Some very depressed parts of the U.S. farm belt are all a-quiver about the possibility of ethanol being their economic saviour.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

THE quilt of winter brown that covers the high plateau makes this area look particularly depressing on a February afternoon. But the still-life can be deceptive.

Later this year, a Canadian company, Iogen, will announce whether Idaho will get what could be the first large-scale commercial plant in the United States to produce fuel from straw. Not ethanol made from corn, as refineries in more than a hundred mostly small towns are now doing, but ethanol made from the native prairie grass, corn stalks, field waste and wood chips.

That would follow an announcement just last month that a company whose investors include Bill Gates plans to open a corn-based ethanol plant here in Burley — the latest in a boom of biorefineries that are being planted in some of the most depressed areas of the United States.

What is happening here is a vision that many in rural America see as their salvation: high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain, and a “grass station” in every town. It may be a chimera. It may drain precious water from the arid plains and produce less energy that it uses.

But it has the undeniable power of an idea in ascendancy.

In part this is because the ethanol economy, as it grows before our eyes, is looking less like a taxpayer-financed Big Plan dominated by a single agribusiness corporation and more like something that might bring fresh jobs and local control back to farm country.

The vision of a decentralized ethanol industry is taking shape, albeit an industry aided by tax breaks and government mandates. There are now 113 American ethanol plants and an additional 77 under construction, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the industry trade group. Most of them are right in the middle of the Farm Belt, in counties that have been losing people since the Depression.

Archer Daniels Midland, once the dominant force, is less of a player, controlling about 22 percent of the market. But roughly 40 percent of the new biorefineries are locally owned, representing the sweat and capital of farmers, retired schoolteachers and small-town bankers.

With the kind of Wall Street and venture capital money now sniffing around the farm, this could change in the blink of a pig’s eye. But for now, in barren counties with shuttered stores on Main Street, people see a renaissance. They see a biorefinery every 50 miles or so, turning out American fuel for American drivers from American crops. And, once the technology moves from corn to cellulose (as field waste is called), they see the essential stuffing of the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz providing a sustainable economy that also offers some answers for global warming.