Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) rules and applications for 2009 are now available.

This USDA program offers grant and loan funds to qualifying small rural businesses, farmers and ranchers who seek cost sharing up to 75 percent of the cost for renewable energy generating systems or for energy efficiency improvements. Detailed information can be found at http://www.access.gpo.gov (click on the "Rural Business-Cooperative Service" link).

Interested applicants should consider the following:

• Projects must be located in a rural area.
• REAP grants and guarantees may be used individually or in combination. Together they may finance up to 75% of a project's cost.
• Grants can finance up to 25% of project cost, not to exceed $500,000 for renewables, $250,000 for efficiency.
• Applications ≤ $20,000 are strongly preferred.
• New "REAP-Feasibility Study" grants will be available to pay 25% of the cost (up to $50,000) of obtaining renewable energy feasibility studies.
• The deadline for REAP applications is July 31, 2009.

Green Lease Teleconference

JSR Attorney Michelle Neumann will be a speaking about Green Leases in an upcoming teleconference. The live 90-minute telephone conference with interactive Q&A is on Thursday, July 9, 10:00am-11:30am PST.

The seminar will explain the common provisions and potential legal pitfalls in leases requiring environmentally friendly compliance by landlords and tenants and recommend best practices for negotiating and crafting green leases.

For more information visit our website or click here for additional details.

Because Plain Old Farming Isn’t Green Enough

In early 2007, Scientific Certification Systems (“SCS”) under took the task of creating a National Sustainable Agricultural Practice Standard. The drafting process remains ongoing as SCS weighs the costs and benefits of existing sustainable agriculture programs along with stakeholder input, in their effort to create a uniformly applicable, comprehensive statement of best practices for achieving and maintaining sustainability in the agricultural industry (think LEED for farmers).

SCS is developing the standard through the process of the American National Standards Institute (“ANSI”). Recently, SCS entered into a MOU with the Leonardo Academy, and ANSI-accredited standards development organization, ensuring that ownership of the copyright for the finished standard will be transferred to a charitable non-profit.

Further information about the standard, including how to participate in its creation can be found here and here.

Federal Financial Assistance is Available to Support Organic Farming: Apply by May 29, 2009

The Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (“Department”) administers the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 ("Farm Bill"). The Farm Bill includes a voluntary conservation program for farmers and ranchers which promotes agricultural production and environmental quality as compatible national goals. To accomplish these goals the Department has implemented the Environmental Quality Incentives Program ("EQIP"). The program provides financial assistance to owners of land in agricultural production or persons engaged in livestock or agricultural production on eligible land to implement conservation practices.

On May 5, 2009 the Department announced availability of $50 million through EQIP to encourage more organic agriculture production. Farmers have three weeks to apply for funds to help pay the cost of converting to organic production. Registration runs from May 11-29, 2009. Farmers can receive a maximum of $20,000 a year per farm in organic transition funding and up to $80,000 per farm in six years. The following practices are eligible for support: conservation crop rotation; cover crop; nutrient management; pest management; prescribed grazing; and forage harvest management.

Two separate National Screening Tools are available to applicants (one for producers transitioning for the first time and one for certified organic producers transitioning additional land or adding additional conservation practices).

Information about how to apply for assistance through EQIP is available online. Click on the State where the property that you are interested in enrolling in EQIP is located. This will take you to that State's Programs home page, which will link to that State's EQIP page. Each State's EQIP page includes application ranking criteria, priority resource concerns, lists of eligible practices, payment rates, information about where you can submit applications, eligibility requirements and other program requirements.

Applications for the EQIP program (PDF, 33KB) are accepted on a continuous basis, however, you must follow the above-referenced application “cut-off” dates for evaluation and ranking of eligible applications.