Our View: EWG Stoops to New Low, Resorts to Pure Fiction in Latest Attack

With crop insurance's popularity rising in rural America and on Capitol Hill, and with the policy's budget outlays falling, we're guessing one of its harshest critics, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), is running out of believable critiques. So now it's resorted to pure fiction.  The EWG sounded an alarm bell in an article earlier this week, warning, "Billionaire Saudi Prince Khalid bin Abdullah could be raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. taxpayer-funded crop insurance subsidies through farms he owns in Kentucky – but we have no way of knowing for sure."  Actually, we have plenty of information to know for sure. And no, he is not fleecing U.S. taxpayers. Under paragraph 202 of the USDA's handbook for crop insurance program standards, it clearly notes that non-U.S. citizens are ineligible to participate. Since the Saudi Prince is not a citizen, he is not receiving crop insurance assistance. Case closed. But for the sake of due diligence, we decided to assume the Saudi Prince became a U.S. citizen without telling anyone. Even in this unlikeliest of scenario, he still isn't hitting up taxpayers for crop insurance on his thoroughbred horse breeding operation headquartered in Fayette County, Kentucky. Here's how we know. There is no crop insurance product available for horse breeding.There is a livestock crop insurance product, but horses are ineligible for coverage.There is a Pasture, Rangeland, and Forage product to assist ranchers in general, but it's hardly been used in Kentucky.