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Washington, D.C., Mar. 3, 2025—The U.S. Forest Service is actively responding to multiple wildfires reported over the weekend in North Carolina and South Carolina following a Red Flag Warning issued across the region. Dry conditions and downed timber from past storms have elevated wildfire risk, and response teams are engaging in initial containment efforts at this time. The U.S. Forest Service is monitoring the situation hourly and will send additional personnel as needed. Sec. Rollins plans to visit the affected area on Friday, conditions permitting.

Washington, D.C., Feb. 27, 2025 — Following the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s announcement of new measures to combat highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), elected leaders and industry stakeholders from around the country are applauding the five-pronged strategy.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins joined FOX News to outline the Department’s strategy to strengthen biosecurity, support farmers, and ensure affordable food prices for American families.

The recent freeze to federal grants and loans has impacted countless federal programs and simultaneously left rural businesses and farmers in a lurch.  Among the most impacted programs has been the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). As a result, farmers and businesses alike may be on the hook for millions of dollars of energy efficiency and energy independence improvements they have already purchased or installed. 

Since its inception, REAP has funded tens of thousands of projects that empower farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses to reduce energy costs and move towards energy independence. However, the recent funding freeze has paused REAP funds even for those with a valid, legal contract. 

This blog post takes a closer look at REAP’s investments from 2014 to 2025, highlighting their critical role in making long-lasting impacts on rural communities, and what stands to be lost if the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to withhold payments on signed contracts.

The Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) offers grants and loan guarantees to farmers, ranchers, and rural small businesses for energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy systems. Administered by the Rural Development division within USDA, REAP helps farmers and rural businesses improve their bottom line by cutting energy costs and increasing energy efficiency. 

Whether it is installing solar panels, upgrading irrigation systems, or modernizing heating and cooling equipment, these projects help reduce electricity consumption and increase energy independence, saving money that can be reinvested in the business. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, as previously reported by NSAC, boosted REAP’s funding, appropriating $820.25 million through FY2031 and increasing federal cost-share and maximum grant sizes for grant-based projects. 

Between 2014 and 2025, REAP assisted approximately 17,026 farms and 32,710 rural small businesses to reduce energy costs and promote energy independence, creating approximately 2,600 new jobs and saving more than 4,700 existing jobs in rural America. 

REAP delivers tangible benefits to rural businesses and agricultural producers across the country. REAP has helped small businesses and farmers in every single state lower energy costs, improve resilience, move towards energy independence, and contribute to a more sustainable future.

Pennsylvania ($83.4 million), Minnesota ($79.8 million), Illinois ($75 million), and Iowa ($74.6 million) are the largest recipients of REAP grants, but every state has benefited from the addition of Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds to the program in 2023 and 2024. 

The IRA has injected a boost into the oversubscribed REAP, creating specialized funding streams for renewable energy systems and efficiency improvements. Between 2023 and 2025, more than $1 billion in IRA funds supported 6,822 REAP projects, with renewable energy systems receiving the majority of allocations.

IRA funded REAP projects have driven $2.75 billion in rural economic development.

The additional funding for REAP from the IRA reached every state, reinforcing its broad national impact. Pennsylvania ($48.1 million), Iowa ($42.1 million), and Michigan ($41.6 million) received the largest amount of IRA-funded grants, demonstrating the program’s bipartisan benefits and its role in supporting rural businesses and agricultural producers nationwide.

The interactive map below shows the total REAP grants and loans awarded in each state from 2014 to 2025, as well as the total funded specifically by the IRA.

Between 2014 and 2025, REAP has invested over $4.8 billion across more than 19,000  grants and loan guarantees in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, spurring more than $14.7 billion of rural development invested in rural communities. REAP grants require matching funds from recipients, so for every dollar USDA invests in REAP grants, it generates $8.72 in total project spending and investment, amplifying the economic impact for rural communities (see Figure 1). 

REAP funding grew significantly, spiking during the COVID-19 recovery years due to IRA funding, with 2024 marking a record $3.5 billion in total investments, $2.1 billion from grants and $1.4 billion from loan guarantees. Renewable energy systems like solar dominate REAP’s portfolio, with most awards granted to farms and small businesses. REAP remains a popular option for farmers and rural businesses for increasing resilience and lowering energy costs. 

The number of grants and loans that REAP supports remained relatively steady until 2023, when the number of awards more than doubled. This investment not only reduced energy expenses for farmers and small businesses but also strengthened rural energy independence by accelerating the adoption of renewable energy and efficiency upgrades.

The average REAP grant between 2014 and 2024 was $59,435.75, with significantly higher average grant sizes in 2023 and 2024 following the addition of IRA funds. The addition of these funds has allowed thousands more farms and rural businesses to enact cost-saving energy measures that work well for their operations. More than 8,362 farms received REAP grants funded by the IRA specifically. This significantly increased the number of farms that took advantage of the program to reduce their energy costs, become more energy independent, and enhance their long-term viability.

The program’s primary focus has been the Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvement Loans and Grants. This component has awarded the lion’s share of grants and has an average grant size of $88,444, higher than the $78,498 average for the Energy Audits and Renewable Energy Development grants but less than the $220,109 average for the Technical Assistance grants. 

Renewable Energy Systems and Energy Efficiency Improvement Loans and Grants provides grants and loan guarantees to help rural businesses and farms install renewable energy systems (e.g., solar, wind, biomass, geothermal) or make energy efficiency improvements (e.g., upgraded insulation, lighting, HVAC systems, and irrigation systems). Grants can cover up to 50% of project costs. 

Energy Audits and Renewable Energy Development Grants provide grants to state, tribal, or local governments, universities, rural electric cooperatives, and other organizations to conduct energy audits and feasibility studies for rural businesses and farms. These grants help farmers and rural businesses assess opportunities for energy savings and renewable energy projects before development. 

REAP has delivered significant benefits to rural communities and farmers in every state, helping them cut energy costs, improve efficiency, and strengthen their businesses. Now, with additional support from the IRA, REAP has expanded its reach, proving its value and popularity as a critical tool for rural economic growth. Yet, the ongoing pause of all IRA payments is directly undermining this growth.

In the immediate term, USDA must urgently provide specificity and clarity for how it will release frozen funds and swiftly honor its legal obligations to farmers, businesses, and organizations by immediately releasing funding on all signed contracts.

In the longer term, continued investment in REAP is necessary to ensure farmers and small businesses can keep accessing these cost-saving opportunities. Opportunities also remain to improve upon the already successful program, such as moving away from the false solution of anaerobic digesters. As Congress debates the next farm bill, lawmakers must recognize REAP’s nationwide success and secure its future. 

The post Rural Businesses, Farmers Lose While USDA’s Rural Energy Program is Frozen appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Shortly after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an array of executive orders, a practice that has become common in recent years. However, abnormally, several of these executive orders triggered a pause on broad swaths of federal funding. As a result of this pause, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now refusing to make payments to farmers on signed contracts for voluntary conservation. By threatening to renege on these contracts, the Trump Administration is breaking commitments to farmers and threatening the economic stability of rural America.

Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022, America’s farmers, ranchers, foresters, and rural small businesses have been signing up in droves to receive funds by entering into formal contracts with USDA. Rural residents in every state have benefited from the IRA through contracts to support conservation efforts on working lands and to improve energy efficiency and energy independence. These programs are designed to provide reimbursements, where farmers take on the initial expense of any contracted project with the expectation that USDA will promptly reimburse them. However, the freeze on payments is preventing those timely reimbursements from happening.

Many projects funded through the IRA are already a year or more underway, and consequently farmers and ranchers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket, trusting that USDA would hold up their end of a legally binding agreement. Pausing IRA funding means leaving tens of thousands of farmers holding the bill for work they were legally promised they would not have to complete alone. Many now face an unplanned expense so large it could destroy their farm businesses. Crushing farms by withholding contractually promised funding is not only unlawful, but it harms rural communities by undermining families that are central to local economic growth, and leaving small businesses that service the farm economy all across this country in a state of panic.

On Friday, February 21, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins released the “first tranche” of IRA funding originally promised to farmers. Unfortunately, this release represents less than 1% of the IRA funding already guaranteed to farmers through signed contracts. As farmers make decisions for next season’s planting and rural businesses operate in a challenging economic climate, this announcement fails to address the sheer scale of the promises broken. The nation’s farmers, and rural America as a whole, deserve the certainty that the USDA will honor its commitments and immediately release funds on all signed contracts.

IRA funding has reached rural communities and farmers through a number of programs. This post focuses on the boosts that the IRA provided to working lands conservation programs and the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). 

The IRA appropriated more than $19.5 billion to existing agricultural conservation programs administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS): 

• $3.25 billion for the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
• $8.45 billion for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)
• $4.95 billion for the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP)
• $1.4 billion for the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP)
• $1 billion for Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA)

These programs are long-standing conservation programs that help farmers, ranchers, and foresters maintain and adopt conservation practices on their land and keep their land in agricultural production.  Farmers pay for conservation improvements such as planting cover crops, prescribed grazing, efficient irrigation, nutrient management, improving tillage programs, and planting wildlife habitat. These are all classic conservation activities that address a wide variety of farm-site and environmental challenges, above and beyond limiting a farm’s greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the IRA targeted funds at the majority of the most popular practices supported through contracts over the last three years.

These conservation contracts operate almost entirely on a reimbursement and cost-share model. EQIP has a total payment limit of $450,000 and CSP $200,000, meaning that farmers enrolling in both programs can incur significant costs before receiving reimbursement from USDA. Further, since EQIP allows contracts up to 10 years in length and CSP requires five year contracts, farmers who enrolled in either program at any point in the last three years have likely already begun to make expenditures on their contracts, or are already halfway through building entirely new infrastructure on their farms. Both programs offer to support the planning, design, materials, equipment, installation, labor, management, maintenance, or training costs of adopting conservation practices, meaning farmers are asked to take the lead in paying for every element of the conservation practices outlined in their contracts, and those contracts stipulate each element, from the first written plan through final installation in the field. Interrupting such contracts at any point guarantees farmers are left holding a big, even farm-threatening bill.

The IRA also appropriated $820.25 million to the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP). Since it was established in 2008, REAP has helped farmers and rural small businesses with grants and loan guarantees that help them improve energy efficiency and energy independence through projects like energy efficient irrigation systems and solar panels. REAP has been extremely popular with rural businesses and farms seeking to reduce energy costs and improve financial viability. As with conservation programs, IRA funding has provided a much needed boost to this wildly popular program. Read more about REAP and IRA funding in NSAC’s blog here.

To date, the IRA has funded 30,715 conservation contracts across all 50 states, promising more than $2.3 billion directly to American farmers, ranchers, and foresters. 

Historically, these programs have been hugely popular with farmers and ranchers and have often turned away over 75% of many applicants each year because they lacked adequate funding. IRA funding provided a much needed boost to these valuable and trusted programs, which still proved insufficient to fund even a third of the farmers applying. These conservation programs are extremely popular with farmers and every year thousands of applicants are turned away due to lack of funding. Even with the boost from the IRA, just 31% of applications were awarded contracts in CSP in FY2023. 

Withholding IRA funds means breaking nearly 31,000 contracts with farmers and ranchers that support their farm’s financial and environmental sustainability. Of the $2.3 billion promised to farmers on those contracts, the majority is likely still in USDA’s coffers. As noted above, contracts span years, meaning some simpler contracts signed in the earliest years of IRA funding (FY2023) may already be paid out in full. However, the charts below show that over $1.9 billion worth of USDA’s obligations to farmers fall in FY2024 or later, meaning contracts signed within the last year. Farmers have likely only begun to make major expenditures under these contracts during this winter season, when many farms plan and make purchases to support their upcoming field seasons. This means the vast majority of what USDA owes farmers is both yet to be paid out, and must be delivered as fast as possible to avoid farmers making dramatic changes to their plans for the 2025 crop year. News articles and anecdotes from the NSAC network have already confirmed that many farmers have chosen to change their plans for this growing season, as these unnecessary and unlawful delays from the Trump Administration have shattered farmer trust in USDA and caused them to make what they feel are farm-saving decisions.

The IRA has funded 6,822 REAP grants across all 50 states, paying farmers and rural businesses more than $1 billion for projects that increase their energy independence and save costs, supporting $2.75 billion in rural economic development. Withdrawing IRA funds means pulling out of investments in rural businesses and rural energy independence. 

Farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses in every state have received conservation contracts and REAP grants funded by the IRA. The map below shows the total IRA funding paid to farmers and rural businesses through CSP, EQIP, ACEP, and REAP. 

The IRA has invested in rural communities, businesses, and farms in both red and blue states. These funds have provided a much needed boost to extremely popular and long-standing programs that support small businesses and farmers to reduce costs and ensure their viability. 

Through lawfully signed contracts, the USDA has promised critical funding to farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses in every state –  funds that stand to strengthen conservation efforts and advance rural energy independence. By reneging on these promises, the USDA is not only cutting off vital resources, but also breaking commitments to farmers and rural communities that have acted in good faith and moved forward spending their hard-earned money to honor their contractual obligations. The $20 million released on February 21 is only a drop in the bucket compared to the full extent of the financial support promised to America’s farmers. USDA must honor all existing contracts and agreements now, and communicate its commitment to do so to farmers with a unified voice at all levels of government. To do anything else is to tarnish the full faith and credit of the Department, and force unneeded fear and hardship on rural America writ large.

The post Broken Promises: Over 30,000 Farmers Denied Funds appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.