FAQ

What's this all about?

The aim of farmsubsidy.org is to obtain detailed data relating to payments and recipients of farm subsidies in every EU member state and make this data available in a way that is useful to European citizens. Farmsubsidy.org is run by a network of European journalists, researchers and activists.

Why are you doing it?

Farm subsidies under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) amount to approximately €55 billion a year, just over 40% of European Union’s annual budget, or an average of just under €100 a year for each EU citizen. We believe that the people who are paying for this policy have a right to know where the money goes.

Are you for or against farm subsidies?

Farmsubsidy.org brings together a diverse group of activists, organisations and journalists who share a belief in increasing the transparency of the Common Agricultural Policy . We do not share any particular view of how farm subsidies should operate, other than in a transparent and open way. We hope that the release of data on the website will help European citizens to be better informed and contribute to a constructive public discourse about farm subsidies in the EU. While those involved in the project may hold their own opinions about the Common Agricultural Policy, farmsubsidy.org has no common position other than the need for greater transparency. If you want to debate the CAP, you'll find several of the members of the farmsubsidy.org network at CAPHealthCheck.eu, the group blog on the future of European rural, farming and food policy.

Who is funding the project?

Farmsubsidy.org is a project led by EU Transparency, a non-profit company registered in the UK and Kaas and Mulvad, a research and analysis partnership based in Denmark.

EU Transparency and DICAR (Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting), which founded farmsubsidy.org, have received funding for their farm subsidy transparency work as follows:

In addition, the various organisations and individuals involved in the project (from NGOs, newspapers and universities) may have their own sources of funding.

Can I have the source data on your website?

Of course you can. We believe in that this data should be widely available and we make our databases available under the terms of the Open Database License (ODbL) (read a plain language summary

). The databases are freely available for commercial and non-commercial uses but the users must agree to attribute farmsubsidy.org in any subsequent re-publication of the data or publication of works derived from the databases. If you publicly use any adapted version of the databases, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL.

If you do something clever with it, we’d love to hear about it. To request data, please email team(at)farmsubsidy(dot)org. We hope to produce APIs for the data later this year.

How can I get involved?

If you think you could help out with the project, please get in touch. We are particularly keen to make contact with people who want to help obtain farm subsidy data in the member states where it has not yet been released. We also welcome donations to help continue our work. And we'd love to have more users to test out new features we're developing.

How can I contact you?

We want to hear your comments about farmsubsidy.org. You can comment on stories or send email to team(at)farmsubsidy(dot)org.

Why is there only data for some EU countries on your website?

Until 2008, when a new EU law required all countries to publish basic information on farm subsidy beneficiaries, it was up to member states to make the decision on whether to release data relating to individual recipients. In some member states, the decision is made at the regional level. All this means that prior to 2008 the availability of data is variable among and within countries.

Why does the format of the data differ from one country to another?

Prior to 2008, the decision to release data was taken at the level of member states (or regions), therefore it is possible that data has be released in different formats. We regularly update our Transparency Index league table which ranks countries according to the level of disclosure. We hope that as more and more governments release data they will do so according to a common format so that it is possible to analyse the data in a meaningful way across the European Union.

Why is there data from some years and not others?

Prior to 2008, the decision to release data was taken at the level of member states (or regions) and many refused to release any data at all. This means that for many countries 2008 is the first year in which data was published. The furthest we go back is 2000, but the truth is that for most countries nowhere near all years are covered. We'd love it if more countries gave us the files they keep on payments made before 2008.

How are the scores in the Transparency Index calculated?

The scores are weighted averages based on a number of criteria including: number of years for which data has been released; amount of detail in the data, e.g. geographical location, description of subsidy schemes, date, currency etc; format of disclosure (we give extra points for disclosure of raw data in a machine-readable format and we penalise disclosure in PDF files). Countries that release comprehensive and detailed data in a machine-readable format will score highly. A country that simply follows the EU law on disclosure will score around 35%. We welcome countries that have worked with us to improve their transparency scores, for example the government of Lithuania

.

Isn't this project making life even harder for European farmers?

No, we don't think so. Many farmers have told us that they are not in the least bit ashamed of receiving public money as they believe they provide an important public service. In France, the Confédération Paysanne, an organisation representing small farmers, has backed transparency and has even published a list of the subsidies received by the farmers who serve on its executive committee. Data relating to farm subsidy payments has been available in the United States for several years, courtesy of our friends at Environmental Working Group and it has proven to be an important resource for the ongoing debate about the objectives and effectiveness of farm subsidies.

Is the website multilingual?

While the default language is English, our intention is to make the website accessible in as many languages as we can. If you would like to help out as a translator, please get in touch.

Why doesn't my search work? Why am I experiencing problems accessing the website?

We are still ironing out technical issues, particularly as we add new functionality to the site. So please be patient but do not hesitate to get in touch if something is not working or you have suggestions for how it could work better.

I think there are mistakes in your data!

The data presented on this website has been obtained from government agencies through formal requests under laws on public access to information. In several cases we have discovered discrepencies, inaccuracies and straighforward mistakes in the data released to us and wherever possible we have queried this with the relevant paying agency. Ultimately, the data available on this site is only as good as the data we have received from the relevant government authorities.