Add dairy farmers to Campbell Soup on the list of those most likely to thrive through the downturn. A new bill sponsored by the senator from Nebraska--Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)--would subsidize the production of "biogas"--a renewable source of natural gas processed from cow "flautus." As written the tax credit would nearly double the current street price of biogas, spurring new investments that would hopefully lower production costs.

The government estimates that all the nation's thousands of existing cow and pig farms could produce 6 million megawatt hours of electricity annually, which isn't actually all that much--equal to twice the capacity of the Solar Electric Generating System, the largest solar farm in the country. But it would take advantage of an--ahem--underutilized resource and cut down on odor and open lagoon deaths too.

Photo: Flickr