USDA Invests in Addison County Rural Development

The goal of the 40 or more programs offered by the Rural Development Division is to provide funding for land, equipment, working capital, infrastructure and training or technical assistance, according to a summary of programs on the Vermont USDA Rural Development website.

The owners of Champlain Orchards, Bill Suhr and Andrea Scott, have used some of these programs to grow and improve their farm. Suhr told the Addison Indpendent that his farm has used loans and grants from the USDA to install an irrigation system and provide housing for employees. The farm will soon build greenhouses to extend the growing season and is working on converting a warehouse into a refrigeration unit. All of these improvements in Suhr’s business were funded in part by grants or loans from different divisions of the USDA, including the Rural Development program.

According to the Addison independent, Suhr described the relationship between the programs and his farm as a win-win in which his business gets support and in turn other local businesses benefit as well.

The Rural Development division of the USDA invested $8,261,382 in Addison County during the fiscal year 2012 according to its report on projects by county in Vermont. Of the 14 counties in Vermont, the USDA program invested the most in Chittenden County and the least in Essex County during 2012.

The program’s average investment per county in Vermont in 2012 was about $9,000,000, with investments in Addison County above the median investment per county. Ted Brady, the state director of the USDA Vermont and New Hampshire Rural Development program, told the Addison Independent that the program invests anywhere from $5 to $10 million in Addison County every year. The loans and grants go to farms, businesses and communities.

Last year in Addison County, 96 percent of the funding from the USDA Rural Development program went to housing programs. These programs included direct and guaranteed loans to families and housing repair grants and loans. Guaranteed housing loans constituted about 94 percent of the total funding form Addison County from the USDA program in 2012.

According to the programs summary on the USDA Rural Development website, the “Single Family Home Ownership Guaranteed Loans” are meant to assist moderate income families or individuals in buying their homes by guaranteeing loans made by private lenders. The loan targets populations in rural areas of 10,000 people or less and has a 30-year fixed rate.

The remaining 4 percent of the 2012 funding went to businesses in Addison County in the form of grants. In Middlebury, $11,824 went to an economic gardening program for four businesses in the form of a Rural Business Enterprise Grant. The goal of the grant was to provide local entrepreneurs with competitive intelligence on markets, customers and competitors as well as virtual business counseling and other online tools.

Another business grant went to Green Mountain Organic Creamery, LLC in North Ferrisburgh to be used as working capital to help make ice cream and chocolate milk. In Starksboro, a $14,592 Rural Energy for America Grant went to a farm to help with the purchase and installation of a solar roof that will replace 39% of the on-farm energy usage.

Just as the financial support for projects at Champlain Orchards has also helped businesses connected to the farm, the loans and grants provided by the USDA are directly helping businesses and families in Addison County while indirectly improving the community and local economy as a whole.

“It’s a smart investment on the behalf of the taxpayer — they may see quite the return on investment,” Suhr said.