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By Canary Media
By Canary Media
Canary Media
President Donald Trump has dealt blow after blow to the Rural Energy for America Program, which has helped farmers save on their energy bills by going solar for nearly two decades. Now, REAP’s proponents see a chance to undo some of the damage.
Last year, within a matter of months, the Trump administration froze almost a billion dollars’ worth of promised REAP funds, and then unfroze them; never opened an expected application period for more funding; and announced strict limits on funding solar on farmland.
Then, on March 31 of this year, it halted REAP entirely. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, said REAP won’t be revived until regulations are in place reflecting Trump’s July 7 executive order targeting subsidies for “unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources.”
The moves have been painful for farmers, especially as energy prices continue to soar nationwide. But farmers and clean energy advocates see a pathway to restore and protect the popular, bipartisan initiative going forward: the latest Farm Bill.
REAP was created by the 2008 Farm Bill, and since then the program has helped tens of thousands of farmers and rural business owners install solar panels, biodigesters, and wind turbines, and make other energy-efficiency upgrades, through grants and loan guarantees. More than three-quarters of REAP grants have gone to congressional districts represented by Republicans, an analysis by Canary Media found.
Yearslong negotiations around a new iteration of the massive Farm Bill appear to be gaining steam, with the House of Representatives scheduled to hold a hearing on the Farm Bill on Monday and expected to potentially vote on its version this week. The Senate still also needs to pass the bill. The last Farm Bill expired in 2023, but provisions have been extended as talks have dragged on.
As written, the House’s proposed bill would damage REAP further by enshrining Trump-administration restrictions in law. It currently includes provisions blocking USDA funds for ground-mounted solar covering 50 acres or more of farmland and for any projects that use solar equipment made by a “foreign entity of concern,” which would apply to most solar panels.
By undermining REAP, the administration is “hindering energy dominance and causing farmers and small-business owners to pay more,” said Lloyd Ritter, founder of the clean-energy policy consultancy Green Capitol, who helped launch REAP as a senior counsel for former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).
Instead, “the Farm Bill could make improvements to REAP by statute in order to correct misguided decisions by the department,” he said. “Democrats and Republicans could work together on a bipartisan basis to protect a hyper-nonpartisan and wildly successful program.”
Leaders of the American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for conserving farmland and developing “smart solar,” have talked to lawmakers and administration officials about pushing for changes to the House Farm Bill that would ensure REAP and other USDA grant programs can still help farmers install solar. In a recent memo, the organization asked lawmakers to remove the restrictions on ground-mounted solar and on funding for panels with components from foreign entities of concern.
House Democrats have indeed filed an amendment that would strike the limits on funding for ground-mounted solar and foreign supply chains.
“This is one of the few sources of support for rural communities, electric co-ops, and farms and ranches to seek if they’re interested in generating an alternate type of energy,” said Samantha Levy, American Farmland Trust’s senior policy manager for conservation and energy. “We know the farm economy is in a really terrible position right now with input prices going up and commodity prices depressed. This is an important time to be finding all the different ways we can to support farmers and ranchers.”
The 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills mandated that REAP allocate a total of $50 million each year, with the chance for more discretionary funding, and offer grants reimbursing up to 25% of a project’s cost.
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2022, boosted the program further: It promised over $2 billion to REAP through fiscal year 2027, and increased grants to cover up to 50% of costs for certain types of projects.
On Day 1 of his second term, Trump issued an executive order that halted payments under the IRA. Funding for REAP was caught up in that; financing promised to farmers was frozen, to the alarm of those who had already spent money on projects expecting to be reimbursed.
The freeze was lifted last March, but with a confusing message inviting recipients to voluntarily change their projects to align with administration goals.
In July, a scheduled window to apply for new funding was canceled. Then in August, the USDA announced it would “no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland or allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in USDA projects.”
“Our prime farmland should not be wasted and replaced with green new deal subsidized solar panels,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at the time.
The statement amplified a line of criticism toward solar on farmland that has been spreading across the Midwest and other parts of the country. Opponents argue that solar changes the character of agricultural communities and that it could endanger the U.S. food supply, though food security risks have been widely debunked.
Only a small fraction of agricultural land is being taken over by solar, compared with that lost to housing development. In fact, solar can help preserve farmland by providing a potential revenue stream and energy bill savings that enable farmers to stay afloat financially, according to the American Farmland Trust, farmers, and other experts.
Under Trump’s new restrictions, now at risk of being cemented into law with the Farm Bill, large ground-mounted solar arrays on farms would be banned from getting REAP loan guarantees and highly unlikely to get REAP grants.
The changes are especially frustrating for farmers who have spent many hours and considerable resources preparing REAP applications or plans that may have no future under the Trump administration, advocates say.
For example, farmers who submitted applications in 2024 but never got an answer from the government are out of luck. Any REAP applications that do not already have an award agreement in place will have to be resubmitted once the new regulations meant to comply with Trump’s executive order are in effect, according to the USDA.
“We’re hearing about major issues in many states — Iowa, West Virginia, Illinois, Kansas — where farmers and rural small-business owners have spent months, if not years of time, preparing for a cost-share grant,” Ritter said. “Now, the rug is being pulled out from under them.”
The delays created by this policy turmoil will likely prevent farmers from being able to combine REAP funding with federal tax credits for new solar projects. The Investment Tax Credit is available only for projects beginning construction by July 2026 or in service by December 2027.
Meanwhile, farmers are reeling from the effects of high fuel and fertilizer prices driven by the Iran war, as well as tariffs impeding their access to foreign markets.
“This could not land at a worse time for farmers,” said Jeffrey McManus, federal legislative advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Farmers operate on razor-thin margins. They don’t have a lot of leeway.”
REAP’s supporters are not only pushing lawmakers to exclude Trump’s restrictive policies from the Farm Bill but also asking them to actively encourage solar and farmland to coexist.
People like Bill Jordan can attest to the value of these “agrivoltaics” projects, in which solar arrays share space with crops or livestock.
His upstate New York–based Jordan Solar has developed about 130 REAP-funded projects for farmers over 17 years. He cites a 420-kilowatt array with 15-foot-high panels that his company is developing at a peach farm in Colorado as a prime example of solar coexisting with farming, and boosting a farmer’s bottom line.
“The messaging from the Trump administration is any solar on farmland is bad,” he said. “Farmers want to do both — reduce the cost of doing business and continue growing food. I don’t think most people are applying to the grant to get out of agriculture.”
American Farmland Trust is actively pushing lawmakers to incentivize agrivoltaics through rural development programs like REAP. Farmers with agrivoltaics have “sometimes been denied access [to USDA grants] because they farm an ‘industrial site,’” according to the trust’s memo. The House’s Farm Bill includes a call for outreach, education, and technical assistance relating to renewable energy integrated with crop or livestock production.
As the Farm Bill moves forward, Jordan is hopeful that lawmakers will listen to REAP-supporting constituents from across the political spectrum, both to encourage more agrivoltaics and to stem the damage of Trump’s policies more broadly.
“REAP has been a tremendously popular program for energy independence for a wide swath of farmers around the country,” Jordan said. “There are probably a lot of farmers — like some customers of ours — who have communicated to their legislators, ‘We like this program. We need to protect ourselves from the wide swings on power prices. This is a good step toward energy independence.’”
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Kari Lydersen is a contributing reporter at Canary Media who covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
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