The chorus of clean-energy advocates is growing louder – and more politically powerful – now that farmers are singing along. And they have good reason: Energy crops. Raw materials such as corn, soy, wheat, trees and even animal manure can be processed into cleaner-burning next-gen fuels. According to a new article in Grist.org, leaders of 70 agriculture groups recently joined the ambitious 25 x '25 alliance. It advocates that 25 percent of U.S. energy supplies come from America’s working lands – either from their crops or windmills and solar panels installed on those lands - by 2025.

Former Central Intelligence chiefs are not the sorts of guys you’d expect to be advocating fuel made from corncobs. Nor, for that matter, are they the types you’d expect to see jury-rigging their hybrid-engine cars with a special plug-in feature that gets double the gas mileage. But Jim Woolsey – former director of the CIA under Clinton – is the exception.