One of the slickest booklets that I 've seen for quite a while came across my desk the other day. The full color, beautifully photographed publicity piece was titled- The American Farm - Harnessing the Sun to Fuel the World. It was produced by an advertising agency for the United States Department of Energy with support from several large corporations and the Soil Conservation Service.

The publication effectively establishes a vision of the day when many American farmers will produce perennial crops such as switchgrass and fast growing trees for harvest as "energy crops." This quote from the inside cover establishes the idea of the brochure. "Farmers work hard to feed the nation. With good conservation practices, there's plenty of land left over to grow energy crops- enough to replace some of the coal and oil that the nation uses. Home grown solar energy is going to provide more than plentiful food, feed and fiber. The new solar energy harvest will provide an abundant source of fuels, electricity, and chemicals".

"Government officials, utilities, biofuel companies, farmers and foresters are already thinking about how to create large regional energy networks based on energy crops. They want tomorrows energy harvest to be bigger and more profitable than it is today, while fully sustaining our resources."

Growing crops for energy will bring energy industries into rural areas. Transporting energy crops is expensive. Power plants and fuel companies will be within 50 miles of the farms that grow the energy crops. New energy industries will create jobs and bring money back to rural America.

The brochure suggests that the basic research has been completed for building sophisticated conversion factories for energy crops. These factories would produce products such as ethanol and biocrude oil which could be converted to make fuels, plastics and adhesives

The slick brochure is probably an indication that these ideas are more of a public relations campaign for the Energy Department rather than something that will happen soon. If energy crop conversion factories do become a reality I expect this area of the Country would offer a good location. In Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin the land, equipment and experience is available to grow and harvest large quantities of forage crops and there are several large manufacturing and population centers within 150 miles.

So there you have it. A proposal to protect land resources and revitalize rural America. How about that for an economic development project?

This article was dated October 3, 1994 and is part of a larger collection of seasonal essays called Twenty Years of Living with the land.

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