Might your plug-in hybrid car of the future one day run on wind power? If so, the farmers of the Midwest might be the “oil sheiks” of the new era - or, at least, make some money off it.
Thousands of dollars in a guaranteed annual harvest come with each windmill placed on a farmer’s land, and that lure has gone a long way toward interrupting the horizontal sameness of vast corn and bean fields. For generations the tallest structures in the agricultural Midwest have been grain elevators, but the rapid growth of the wind-power industry is altering the landscape in states such as Iowa, which has about 960 turbines, and Minnesota, which has about 860 turbines, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group.
Iowa and Minnesota rank third and fifth, respectively, in annual electrical power generated by wind (Illinois ranks 11th), and a utility executive in Detroit said he envisions the tip of Michigan’s Thumb planted with more than 1,000 wind turbines.
“Agricultural land and wind play together very well,” said Trevor Lauer, vice president of retail marketing for DTE Energy Co. Among the companies to watch: TPI Composites, which recently announced it will open a factory in Newton, Iowa, to build wind turbine blades. TPI is the fifth turbine parts manufacturer to set up operations in Iowa in the past two years, driven by a soaring national demand for turbines.
