With high corn prices and payments for wind farms, renewable energy is proving to be profitable for my family and American farmers. Displeasure with prices, as well as the environmental and diplomatic problems surrounding oil, could make farmers the energy tycoons of the future and we’re doing it with renewable practices that decrease the strain on the earth.

Yet, environmentalists must hear the word energy and come crawling out of the woodwork. Their arguments are indicative of their inability to think rationally about our energy future. Ethanol uses too much energy to get from seed to gas tank and puts too much land into crop production. Wind towers alter the flight patterns of birds and bats and affect the view of the sunset they get from their environmentally-friendly country home.

Only when we’re able to harness and use the outpouring of “smug” that these environmentalists release will we have an agreeable solution. Until then, farmers will continue to be the brunt of criticism from activists as they have been for years.

I enjoy watching the environmental hypocrisy on campus. The same activists who criticize herbicides and genetically modified crops are vegetarians who want America to provide food aid for the rest of the world.

Those who argue against crop and pasture land use do so while living in their pavement paradise that is urban America, and none understand the advances in environmental practices that agriculturalists continue to make.

A brief walk around farms of today and these practices become apparent. We have acres of quail strips and tree plantings. Many of today’s tillage practices are designed to limit surface erosion and leave winter animal cover. In case herbicide and pesticide use causes problems, we’ve planted riparian buffer strips to catch nitrates and today’s hybrids are producing higher yields meaning more crops off of less land.

Now we have the opportunity as agriculturalists to provide renewable energy from the soil and provide acreage for wind generated power. Both are necessary because of limits placed on fuel refineries and nuclear power production by environmentalists and oil profiteers. But, environmentalists are again playing right into the oil companies’ pockets by finding new reasons for resisting alternative energy. Resistance will result in maintaining the status quo, which is reliance on foreign fossil fuels.

Documentaries and news programs constantly remind us of a need to reduce our energy dependence on foreign oil yet now deplore our most practical energy alternatives. The steam from nuclear power plants can be used in ethanol production but the outside chance of a nuclear leak is too big of risk to take. Wind energy can reduce the number of coal-burning power plants but we wouldn’t want to injure a few bats now, would we?

I’ve lost faith in productive dialogue and hope now that our economy speaks more loudly than our opponents. High corn prices and land-use payments for wind power seem to be the first step in practical implementation of energy alternatives.

Economics will change the world more quickly than some over-hyped rock concert like Live Earth and I’ll be listening to the cha-ching of the cash register rather than the whiny vocals of some punk rock band.