Duane Adams describes his Cosmos, Minnesota, location as “out at the western end of a railroad and at the top of the river.” But he offers a more expansive view of the world than his zip code would indicate.

After growing up on a dairy farm in Minnesota, Duane Adams joined the Peace Corps as an agricultural development specialist in Pakistan. Back in the United States he worked as a crop protection sales representative before joining his brother on their corn and soybean farm near Cosmos.

“I came back to farming because I thought the grass was greener here, but just as I returned in the mid ’80s, it got browner. Thankfully, things did improve after a while,” he recalls.

Now, Adams is putting his experience and perspective to good use serving as chairman of the NCGA Ethanol Committee and as a shareholder in the Minnesota Energy ethanol plant at Buffalo Lake. His enthusiasm for ethanol is influenced by his view from Cosmos and his experience in real-world agricultural economics.

“Export markets are important, but we can’t export our way to prosperity. When the corn is shipped out of here, we receive the lowest price in the distribution chain. Others add value down the line for extra profit,” Adams points out.

That’s why he is working with Congress to pass an energy bill that defines a renewable fuels standard that could grow ethanol production to more than 5 billion gallons per year in a decade. Increased ethanol production will create economic incentives for expanding the ethanol industry and encourage smaller producers to invest in the future of renewable fuels.

“Ethanol production gives growers the power to create value for our crop rather than shipping it out as a commodity by barge and rail,” Adams says. “Every dollar spent developing and supporting ethanol production comes back to the community in the form of a stronger tax base, jobs and markets for local growers’ crops.”

A renewable fuels standard also provides a market-based incentive for increased production, reduced government spending on agriculture and reduced U.S. dependence on foreign oil. “And we can do this while protecting the environment with a cleaner-burning fuel,” Adams adds.

Not content to focus on near-term opportunity, Adams has built a miniature working model of an ethanol-powered hydrogen fuel cell. The same sort of cell that, on a much larger scale, is viewed as the potential automobile power source of the future. Adams’ model is used at trade shows to demonstrate the long-range potential of ethanol.

So while Adams calls home “the western end of a railroad and at the top of a river,” he takes a global view from the perspective of his small Minnesota town. “No other initiative offers more promise for adding value to the local corn crop than ethanol.”