In the past decade, however, it's been their ability to generate alternative energy from wind, solar and biomass which has been in hot demand.

For dairy farmer, Jorgen Tranberg, the move into renewable energy has been a simple one. And it's making him lots of money.

These days, Mr Tranberg describes himself as a windfarmer with some dairy cows. He says without doubt renewable energy, and in particular wind power, is a better pathway to money than is dairying.

Mr Tranberg runs a dairy with 150 milking cows on 100 hectares at Samso. While he's been a passionate advocate for achieving fairer milk prices for Danish farmers over the years, it's the one and a half wind turbines he now owns which bring home all the cash.

Mr Tranberg spent close to $A1.3 million to buy a one megawatt turbine on Samso nine years ago which produces 2.5m kilowatts of power each year.

It's now fully paid off, and he's now making more than $200,000 from sending power back to the main electricity grid.

His turbine generates enough power to supply 500 families.

With the profits, Mr Tranberg went halves in a turbine at sea, a 2.3 megawatt turbine producing 8m kilowatts a year, costing him more than $A4m six years ago.

Mr Tranberg explained that much of the community acceptance of wind turbines had been made possible from co-operative share investments allowing local ownership in these otherwise imposing, often noisy structures.

"There are a lot of people on Samso who own parts (shares) in wind turbines," Mr Tranberg said.

"It's quite difficult to go around Samso and find people who don't like the wind turbines.

"If we want people to look at these turbines and live with then they must have parts…then they are more beautiful."

Samso's co-operative approach has been so successful that it’s a model being replicated across the country as the Government attempts to remove the community antagonism and the "not in my backyard attitude" which often accompanies new wind farm developments.