EWG and Crop Insurance

Politico is just one of several articles on EWG's attack on crop insurance, using data on crop policies and policyholders. (Here's the link.)

In 26 cases, policyholders received an annual discount — carried on the government’s books — of $1 million or more in 2011. In 10,152 cases, it was $100,000 or more, while the vast majority of farmers received far smaller discounts averaging closer to $5,000.
“The eye-opening analysis shows crop insurance is not only very expensive,” said Craig Cox, EWG’s senior vice president of agriculture and natural resources, “but also very, very generous to large and highly profitable farm businesses.”
Corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton are among the leading beneficiaries, just as they dominate American agriculture. At the same time, fruit and vegetable growers, which account for about one-fifth of farm receipts, are disproportionately represented since their crops tend to be high priced and therefore more likely subject to higher premiums.
Potatoes, tomatoes, apples, onions and grapes accounted for 36 percent of the high-end subsidies over $1 million, which carried some irony since environmentalists have long favored such specialty crops.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76913.html#ixzz1wf2BLmap

Politico points out differences between crop insurance and FSA's farm programs but ignores one.  Because of payment limitation, I suspect EWG will would not find as many city dwellers benefiting from subsidized crop insurance.  One of the things EWG seemed to delight in with their database on FSA's payments was the revelation of where recipients lived, particularly in big cities and wealthy ZIP codes.  I don't know if FSA and FCIC ever tried to cross-match their producers, but my suspicion is that crop insurance's "producers", those people and entities who are the policyholders, come much closer to matching John Doe's idea of who is a farmer is than do FSA's producers.  

Note: I changed "will" to "would" in the previous paragraph because it turns out EWG couldn't get identities of producers; Congress barred it.