Sugar cane is king in Cajun country, with vast stretches of fertile land filled with green stalks reaching to the heavens along the bayous of south Louisiana.

Fifth generation grower Rodney Foret inspects his crop in Raceland with nervous anticipation.

“The cost is definitely going through the roof,” Foret said.  “The profit margin is going to the bottom. We're playing on the red line so close, you have a lot of sleepless nights.”

Foret looks forward to the day when he can harvest energy, along with the sugar. “We're looking at every avenue possible to bring income into the company to keep it going.”

Sugar cane may have a sweeter future, thanks to Dr. Ed Richard and his staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture research center in Houma.  They are blending different varieties of cane, to find the best combination for ethanol production.

The new energy crop would be more cold tolerant and insect resistant than the current variety.

“We actually go around the world, looking for wild types of sugar cane that we can use,” Richard said. “We're collecting sugar cane varieties in Asia, in the foot hills of the Himalayas where the temperatures are actually colder than what they are in Louisiana, looking for those cold tolerance genes we can incorporate into our commercial sugar cane varieties.”

Dr. Richard says the new sugar cane could be grown in north Louisiana and parts of Arkansas.

“We're not just looking at sugar cane. We're looking at other tall growing grasses that also produce sugar and bio-mass,” he said.  “We're looking at crops like sweet sorghum, an old crop where very little is planted anymore.”

Louisiana could be one of the country's largest producers of ethanol in just a few short years.  State Agriculture Secretary Mike Strain says there are now plans to build four refineries here over the next five years.

“We're looking at potentially one company alone, utilizing 15 to 20 percent of the entire sugar cane production in Louisiana for ethanol,” Strain said.

E-85 gas stations are beginning to open up, as demand for alterative fuels increases.  Currently the blend is 15 percent ethanol, 85 percent gasoline.

Secretary Strain says in the future cars could run on 100 percent ethanol. “When Henry Ford built his first automobile, it ran on ethanol.  It did not run on gasoline. So I think there's tremendous potential. We are just at the beginning of this.”

Strain said he expects Louisiana plants to produce 15 million gallons of ethanol over the next two years. Today most of the ethanol produced in the United States comes from corn and other grains.  Experts say sugar cane is easier to convert to ethanol and requires less energy to process than the other feed stocks. “We can probably get higher ethanol yields per acre planting sugarcane as opposed to a crop like corn.”

Farmers say ethanol can also be produced from leftovers in the field and the crushed up stalks and other byproducts left after the sugar milling process.

“We need to be paid for everything we grow on top of the soil. Everything that we grow should be a benefit to the ethanol project,” said sugar farmer Rodney Foret.

Louisiana growers say the price of oil is now so high, it's not a matter of if they'll be growing crops for ethanol, it's a matter of when. The big question in the field is will that come soon enough to save the family farm?