USDA Rural Development will invest nearly $25 billion in loans and grants across roughly 90 programs in fiscal year 2026, newly confirmed Undersecretary Glen Smith told Agri-Pulse founder Sara Wyant in a wide-ranging interview. The figure covers funding for hospitals, wastewater systems, fertilizer plants, rural housing and other infrastructure across rural America.

Smith, an Iowa farmer and former Farm Credit Administration board member, marked his fifth week on the job by logging more than half his days on the road. "My best qualification for the job, and what I felt was my best qualification for the Farm Credit Administration, is a lifetime of being in rural America and in agriculture," he said.

What does the $25 billion buy in small-town infrastructure?

Rural Development's portfolio leans heavily on water and sewer projects that local tax bases cannot finance alone. "Perhaps $25-$50 million for maybe a community of 500 or 1,200 people," Smith said. "There's absolutely no way that tax base will support those types of expenditures." Grants often pair with loans to stretch repayment across the life of the asset, a model Smith said makes the deals feasible where pure debt would not.

The undersecretary framed rural vitality in blunt population terms: "I just can't imagine an environment someday where there's a half a dozen farmers per county or per township." He argued that schools, churches and Main Street businesses underwrite farm operations, not the other way around.

How is value-added agriculture translating to the ground?

Smith highlighted a new identity-preserved oat milling plant in southern Minnesota drawing domestic oats from about 40,000 acres, plus a local meat processor whose customers ship "direct from the feedlot to the consumer plate." Rural Development paired a grant and loan to expand the processor's cooling capacity.

"If a farmer has $1 in his pocket, there's a good chance over time that 90 cents will be spent in the local community," Smith said, citing ethanol's track record of pumping billions into rural economies. Value-Added Producer Grants over the past four years have ranged from under $10,000 to nearly $1.5 million, with additional dollars flowing through the Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion program.

Why is small-scale beef processing in focus?

Smith pointed to plant closures among the Big Four packers as one driver. He said Rural Development is studying whether idled facilities can return to service. "They have to be financially viable, but I think there's a lot of opportunity there."

The U.S. cattle herd sits at record lows, a contraction Smith attributed partly to aging owners exiting on favorable terms. The Farm Service Agency has a new financing vehicle aimed at young, beginning and small farmers — a category Smith championed at the Farm Credit Administration. "The cycle will return," he said. "Someday, we're going to need that killing capacity back again. The challenge is being financially viable in the interim." Small plants he has visited tend to be family operations running 50 years or longer, often navigating generational handoffs.

What is the FIELDS fertilizer program delivering?

Applications for the Fertilizer Investment & Expansion for Long-term Domestic Supply (FIELDS) program closed in [month unavailable in source], with $500 million allocated against more than $3 billion in requests. "Obviously, a huge need there and I'd like to see the ability to expand on it again," Smith said. He tied the push to directives from the executive order and to the priorities of the Trump-Vance administration and Secretary Brooke Rollins, framing domestic nitrogen, phosphorus and potash capacity as a national-security parallel to domestic energy.

How is the IT backbone being rebuilt?

Rural Development is migrating off a legacy system that dates to 1968. The Rural Business-Cooperative Service is the first of three mission areas moving to the new platform. "Once we get onto that platform, we'll see more efficiency with employee delivery, but also to the ultimate stakeholder and the applicants," Smith said. He expects shorter wait times once the rollout completes.

Where does broadband fit in the 2026 agenda?

Smith named broadband as his second priority alongside value-added agriculture. "The first question I ask beyond infrastructure is: Do you have access to high-speed internet?" he said. He tied connectivity to population retention, precision-agriculture equipment and the post-COVID Census signals of urban-to-rural migration. Rural Development's water and broadband investments, he argued, are "the catalyst for those communities to maintain their population, to continue to be viable and to grow."

Whether the $25 billion in fiscal 2026 deployments keeps pace with rural demand — particularly the $3 billion in unfunded FIELDS requests — will depend on congressional appropriations and the execution of a 1968-era IT migration now underway.