Farmers in the U.S. operate on the thinnest of margins, and some have looked to renewable energy as a way to cut costs on electricity. But that has gotten a lot harder since Donald Trump's return to the White House. Within the first year of Trump's return, two federal programs critical to the growth of solar energy production have been rolled back. Those programs are the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Energy for America Program and the clean energy tax credit. The Associated Press and Grist analyzed data on both commercial-scale solar projects and small-scale rural energy development. The news organizations found that the USDA hasn’t awarded a single dollar in rural energy grants or loan guarantees since September.