They Farm out the Wind, but They Should Farm It Themselves

   Are farmers perhaps sitting on a goldmine, and they don't even realize it? Wind potential in just three states -- Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota -- would satisfy the electricity needs for all of America. 

   Don't let it go unnoticed by you that a lot of the wind farms could be -- and would be -- located on agriculture land. As is, farmers are paid for hosting wind farms, getting, say, 2-4 percent of gross incomes. The question is, why take just a piece of the pie when you can have the whole thing? 

   Why not the farmers band together in county-wide cooperatives and create their own power companies? Why not they, instead of just hosting energy producers, become the energy producers, themselves?

   Yes,  there is the factor that they know nothing about the industry. But, you hire people to fill that niche. When you set up your company, you bring in the wind engineers needed to staff and head it. You are the CEO, and they are the COO. A lot of times, this would translate into the farmers hiring the very same companies that are now doing the job anyway -- except the farmers would now be the bosses.

   There's a lot of gold in them-there hills. Where there's a wind farm, there's a windfall. They are farming out the wind, but instead the farmers should be farming the wind themselves.

(Index -- Climate change info)