News from rural America.

Limited access to community resources negatively impacts rural Americans' health, a successful solar company is the result of a Georgia woman's determination to stay close to her ailing grandfather and Connecticut is looking for more ways to cut methane emissions.

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Limited access to parks and other community assets contributes to health issues in rural America.

Daily Yonder data reporter Sarah Mallott says a nonpartisan county health ranking reveals where folks are struggling.

Rural counties make up 17 of the top 20 most unhealthy counties.

Northern counties, urban and rural, are the least healthy.

But in every state, except Nebraska and Maryland, rural areas have worse health outcomes than cities and suburbs.

New England has some of the healthiest counties.

Only 20 percent of nonmetropolitan counties are in the healthiest group of counties, even though they make up about 62 percent of all counties in the data set.

Mallott says it looks like the difference may come from rural residents not participating in local activities or lacking the community resources that support health.

Which is driven partly by unequal access to civic infrastructure like broadband internet access and parks and other meeting places.

New investment in clean energy is driving economic growth in Georgia.

Ilana Newman explains.

When Olivia Amiette graduated from college, she needed to make a living while staying close to her ailing grandfather.

That led to a solar consulting business in Cleveland, Georgia, population 3,500.

Four years later, she attributes her business' success to the clean energy tax credits in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

If it wasn't for that, I would probably say 90 percent of our clients wouldn't make that move to get solar.

Since the law was signed two years ago, its investments have helped Georgia alone add more than 17,000 clean energy jobs.

And Amiette started the Solar Knowledge Institute, a workforce development program to prepare new employees for solar energy careers.

I want to make sure that people of all backgrounds have access to high paying jobs.

Solar is a great field for that.

I'm Ilana Newman.

Connecticut and the nation are working to reduce methane emissions.

And that means taking a closer look at livestock production, which nationwide is a top source of greenhouse gases.

Fernanda Ferrada with the Clean Air Task Force wants to see farmers adopt new practices that turn animal waste into biogas and biomethane.

You can capture all that gas, that biogas that's being produced, which is methane, mixed with other things.

And then you can either use that biogas as a source of heat for your own operations.

Some farmers do that.

A federal report shows American agriculture reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 2 percent from 2021 to 2022, the largest decrease of any economic sector.

It was primarily due to voluntary conservation efforts and market-based incentives.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.