Welcome to farmsubsidy.org
Farm subsidies on the map 05 Jun 2008
posted by Jack Thurston
We are proud to release the first product of a new project to map EU farm subsidy payments. The map shows all EU farm subsidy payments in Sweden between 2000 and 2007, around 7 billion euros. Built by Google Maps maestro Martin Green and the farmsubsidy.org team, we think this new way of presenting farm subsidy payment information in a way that is useful to European citizens. We hope you like it.
Sweden was chosen as the first country for a map like this because of the high quality of the data released by the Swedish Government after a request by Staffan Dahllöf, farmsubsidy.org network member and freelance reporter. Sweden currently tops the farmsubsidy.org transparency league table, with a score of 81%. Sweden was the first country to release the 'cross files' which every member state is required by law to compile and submit to the European Commission for audit purposes under the Clearance of Audit Trails System (CATS). Cross files are very detailed and well structured, including standardised geo-data which allows us to derive coordinate data for mapping. We expect more countries to release their cross files in the coming months, and if they do, we will be able to do more mapping.
It is important to note that the locations are the recipient locations, not necessarily the exact locations of the land, animals or crops in respect of which the subsidies were paid.
I work for a Swedish agricultural newspaper. When we posted an article about this map on our website, the previous record for number of readings for one article was shattered! Our web editor first thought there was something wrong with the statistics...
On our website we also asked the readers to say whether they were curious about what subsidies their friends and neighbours were getting. The majority answered no...
It would be interesting to know how many of our readers clicked on the link to the map. Have you seen any increased activity since June 13?
Sara, we did see a spike in traffic to the map on the 13th, although we're not able to tell precisely it came from. A shade over a thousand visits that day, and between 500 and 700 a day for the next few days.
Thanks for linking to us!
You should see another traffic spike for the weekend of 26/27 June, since www.farmsubsidy.org made the Financial Times Weekend magazine!
That is how I found your site!
I've just used your search engine to find the subsidies paid to farmers here in Shropshire.
Shocking! Six figures paid yearly to many of them.
Many of the land owners are running parallel rackets through the diversification grant schemes.
One of the local robber land barons was awarded a £750,000 RDA grant to convert a barn into an organic food shop.
No wonder this nation teeters on the edge of bankruptcy!