Hampstead, Maryland

Lane grows vegetables, herbs and flowers for local farm stands and restaurants. In the summer of 2024, she was approved for $30,000 in funding, through the federal Department of Agriculture, to cover about half the cost of installing solar panels on a portion of her 15-acre property. Her solar project was already in the works when the USDA froze funding of the program Lane was counting on.

That’s because the funds came from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden Administration’s omnibus clean-energy bill. On January 20th, the day of President Trump’s inauguration, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a government-wide order to “”immediately pause the disbursement” of all IRA funds. Despite a subsequent statement insisting that subsidies for farmers and small businesses would be exempt from the order, Lane’s grant remained in limbo a month and a half later.

“We are American farmers,” Lane told the Baltimore Banner, “and so we are the people that when we hear ‘America first’…, that message is supposed to be for us.”

Date Posted: 3/10/25