HENDERSON -- Prior to a 2007 Farm Bill hearing session here, U.S. Sens. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, spent four hours touring the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.

Harkin, who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and who has spent 32 years in the senate, said the country's national security "demands that we get off foreign oil dependency."

The nation's farmers, he said, will have to change a mindset of producing food and fiber for the nation to also providing a source of renewable fuel, which he predicted will become a part of the 2007 Farm Bill.

Salazar agreed and took several suggestions from those who attended the hearing on how the federal government can help in getting farmers to become a part of the emerging energy boom. Those suggestions ranged from tax credits given those who build renewable energy programs involving wind, ethanol or biodiesel facilities, to maintaining flexibility in any programs to allow farmers to adapt.

Dusty Tallman, president of the Colorado Wheat Growers, said those programs have helped in improving the price of corn and wheat, but Gary Peterson, who heads the department of soil and crop sciences at Colorado State University, said educational programs need to be developed to address the problems that could arise by taking cellulose material from land to make ethanol, instead of returning that material back to the soil.

"We need further research in the area of energy, especially in the area of specialty crops and how we can do that at a profit," Harkin said.