REAP Program Updates

REAP Program Updates. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

During a press conference held on Monday officials gave an update on the Renewable Energy for America program commonly called REAP. Kelley Oehler, USDA, Branch Chief Energy Division discusses some of the updates to this very popular program.

OEHLER: We had published a notice in March of 2013. We got the notice to the Federal Register and wouldn’t you know it, probably the day or two after it got to the Federal Register the continuing resolution was approved by the government. And under the continuing resolution what basically happened is they basically funded the government for the remaining of the year and some of the things I’m going to get into talks about how exactly that impacted the Rural Energy for America Program.

This did wind up funding the REAP program.

OEHLER: We are still working through with budgets to identify the specific amounts but I can tell you it was a significant amount more than was originally announced. So what we did right away is we started the process to actually extend the application window because all along during the year we had basically identified that we were going to have about 20 or 22 million funds available for the program and with the extension notice that was published in May the windows for the grant programs got extended to May 31st of 2013.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.