Independent, 7 CFR Part 5001–compliant feasibility studies for USDA guaranteed loans across Vermont — written for the Agency reviewer and your lender's credit file.
A feasibility study submitted with a USDA guaranteed loan in Vermont is governed by 7 CFR Part 5001, the OneRD rule that consolidated Business & Industry, Community Facilities, Rural Energy for America and Water & Waste Disposal guarantees under one processing framework. The rule is not a suggestion about format: it tells the Agency reviewer what the report has to contain, and a report that omits a required component is commonly returned to the lender with comments before the credit is reached.
The study must be prepared by a qualified, independent third party with no financial interest in whether the loan closes, and the data behind it has to be current. We prepare each Vermont engagement against those five headings from the first day, so nothing is left for the lender or the Agency to reconstruct. The full framework is set out on our USDA feasibility study consultants page.
Dairy and artisan cheese, maple production, craft beverage and food manufacturing, forest products, rural health centers and senior living, water and waste systems, and digesters and REAP solar.
Program mix matters to the study because the analytical emphasis shifts with it. A B&I credit turns on market capture and coverage; a Community Facilities project turns on the service area and the sponsor's revenue base; a REAP project turns on the energy production or savings and the contracts behind them. We scope the work to the program you are actually applying under, not to a generic template.
Essentially the entire state qualifies under USDA thresholds. That pattern is a starting point, not a determination: eligibility is decided by the Agency against its own mapped thresholds — the official USDA property eligibility site is the authority. We recommend confirming the site before a study is commissioned, because a feasibility study cannot cure an ineligible location.
USDA Rural Development reviews Vermont guaranteed-loan files through its state office in Concord, New Hampshire. Vermont is served together with New Hampshire from the Concord office. Guaranteed-loan files are typically packaged by the lender and reviewed at that office, which is why the report has to answer the reviewer's questions in the reviewer's order. Contact details for the state office are published on the Agency's own contacts page.
We build the demand case from data that can be cited and checked: federal series from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDA and the Energy Information Administration; Vermont-published sources including transportation counts, licensure and permit records and state agency filings; and primary work — operator interviews, competitor inspection and site visits — where the published data stops. Every material number in the projections traces to a source in the report.
Standard delivery is 10 to 15 business days from a complete data room, the fee is fixed and quoted in advance, and it is never contingent on the finding. If the evidence does not support the project as proposed, the report says so and identifies the conditions under which it would — which is the only version of the document a USDA reviewer can actually rely on.