Picture an idyllic scene: a pasture full of cows contentedly munching on green grass, or chewing their cuds as they drowse–at the foot of a 100-foot tall wind turbine.

It’s a scene becoming increasingly prevalent along the back roads of America’s rural landscape, as renewable alternative energy technology begins to revitalize the heartland.

Wind and biofuel–the extraction of alternative energy from plants, animal waste, and landfills–technologies are bringing new hope to rural economies which have been devastated from decades of declining crop revenues. So says the September 2006 WatchWorld Institute report on American Energy.

The alternative energy industry at the forefront of this rural Renaissance is ethanol and biodiesel production. The Renewable Fuels Association estimates that in 2005, the growing ethanol industry produced 154,000 jobs and paid $5.7 billion dollars to its workers, with an additional $3.5 billion in taxes going to the Federal, state, and local coffers.

The alternative energy ethanol jobs are in the construction, operation, and maintenance of plants, but the industry also offers farmers an income boost by giving them a market for the high-cellulose residue of their crops, and letting them make money from marginal land now planted in fast-growing, alternative energy supplying switchgrass.

Farmers now benefit from being paid to produce the crops they feed to their animals, and they can also get biodiesel from their local processing plants to fuel their farm machinery. So local money is being spent locally.

Farmers with land suitable to capture alternative energy wind power can make money even in times of crop failure. They can lease their land as wind turbine farms, earning them between $1000 and $4000 a year per turbine. And they can still use the land beneath the turbines for planting crops or grazing.

Alternative energy from solar power is playing its part as well. Solar panel equipped farms can generate electricity to provide heat and light, as well as to drive their automated pumps and irrigation lines.

The movement to use the renewable alternative energy industry to restore stability to America’s rural economy is slowly, but surely, gathering wind, solar, and biofuel-driven steam.