Farmsubsidy.org has released information on farm subsidies for all 27 EU memberstates for free and made the database searchable in a simple way.
Danish payments of EU farm subsidies got journalist Kjeld Hansen and I access to in 2004. Several stories followed in Danish medias. It was a breakthrough, because it was the first country in EU to release the information.
The year after together with the UK-based analyst Jack Thurston and others I founded Farmsubsidy.org. The goal was to get the data out in all EU countries. Slowly this developed. We got the data in some countries, we run court cases and other cases to press the authorities.
Farmsubsidy.org has got more data and a new design.
First time with all payments
EU decided then memberstates should release their data. In May 2009 it was the first time all countries was forced to publish data, but several countries did it in a way, where we couldn’t get it all.
In May this year the memberstates then published the data for 2009. Despite we still face a lot of problems with data quality, we managed to get a more and less complete data set for all countries. For the first time we then see a total set of data of all the payments of €56 billion in 2009.
The data has been used for several stories. Look at the overview from journalist Brigitte Alfter.
2009-data searchable
Now is the website then opened for conducting your own search. It is still possible for analysts and others to get the full dataset. Look here.
The work in Farmsubsidy.org has been financed by Hewlett Foundation, but they will stop. We seach for other sources, so we can continue to gather data and help media and others to analyse. If you have ideas please help.
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