By Ryan Hanrahan
Agri-Pulse’s Noah Wicks and Philip Brasher reported that “Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Monday that the department would be cutting off subsidies for solar power projects on U.S. farmland, asserting that they are making it harder for producers to afford acreage.”
“Neither Rollins, who was speaking in Tennessee, nor the department provided any guidance on USDA’s plans. But a USDA-Rural Development memo obtained by Agri-Pulse indicated that solar and wind projects would be made ineligible for the Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan program and that the Rural Energy for America Program guaranteed loans and grants would be restricted to small-scale projects,” Wicks and Brasher reported. “Solar projects containing Chinese components also would be ineligible for REAP, as would projects on ‘certified cropland,’ as defined by the Farm Service Agency.”
“The memo to national and state RD staff cites a July 7 executive order signed by President Donald Trump and has an expiration date of Aug. 31, 2026,” Wicks and Brasher reported. “‘[The] Department of Agriculture is taking bold action to keep prime farmland in production by eliminating all USDA programs that use your taxpayer dollars to subsidize solar panels on productive farmland,’ Rollins said in her remarks in Lebanon, Tennessee, on Monday.”
Source : illinois.edu