Rural Electrification Administration: Lantern-Lit Farms to ReConnect

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In 1934 fewer than 11% of U.S. farms had electricity, while nearly 90% of farms in France and Germany were electrified. American farmers milked cows by kerosene lantern, hand pumped water for livestock and had no refrigeration. Private utilities built on density, where 50 or 100 customers shared a mile of wire in a city, refused to string lines to rural areas with two or three farms per mile. On May 11, 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7037 creating the Rural Electrification Administration as part of the New Deal, and the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 backed it with federal loans made directly to rural organizations rather than to the big utilities.

The cooperative model moved fast. By 1939, 288,000 households drew power from rural electric cooperatives, by 1942 nearly half of U.S. farms were electrified, and by 1952 almost all of them were. In 1949 Congress expanded the agency to fund rural telephone cooperatives, and the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 folded the REA into the Rural Utilities Service under USDA Rural Development. The episode follows that agency into water systems, electric grid upgrades, telecommunications and the 2023 ReConnect broadband push, drawing a direct line from 1930s power lines to modern internet access.

• Local co-op members often supplied the labor themselves, digging pole holes and clearing brush to keep loan costs down.
• By 1937, hundreds of municipal power utilities had appeared across the country.
• The RUS water and environmental programs serve communities of 10,000 people or fewer, about 7,200 of them.
• The agency assists 890 rural electric utilities and around 800 telecom utilities, in 47 states plus Puerto Rico, Guam, the Marshall Islands and other territories.
• The 2023 ReConnect program committed nearly $700 million to bring broadband to remote areas.