Biodiesel fuel hasn't quite taken over the agricultural industry yet. But tractors, plows and other farm equipment all can run on biodiesel, and farmers who have begun using it have discovered a safer alternative to diesel fuels. With biofuel, a farmer sees fewer sulfuric emissions, which is better for the air quality of the farm and for the plant and animal life living there. There's less carbon monoxide, less smoke and fewer contaminating particles in the air when biodiesel fuels are used. There's less acid rain, too and acid rain causes millions of dollars of damage to American crops annually. Also, there's no chance of a barn fire caused by ignited fuel when that fuel is biodiesel. Biodiesel is also easy on the sensitive engines of tractors and plows; it's a natural lubricant, and so when used causes less wear and tear.

Still, there is a lot of room for growth when it comes to farmers using biodiesel fuel. The American agricultural industry today uses at least three billion gallons of fuel a year. Imagine if those three billion gallons were three billion gallons of biodiesel fuel. Farmers could, in essence, grow their own fuel.

They would save a lot of money and greatly reduce their carbon footprints to boot. Furthermore, farmers would no longer have to have oil delivered to their farms through pipes. This would eliminate oil spills through leaky pipes, which would help the environment, obviously. It would also reduce agricultural energy costs and make it easier for someone to start a new farm, as she or he would not have to worry about having a pipeline built to their property.

The main reason farmers and agricultural technicians are interested in biodiesel, however, is because it will greatly increase demand for their products. Currently, biodiesel manufacturing is the third-leading user of the corn grown in the United States, and the potential for growth here is enormous. And all kinds of other crops can be used to make biodiesel, including those crops that generally are used to make feedstock, among them wheat, barley and rice. In the future, new crops like algae might even be grown by America's farmers to create new kinds of biofuels. And so, many farmers are trying to build support for the use of biodiesel. One of their efforts is their widespread lobbying of fuel distributors to only sell fuel containing some percentage of biodiesel, even if that percentage is as low as two percent.

Many farmers and agricultural experts foresee a future in which every farm contains a mini-plant for creating the biodiesel fuel to run that farm. The vegetable oil will go in, the fuel will come out, and any fuel not used can be sold to local markets.