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USDA Funding to Ease Application Process for Clean Energy Projects

By Terri Dee

Indiana will soon get a dedicated person to help farmers, ranchers and other landowners apply for federal grants to help fight pollution and climate change.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would hire 40 individuals as Climate Change Fellows. They will be assigned to Indiana and other states to help people apply for the Rural Energy for America Program, which has $2 billion in funding for clean-energy projects.

Anthony Kirkland, director of business and cooperative programs at the USDA's Rural Development office in Indianapolis, said Indiana's Fellow will have specific tasks.

"Helping to provide guidance to the grant recipient, or to the grant writer," Kirkland outlined. "They'll also be helping with evaluating the process of an application and helping with monitoring, making recommendations, providing advice to the coordinator."

USDA officials said they saw a need to hire the Climate Change Fellows after seeing an increase in applications. Kirkland noted in Indiana, just one person is processing more than 60. The program is part of President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

The funding is expected to help transform rural power production, with new energy sources through net metering and power purchase agreements.

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Democratizing Gene Editing - Pairwise’s Vision for the Future of Agriculture

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Pairwise has built its business around an idea that runs counter to how many companies approach innovation: make transformative technology easier to access.

In this Seed World interview, CEO Tom Adams discusses why broader access to gene editing could speed crop improvement, expand innovation opportunities and help agriculture address emerging challenges. He explains why Pairwise believes no single company can solve all of agriculture's problems alone—and why making advanced breeding technologies available to more organizations could accelerate progress across the industry.

The conversation explores how consumer trust influences technology adoption, why innovations like pitless cherries and seedless blackberries matter beyond convenience, and how future crop improvements could help address labor shortages, automation, harvest efficiency and other production challenges. Adams also shares his perspective on what the industry may be underestimating about the next wave of gene editing innovation.

Watch the full interview to hear why Pairwise believes agriculture is approaching an important inflection point for gene editing, and why the pace of innovation over the next decade could surprise the industry.

Topics Covered:

o Democratizing agricultural innovation

o Consumer trust and technology adoption

o The business case for sharing innovation

o Expanding innovation beyond major crops

o Next-generation breeding technologies