The ‘Forbidden’ Crop Taking The World By Storm…
For those of us already in this industry, we could not be more delighted to see these kinds of headlines – Hemp is emerging and it’s not going away!!!
If domestic hemp use and cultivation were practiced and encouraged, we might just be able to change the world…
The cultivation of the plant would be a boon for small farmers, especially organic farmers. We’re talking about industrial hemp this time, not medical cannabis/marijuana, which continues to prove its merits and gain acceptance.
The worldly benefits of using hemp are in plain view and clear to see. But it’s a complex concoction of legal and bureaucratic nonsense even without THC – the psychoactive element found in cannabis – that holds the industrial revolution of hemp back.
Commercial hemp cultivation is legal in Canada but the US government pushed the industry to the side when industry monopolies were threatened when it appeared that a hemp boom may compete for the very products of their monopolist concerns.
Around 1937 the hemp industry was boosted by the introduction of the decorticator machine. It replaced hand shredding of hemp to glean its fibers, fibers that could be used for textiles, clothing, paper, and plastic.
With this new invention, hemp would have been able to take over most competing industries in areas such as paper, textiles, fuel, and plastics. Growing hemp in abundance was easy, and it’s planted to harvest time was no more than six months.
According to Popular Mechanics during that time:
“10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land.”
This was followed by a small number of large businesses with competition concerns used high-level government connections to push through the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
The inevitable marijuana scaremongering ensued and was hyped by movies such as “Reefer Madness” brought about more legislation that would prohibit all hemp cultivation, even hemp without THC.
George Washington – “Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.”
Thomas Jefferson – “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country.”
Original Post for here – http://www.ecosnippets.com/gardening/mover-over-cotton-here-comes-hemp/
