Dan Juhl inherits the wind.

Dan Juhl is America's leading advocate of and developer for farmer-owned wind power.

A Vietnam vet who served on the destroyer USS Floyd B. Parks, where he helped design missile systems, Juhl decided to "beat my swords into ploughshares." When he returned to the Red River Valley in northern Minnesota, he started building wind machines designed to supply electricity to local farms, businesses, and homes.

In the early 1990s, Juhl moved to Buffalo Ridge, in Minnesota's southwestern corner, where early settlers were sometimes driven mad by the relentless howl. "The wind is pretty good in the Red River Valley," says Juhl. "But it's better here. If you farm sugar beets, you stay up there. But if you farm the wind, you move to Buffalo Ridge."

After years of statewide turmoil over two embattled nuclear reactors at Prairie Island, their owner, Northern States Power, agreed to purchase some 400 megawatts of wind power.

This gave Juhl his opening. With a firm contract in hand, he secured a $10 million bank loan for seventeen Danish-made Vestas machines. The 600-kilowatt turbines now stand on six acres of leased land in the town of Woodstock, producing enough electricity to power 3,000 homes.

Juhl has helped establish two wind co-ops with twenty farmers each, and has since been besieged by farmers wanting to know how to do it.

Juhl worries that wind power could be monopolized by large corporations. "All the big guys are here," he says, including General Electric, which is now the nation's largest domestic wind turbine manufacturer.

"Small farmers haven't had access to this technology," he says. "We need to educate them--and the banks and the community as a whole--to the fact that there's money to be made with these machines. This is a great cash crop, and a chance for farmers to diversify and save their farms."

With Dan Juhl, Harvey Wasserman is a co-author of "Harvesting Wind Energy as a Cash Crop: A Guide to Locally Owned Wind Farming." Dan Juhl's website is www.danmar.us.