Too often, conservation programs help bolster industrial ag

There is plenty of both good and bad in this report.

Industrial animal agriculture is a well-documented and significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, water and air pollution, poor animal welfare and environmental injustice.

One way the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempts to address the harms caused by industrial agriculture is with conservation programs funded through the Farm Bill. These programs are intended to “help agricultural producers improve their environmental performance with respect to soil health, water quality, air quality, wildlife habitat, and greenhouse gas emissions.”

However, one of the leading conservation programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), also supports the factory farm system of industrial animal agriculture — the very system that impairs rural water and air quality, releases high levels of greenhouse gases and undercuts independent farmers using high animal welfare systems that protect the environment! Since 2002, 50% of total EQIP funding has been required to support livestock operations, including industrial-scale factory farms. These EQIP contracts are often up to six figures and pay for equipment and infrastructure that support and lock in the industrial model, ultimately using limited conservation funds to subsidize factory farms. - IATP

Trump plan for farmers would make things even worse

I've pretty much run out of variants of "shamefully underreported and underemphasized in corporate 'news' media."

Presidential budgets, released annually, are aspirational documents—they display an administration’s intentions and goals, but are typically considered “dead on arrival” in Congress, which ultimately sends its own federal spending proposal to the White House. This year’s version, which has no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, sends a jarring message to a key Donald Trump constituency: large-scale farmers who rely heavily on federal programs.

The proposed budget calls for a 31 percent cut to a program that subsidizes crop insurance, a key support for corn and soybean farmers during extended periods of low prices, such as the one currently in effect. This, even though Trump enjoyed strong farm-country support in 2016 and loves to flatter “our Great Patriot Farmers,” as he once put it on Twitter. The budget would also slice about 10 percent—$9.1 billion over 10 years—from the US Department of Agriculture’s conservation programs, which provide farmers with incentives to use practices that keep soil in place and reduce water pollution. - Mother Jones