Jim Nichols calls himself a corn and wind farmer.

"I grow two crops: fuel for your car—ethanol—and electricity for your home. I believe the future for farming is energy,” he says.

A former Minnesota agriculture commissioner, Nichols farms 630 acres near Lake Benton, Minn., on the Buffalo Ridge in the southwestern part of the state. This is where 300 or so wind turbines turn the steady breeze into electricity and send it on to Minneapolis/St. Paul and other more populated areas. Nichols and his brother built a family-owned $11⁄2 million 1.5-megawatt wind turbine five years ago and have enjoyed its steady income.

"It's my best crop. You don't have to plant it, you don't worry about weather or weeds or bugs, and it harvests itself,” Nichols says.

Owning wind turbines allows farmers, ranchers and community investors to reap the wind's full rewards. However, most turbines now are owned by large corporations that lease locations from landowners. In the Lake Benton area, only eight wind turbines are locally owned, Nichols says.

Nichols hopes a group of 150 local investors (mostly farmers) called Community Wind North gets to build 12 2.5-megawatt wind turbines on Buffalo Ridge. So far, they've found themselves in a bureaucratic tangle instead. High-voltage electrical transmission lines out of the area are full. Dealing with the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, a government agency controlling access to the transmission lines, is expensive. Just getting a new turbine these days requires a long wait.

Turbines are manufactured by European companies, and the high-value Euro versus the dollar makes turbines costly. Subsidiaries of foreign corporations own many of the wind turbines in the U.S., thanks to a production tax credit law that makes it difficult for small independent wind producers to compete, Nichols says. Community Wind North opted to partner with California-based Edison Mission Energy, which can take advantage of the production tax credit.

Nichols' frustration is just one example of how tough it is for landowners to get new wind projects going. Even as the Barack Obama administration touts renewables as a long-term answer to the nation's energy needs, it is increasingly apparent that the wind industry has to leap tall hurdles before many farmers and ranchers see significant income from it.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) set a goal of 20% of the nation's electricity coming from wind energy by 2030. Right now, wind meets only 1.9% of the nation's electricity needs. Growth potential is huge, but huge change must come along with it.

A report by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory says it is critical for the nation to invest in trans-mission lines to carry the electricity to urban centers, along with improvements in turbine performance and the manufacturing supply chain, reduction in wind capital costs and successfully dealing with siting issues.

"The 20% wind scenario is not likely to be realized in a business-as-usual future,” the report says.

Business winds. Unfortunately for the future of wind, the business-as-usual scenario remains all too common. For just one example, concerns about sage grouse this year stopped wind projects in Wyoming. Sage grouse is not on the endangered species list. Eleven Western states have sage grouse habitat, largely on Bureau of Land Management land. Yet, in light of this development, it is now critical to site wind projects away from sage grouse.

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