Iowa farmer brings down debt with help from wind turbines — Transcript

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1. 0:00well this is not expected to be a good
2. 0:02year on the farm the US Department of
3. 0:04Agriculture is forecasting a 25%
4. 0:06downturn in farm profits but some
5. 0:08farmers in Iowa have put something new
6. 0:10on the ground to hopefully offset some
7. 0:12of those losses or Janet Shaman has a
8. 0:15look at their powerful
9. 0:18idea for a h this is a window of
10. 0:22opportunity I have my very own wind
11. 0:24direction machine out there in fact she
12. 0:26has three wind turbines on her 160 Acre
13. 0:29Farm in central Iowa as Farmers ready
14. 0:33their fields there's a new cash crop
15. 0:35working the land year
16. 0:37round wind turbines how much money do
17. 0:40the turbines bring in each year my
18. 0:42payment is
19. 0:44$335,000 this year and it keeps going up
20. 0:47with
21. 0:48inflation that's made the difference
22. 0:50between keeping the family farm and
23. 0:51losing it for struggling Farmers as
24. 0:54agriculture becomes more unstable due to
25. 0:56climate change come many days is it
26. 0:58windy out here practically every day I
27. 1:01would say when her husband Wallace died
28. 1:04a decade ago Farm debts lived on how
29. 1:07much debt did you have I had
30. 1:09$350,000 and now you have 67 how did you
31. 1:13get that paid off with my wintering
32. 1:15money each turbine takes up less than an
33. 1:18acre leaving plenty of farmable land two
34. 1:21decades ago there were only a few
35. 1:22hundred wind turbines in Iowa now there
36. 1:25are more than 6,000 in this state and
37. 1:27they turn out about 60% of the state
38. 1:30energy us wind energy clean and
39. 1:32renewable avoids carbon emissions
40. 1:34equivalent to taking 73 million cars off
41. 1:36the road Nationwide turbines power about
42. 1:3910% of the US electric grid you might
43. 1:43call attorney Cathy law the conduit for
44. 1:45Iowa wind the daughter and wife of
45. 1:47farmers she's helped Place almost half
46. 1:49the state's turbines from my farm
47. 1:51background I think I can talk their talk
48. 1:53and have conversations with the land
49. 1:55owners that are interested in having
50. 1:56wind turbin on their properties both
51. 1:58women have fielded complaints from CR
52. 2:00who say the turbines are a threat to
53. 2:01Wildlife ruin the view and that
54. 2:05this is too noisy what do you say to the
55. 2:08Nay nobody's requiring them to put that
56. 2:10on their Farms or on their land we want
57. 2:12to be able to put turbin on our land and
58. 2:15receive those benefits they need to be
59. 2:17perfect ay help is still oldfashioned in
60. 2:20some ways but on power the 75-year-old
61. 2:24is Progressive I look at it as progress
62. 2:27I think we can't stand in the way of
63. 2:29progress the Vista has changed from
64. 2:32decades ago a view she says suits her I
65. 2:35need to give up one or two acres of my
66. 2:37land so that I can generate a commodity
67. 2:39that we all use every day and we all
68. 2:42want to use more of it every day so I'm
69. 2:45happy to be able to be a part of that
70. 2:47generation perspective focused on the
71. 2:50future for ION America I'm Janet Shaman
72. 2:54in Wellsburg Iowa