By Jonathan Adelstein, Administrator-USDA Rural Utilities
Service If you lived in a rural area 75 years ago, you probably
didn’t have electricity. Water for livestock, cooking, cleaning
and bathing had to be hand pumped from a well. Farmers risked
milk spoilage in the summer, and people often got sick from lack
of refrigeration of their food. On May 11, 1935, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order to create the
Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to bring power to
rural areas. It was a resounding success. Nothing before or
since has transformed rural America like the REA. Today’s Rural
Utilities Service (RUS), part of the USDA Rural Development
mission area, continues the work of REA. Just this week, four
former REA and RUS administrators gathered in USDA’s radio
studio, reflecting on their roles from 1993 to the present.
Their observations will soon be available via podcast. Rural
Development, through RUS, is aggressively building a program to
finance renewable energy, and rural Ame