Corn stoves produce clean heat and a nice aroma. And what's left over goes straight back to the garden.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said rural broadband funding is expected to emerge as a big winner in the federal stimulus package. “There’s going to be plenty in there for rural broadband,” Harkin said. “We just have to make sure we get it out.”

In a conference call with The Daily Yonder and other media, Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, estimated that $9 billion could go to broadband extension, much of it in rural areas. That's how much is included is included in the Senate version of the stimulus bill. The House bill, which now moves to the U.S. Senate, includes $6 billion in funding to stimulate broadband deployment across the U.S.

Harkin also said on the conference call that E85 ethanol should get a boost as well from this new legislation. There are expected to be tax incentives in the stimulus package for filling stations to put in more blender pumps. This would widen the market for the biofuel. The senator said he plans to offer amendments for more funding of biofuels and biomass in programs already established under the Farm Bill. “We’ll try to do more in that area,” Harkin said.

— Douglas Burns

Fast Company magazine — which is more Silicon Valley than Great Plains — has published a story headlined "Can Wind Power a Rural Renaissance?" Reporter Melanie Warner counts up the year leases paid to ranchers near Sweetwater, Texas, by wind companies and finds that the turbines give "the town the sort of solid economic development American rural communities desperately need."

Warner counts the benefits. The turbines pay local property taxes, adding $23.7 million to the budgets of the county's school districts. (Each is now building a new facility.) The turbines are so big, they have to be pieced together and serviced locally, jobs that pay up to $20 or $30 an hour. And then there are the leases. One rancher had 13 turbines on his land and collected $52,000 a year.

But, she warns, "If wind is going to power a rural renaissance, policy makers in Washington must put in place a strategy to fund the building of new electricity transmission lines that will connect more rural areas to big population centers where most energy is consumed." The cost of building these lines could top $60 billion.

There's been speculation that rural communities could be the foundation of the country's renewable energy future. Not all of this is talk, it turns out. Monday, the ethanol producer Poet announced that it has opened a pilot plant to produce low-carbon fuel made from crop residue, not corn. This is the nation's first cellulosic ethanol plant and it's in South Dakota. Poet hopes to open a commercial-sized version by 2011 in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

Kate Galbraith writes in the New York Times that other cellulosic plants "are also racing to start construction and, in a few cases, start operating." Cellulosic ethanol producers use corn cobs, switchgrass, sugar cane scraps (above) or other woody materials as feed stock instead of corn. Last week the Secretary of Agriculture told reporters that a cellulosic company backed by Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, would likely get a loan guarantee from the government. Range Fuels is building a plant in Georgia.

The corn-based ethanol plants are still in trouble, as corn prices have risen and the price for gas has dropped. Innovation taking place in rural communities, however, has pushed the industry in another direction.