USDA’s Continued Infrastructure Investments in Rural America

While the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) started investing in rural America through the Rural Electrification Administration, as needs and technology have changed, so too has the organization and mission. Today’s Rural Utility Service (RUS) now provides infrastructure funding for water and broadband as well as electricity. 

“Water, we do somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion and a half dollars’ worth of mostly loans, some grants every year,” said Andy Berke, Administrator, Rural Utilities Service, USDA on an October 9, 2024, Fiber for Breakfast webinar. “Those go almost exclusively to municipalities, because they’re the ones in the water business. These are for very small communities with tremendous amounts of needs to either upgrade their water system or often to fix what they have, including decentralized water, people who have septic system.”

Electrical investments remain the largest focus of RUS, with the agency loaning an average of about $5 billion per year to electrical cooperatives, but the portfolio has expanded under the Biden-Harris Administration to add forgivable loans and grants for clean energy projects with an announcement in September 2024 of more than $7.3 billion in financing for rural electric cooperatives, leveraging private investments of more than $29 billion.

“When we fund rural electrical cooperatives, they’re often building out fiber through their [electric] network, which has a lot of effects,” said Berke. “Could be for direct provision of broadband. It could be the middle mile piece for others, or to lease fiber to others. A lot of funding we see on the electric side, people are trying to figure out how that interacts with the telecom side as well. We see that interaction at play every day.”

To date, RUS has conducted four rounds of the Rural Development Broadband ReConnect Loan and Grant Program, designed to furnish loans and grants to provide funds for the construction, improvement, or acquisition of facilities and equipment needed to provide broadband services in eligible rural area, and expects to announce the first recipients of the fifth ReConnect in the fall of 2024. 

“In this administration, we’ve given out a little bit under $4 billion dollars [for broadband], that will connect about 627,000 people,” said Berke. “We are connecting people every day. We also have a smaller initiative called Community Connect, which is in the $5 million dollar [grant award] range. Those will also be coming sometime in the next few weeks.” 

Berke noted that investing in infrastructure is an ongoing process for the nation as new technologies come to the fore, not a one-and-done task. People in rural communities are depending on USDA RUS ReConnect funding to deliver reliable internet for their livelihoods and safety. Berke cited an example of a women in Decatur, Mississippi, who was going to lose her job as a remote worker managing a health care facility because her legacy copper connection was too unreliable.

“When she got high-speed internet through fiber at her home, it literally saved her job,” said Berke. “We did rural electrification 90 years ago, and we’re still doing billions of dollars worth of [infrastructure] work every year. These things don’t end. We still have customers who are in need, who are going to be in need who, whether it’s for precision ag[riculture] or other things, are going to need to keep moving forward. We fund the hardest to reach connections in our country.” 

Within that context, alternative technologies being considered by other programs providing “unreliable broadband,” such as low Earth orbit satellites or unlimited wireless don’t measure up. “If you read our regulations, if you read our mandate, which I know you have, you’ll see that if people have internet that is less than 25/3, if they have unreliable internet, we’re going to make sure that that they are reached by our funding,.. We’re going to keep making sure that people who need this [fiber] resource have it,” Berke stated.