The chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee told a Carroll audience that Barack Obama has done more to support Iowa farming in a few years than John McCain has in a political lifetime.

“To me this (Obama) could be a really good friend of ours in the White House to those of us who farm or live in rural communities,” U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said Friday at a rural roundtable for Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois and the Democratic presidential candidate.

The potential of algae as an energy source has a lot of people excited, including Iowa senator Tom Harkin.

Monday Harkin was in town to meet with representatives from Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. and Shenandoah Chamber and Industry Association Director Gregg Connell at the chamber’s office to hear an update on GPRE’s plan.

“As chairman of the Agricultural Committee I’ve put a lot of emphasis on the Farm Bill on building more cellulose ethanol plants, and now I’ve become aware of algae and how we can get diesel fuel basically out of algae,” said Harkin after the meeting. “I’ve looked at different companies around the United States and we’ve got testimony about this, and quite frankly the promise of growing algae, which only takes sunlight and CO2, the oils that you get from them for diesel is just phenomenal.

The United States should reduce its reliance on imported oil, provide everyone access to a good education and have a health care system that people can afford, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, said Wednesday at The Des Moines Register’s Soapbox.

Mason City, IA- U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D) Iowa made his way across North Iowa on Thursday. Harkin is holding listening posts around the state.

We caught up with the Senator in Mason City. He was talking with the North Iowa Community Action Agency. The group recently received a grant worth about $240,000 per year for the next three years.

Sen. Tom Harkin appeared at Newton City Hall Tuesday, joining other elected officials and community members to celebrate the recently awarded federal grant money totaling more than $1.2 million.

The previously-announced grants include $580,000 for a Trinity Corporation storage facility that will house wind turbine equipment. Central Iowa Rural Water received an EDA grant for $670,000 to construct a water tower and help support the Central Iowa Energy Biodiesel plant and TPI Composites wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in northeast Newton.

During a stop through Storm Lake, Thursday, Senator Tom Harkin was a special guest speaker for the Iowa State Education Association’s 2008 summer conference held at Buena Vista University. ISEA serves K-12 schools, community colleges, area education agencies as well as education support workers. Currently ISEA has about 34,000 members in the State of Iowa.

“(Conferences like these) are about getting our leaders together to talk about the important issues with education,” says Jean Hessburg, ISEA Public Relations Specialist. Since this is an election year Hessburg says this has been an especially crucial year to let candidates hear from educators issues impacting their schools.

On July 21, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to make changes in the federal tax code to encourage construction of an ethanol pipeline across America.

As Harkin told members of the Iowa Corn Growers Association who were in Washington D.C. and met with him, a provision in the tax code is effectively blocking publicly traded partnerships that build and operate most fuel pipelines. By law, publicly traded partnerships must earn 90% of their income from the exploration, transportation, storage or marketing of depletable natural resources – oil, gas and coal – but not renewable fuels. Harkin’s bill would add renewable fuels approved by the federal EPA to this list.