Rural Americans want leaders who help middle-class communities to plan and prosper over the long-term - not opportunists who reap the rewards for themselves, leaving nothing for the people who do the sowing.

If we truly want an innovative and creative renewable fuel industry, then it needs to be challenged. And if we create a set of protections that allow it to not be as creative and innovative as possible, then we aren't doing a service to the industry or to the people of this country.

Many young and beginning farmers start out in local markets. Some stay there, and some scale up.

What Republicans have done in my view is that they are systematically dismantling a sense of community in America.

In the past 40 years, the United States lost more than a million farmers and ranchers. Many of our farmers are aging. Today, only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming, and more and more of our farmers are looking elsewhere for their primary source of income.

At President Obama's direction, the U.S Department of Agriculture is working hard to unleash the power of America's innovators and entrepreneurs to build a green energy economy.

There are children with dreams counting on us.