Jack Thurston

How freedom of information can inform public debate and lead to better public policy. Co-authored with Nils Mulvad.

First published in the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s SubsidyWatch Newsletter, October 2006.

Question: what do Prince Albert of Monaco, Ted Turner, Lufthansa, Congressman Marion Berry (D-AK), the Danish State Prison Service, Nestlé, the Duke of Westminster and Dutch Agriculture Minister Cees Veerman all have in common? Answer: they all receive large payments under the European Union and United States farm subsidy programs. Until recently, governments kept records of such payments in files marked ‘top secret’. But thanks to the achievements of investigative journalists, academic researchers and campaigning non-governmental organizations, light is now being shed on the question of who gets what — and why.

In 1996, the Washington Post newspaper won a landmark court case forcing the US government to hand over lists of all farm subsidy payments. In 2002, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) made these data available to the public in its online Farm Subsidy Database. It was not long before European journalists and researchers started to request farm subsidy data from their governments. The first breakthrough was in Denmark in 2004.

Today as many as 13 EU countries have released data on some or all of their farm payments. In most cases, ministers and their advisers have sought to thwart freedom of information requests, fearing the public reaction. Only in the former eastern bloc countries of Estonia and Slovenia did governments make a virtue of openness by voluntarily releasing the data. But aside from exposing showbiz and celebrity ‘farmers’ on the public payroll, embroiling politicians in rows over conflicts of interest and uncovering new levels of ‘corporate welfare’ in the agri-food sector, what are the consequences of transparency for farm policy?

First of all, the sheer scale of farm subsidies is becoming apparent, as is the concentration of payments among a few large recipients. US federal subsidies totalled $143.8 billion from 1995-2004, according to the EWG. Some 72% of all payments went to the top 10% of recipients. In 2003-04, the EU paid €30 billion to its farmers, with 80% these payments going to just 20% of recipients. These results undermine the argument used on both sides of the Atlantic that farm subsidies exist to help the ‘little guy’ and traditional, family farms. It is no surprise that small farmers’ groups like the Confédération Paysanne in France and the Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft in Germany are in the vanguard of transparency campaigns. As a result, individual recipient payment limits are now top of the agenda in Washington DC and Brussels.

Geographical analysis is showing that the most heavily subsidized land is often the land with the most severe problems of fertilizer runoff, overgrazing and soil erosion, and the least rich in natural beauty. The EWG has analysed farm subsides in the Mississippi River watershed and found a strong positive correlation between farm subsidies, over-application of agro-chemicals, soil erosion and flood risk. Are federal farm subsidies responsible for the poisonous ‘dead zone’ that appears every summer in the Gulf of Mexico?

In Europe, farm subsidies are often justified as rewarding farmers for being the stewards of the countryside, providing non-market benefits enjoyed by the rest of society. However, transparency is showing that farm subsidies are concentrated in Europe’s areas of industrial agriculture and not in places to where people actually choose to go when they want to enjoy the countryside.

The European Commission, for many years hesitant about transparency, has officially embraced the idea. Following the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes on the draft EU constitution, the Commission has realised that transparency is necessary to reconnect citizens with the political institutions that serve them and the policies that are carried out in their name. If subsidies form part of a ‘social contract’ between recipient and society, then it is essential that the public knows to whom the money is being paid – and why.

There is no reason, therefore, why transparency should be limited to farm subsidies. Subsidies to fisheries, energy, infrastructure and industry ought to be brought out into the open as well. And not just in Europe and the United States. Why should the citizens of Japan, South Korea, Brazil and India be denied the same rights? Former US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’. For us, transparency is more than just a safeguard against fraud and corruption. We believe that transparency promotes accountability, civic engagement and legitimacy, the result of which is better public policy.

Jack Thurston and Nils Mulvad are the co-founders of www.farmsubsidy.org, a network of journalists, analysts and campaigners in more than twelve European countries who are seeking to obtain detailed data on farm subsidy payments and make these data available in a way that is useful to European citizens.