About

What's all this about?

Subsidies paid to farmers and others under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy amount to approximately €55 billion a year, more than 40% of European Union’s entire annual budget, or around €100 a year for each EU citizen. Farmsubsidy.org helps people find out who gets what, and why. It is run by EU Transparency, a non-profit organisation in the UK and Kaas og Mulvad, a research and analysis company in Denmark. Using citizens rights to access government information we try to obtain detailed information to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in every EU member state. We make this data available in a way that is useful to European citizens. The project has brought together journalists, analysts and campaigners in more than ten countries. You can read a short newspaper article about the history of the project and its big successes.

Watch the film

'Fields of Gold' is an 18-minute film that tells the story of the farmsubsidy.org project made in 2009. A shorter version is on the way.

Fields of Gold: Lifting the Veil on Europe's Farm Subsidies from farmsubsidy.org on Vimeo.

Keep up to date

There are several ways you can stay up to date with the work of the farmsubsidy.org network. You can subscribe to regular email updates. If you want more regular updates, subscribe to our RSS feed by using a feed reader.

Supporters

EU Transparency and DICAR (Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting), which founded farmsubsidy.org, have received funding for their farm subsidy transparency work from the following sources: William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($516,000 over three years), the Open Society Foundation (€22,800) and the European Social Fund (€60,000). In addition, the various organisations and individuals involved in the project have their own sources of funding.

People

Nils Mulvad

Born 1955, Nils is a co-founder of farmsubsidy.org and a partner of Kaas and Mulvad, a data consultancy in Denmark. Until December 2006 he was the executive director of the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting, DICAR. Along with Kjeld Hansen he applied for and obtained the Danish data on beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies, a case that lasted for 16 months ending in May 2004 with the release of the data. Nils is a trainer in investigative journalism, computer-assisted reporting and interview techniques. Nils Mulvad has conducted training in Denmark, UK, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Bangladesh. He participates in research on electronic access in Denmark and is co-author to several reports on that issue. Together with Flemming Svith he is author of two Danish textbooks on Computer-Assisted Reporting, “The New House of the Watchdog” published in 1998 and “Watchdog in the Knowledge Society” published in 2002. Nils Mulvad and Brant Houston, executive director of the US-based Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) were responsible for the two first Global Investigative Journalism Conferences in 2001 and 2003 in Copenhagen. In 2002 Nils initiated the Scoop-project to support investigative journalism in South East Europe and the Ukraine and currently is on its board. Since 2001 he has served as a board-member of the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism. He previously worked at the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. He operates from Aarhus in Denmark. Nils won the European Voice 'Journalist of the Year' award in December 2006.

Jack Thurston

Based in London, UK, Jack is a co-founder of farmsubsidy.org. He led the campaign for access to farm subsidy data in the UK, first making the case for transparency in farm subsidies in 2002. Since 2005 he has been working on taking the campaign to a pan-European level. He is also a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US. He served a special adviser to Nick Brown, the UK Minister for Agriculture Fisheries and Food (1999-2001). He was a Senior Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre in London from 2002 to 2005. He writes widely on agriculture, food and trade policy including 'How to Reform the CAP' (FPC, 2002), and 'Free and Fair: Making the Progressive Case for Removing Trade Barriers (FPC, 2004) and 'Why Europe Deserves a Better Farm Policy' (Centre for European Reform, 2005). His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Observer, European Voice, New Statesman, Prospect and Tribune. He blogs on agriculture policy at CAPHealthCheck.eu. He is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio Four’s ‘Farming Today’. Jack holds a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Oxford University) and a masters in Public Policy Analysis (University of California at Berkeley). You can read Jack's blog here or email him via jack(at)farmsubsidy(dot)org

Brigitte Alfter

Born in 1966 in Germany, Brigitte Alfter is the EU-correspondent in Brussels for the Danish daily Information. She has covered EU-matters for a number of years, and also writes about media law for journalist magazines in European countries. She uses freedom of information legislation as a journalistic tool and conducts training on the subject. A board member of the Danish Association for Investigative Journalism since 2002, she was one of the coordinators for the Danish Scoop project to support investigative journalism in South East Europe and the Ukraine. She was nominated for the Danish Cavling award for journalists in 2006 along with farmsubsidy.org colleague Nils Mulvad, and she was awarded the IRE Freedom of Information Award along with farmsubsidy colleagues Nils Mulvad and Jack Thurston. Since 2007 she has been editor of the 'wobsite' on freedom of information in Europe.

Pierre Boulanger

Pierre is currently in charge of the “CAP Efficiency, Equity and Transparency” Research Programme at the Groupe d’Economie Mondiale (GEM) in Paris since 2005. He is a Research and Teaching Fellow at Sciences Po and is writing a Ph.D thesis under the supervision of Prof. Patrick A. Messerlin. Pierre holds a Master’s degree in International Economic Relations from the Paris Political Studies Institute (Sciences Po) and also degrees in Applied Economics from the Paris-Dauphine University and the Autonomous University of Madrid. His fields of research are Agricultural and Rural Development Policies, (De)coupled Farm Subsidies Distribution, European Trade Policy and Structural Adjustments induced by Globalization.

Annamarie Cumiskey

Annamarie Cumiskey is an Irish freelance TV producer/reporter and print journalist specialised in EU politics based in London. She was a regular contributor on EU politics to The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The European, and is now a TV producer/reporter. Credits include: Newsnight, BBC2 and TV3 News, Ireland. Annamarie speaks French, German and Italian, has lectured on EU Politics for the EJC, Maastricht and the IEME, Paris, and graduated from the College of Europe, Bruges. In 1999 she was a member of The Sunday Times Kosovo crisis reporting team awarded “Team of the Year” by the British Press Awards.

Staffan Dahllöf

Born 1955 in Sweden, Staffan is a freelance reporter based in Copenhagen, where he reports on Danish issues to Swedish media, and on European affairs to Danish and Swedish media. In 1993 he was co-editor and co-author on "JournalisternasEG-handbok", a guide in Swedish on EC/EU-reporting. Since 1994 he has been engaged in courses on EU-reporting arranged by The Swedish Institute for Further Education of Journalists (FOJO),and by the European Journalist Center (EJC) in Maastricht. In this respect he has conducted courses about EU and EU-reporting in the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, and for a couple of years, in Turkey.

Contact us

Please tell us what you think about farmsubsidy.org

team[-at-]farmsubsidy[-dot-]org

Enquiries

All media enquiries to Jack Thurston, phone +44 (0)7973 155 278.