Source: wset.com
Lynchburg, VA - It's just a normal Monday night at Lynchburg Livestock Market as dozens of Virginia farmers place bids on cattle.
Cows and bulls wait their turn in a nearby stable to be auctioned off to a new home. In the corner, several cows pass the time chewing on hay. When the hay is not being used as a feed, it's bound together by ropes made of hemp.
Del. C. Matthew Fariss (R-District 59) is the co-owner of the market. He says he's been using hemp rope for farming his whole life. Currently, he buys the product from overseas. Brazil and Argentina, included.
"If it's in the hay and a cow eats it, it's not poisonous to them because it's a biodegradable natural product," says Fariss. "There's not a market because it's illegal to grow it [in Virginia]."
That could soon change. Fariss is a co-patron of a bill that would make it legal to grow industrial hemp products. Del. Joseph Yost (R-District 12) pre-filed the proposal in July that would produce products like hemp fabrics, hemp food and hemp personal care items.
Advocates have been pushing for this product, including a petition on Change.org, calling industrial hemp an "industrial and agricultural commodity".
What this bill isn't: an advocacy for legalized marijuana. Though hemp is marijuana's cousin, it contains less than one percent of THC, compared to five percent or more in marijuana, according to the Virginia Industrial Hemp Coalition.
"If we can make it legal to grow, then we can investigate the viable market for it," says Fariss.
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