The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a public-interest organization, launched a database in June that includes the names of over 1.5 million subsidy recipients in the United States and the amounts that they received.

The Farm Policy Analysis Database suggests millions of dollars in US farm subsidies are going to rich land owners, many of whom don't even farm. Among the recipients are millionaire bothers Mark and David Rockefeller, who received over US$ 160, 000 US between them from 2003 to 2005.

"While two-thirds of US farmers receive no farm subsidy payments, American taxpayers have been writing farm subsidy-checks to wealthy absentee land owners, state prison systems, universities, public corporations, and very large, well-heeled farm business operations without the government so much as asking the beneficiaries if they need our money," says EWG president Ken Cook.

The EWG compiled the information based on new data obtained from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has made it possible to match specific dollar amounts of subsidies to individuals.

Until last year the data kept by the USDA made it difficult to match subsidy amounts to individuals, shielding subsidy recipients "behind layers of partnerships, joint ventures, limited liability corporations, cooperatives, and other business structures that obscured their personal subsidy claims," says the EWG.

The EWG has also recently released a study concerning subsidies to water in California.

That study looked the Central Valley Project (CVP), the largest federally tax-payer funded irrigation system in the US. The CVP is a complex system of dams, reservoirs, canals and pumping plants that stretches 400 hundred miles through California and provides more than 2 trillion gallons (7.6 tillion litres) of water to thousands of farms in the state.

To move this water costs over a US$ 100 million a year, based on current electricity prices charged to customers in the area. Yet the farms that benefit from the CPV "pay next to nothing for the power that provides their lifeblood," says the EWG.

Estimates by the EWG reveal that agribusinesess under the CVP system paid about 1 cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity used to transport the irrigation water, while the local electricity provider charged rates between 10 and 15 cents per kilowatt-hour to industrial, agricultural and residential customers in the area.

The EWG used freedom-of-information legislation to obtain the data used to calculate the subsidies provided under the CPV scheme.

More information on EWG's work can be found on their website here (subsidy recipients) and here(power-irrigation).