-based ethanol, a fuel that has failed to fulfill its promises at every turn."

"Corn-based ethanol production, spurred by federal subsidies and mandates, is polluting our nation's water, eroding our soil and plowing up precious wildlife habitat -- and worst of all is likely contributing to global warming," Cox said. "As the polluting ethanol industry gets fat at taxpayer expense, proven clean technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal are fighting for support. America needs a truly renewable energy portfolio, and the evidence is mounting that corn-based ethanol will not get us where we need to go."

Go here for the full report.