Leadership Quote by John Salazar

Agriculture as the “backbone” of America’s energy supply is a deliberately frontier-flavored promise: practical, local, and patriotic, with the added benefit of sounding less controversial than “industrial policy.” John Salazar, a Colorado politician from an agrarian district, is stitching together two constituencies that don’t always naturally align - farmers and clean-energy reformers - by offering a story where rural America doesn’t just endure the energy transition, it profits from it.

The intent is transactional. Ethanol and biodiesel aren’t framed as niche green alternatives but as renewable “fuels,” a word that keeps the pitch safely inside the familiar world of trucks, tractors, and national infrastructure. “Providing the Department of Energy with a budget” is the tell: this is a legislative argument in plain clothes, signaling that the path to energy independence runs through appropriations, R&D, and government-enabled markets. The subtext is that the private sector won’t do it alone, but that message is softened by wrapping it in the imagery of fields and production.

Context matters: this rhetoric peaked in the 2000s-era mix of high gas prices, post-9/11 energy security politics, and the biofuels boom encouraged by federal mandates and subsidies. It’s also a way of reframing climate and energy as farm policy - a shrewd move when “environmentalism” can read as coastal moralizing. The line sells optimism while sidestepping the complications: food-vs-fuel tradeoffs, land use, water, and whether corn ethanol’s net benefits justify its political popularity.