You could say that the roots of this nation’s agricultural heritage were those of hemp plants.
In 1619, King James I decreed that every colonist in the New World had to grow 10 hemp plants for export to England.
George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon. Hemp fibers were used to make rope and weave fabric. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, hemp was a valued cash crop in the United States.
Hemp was a major crop in central Pennsylvania. Between 1720 and 1870, there were more than 100 hemp mills in York and Lancaster counties. Adams County was a major producer of the crop. Hemp was so ubiquitous in Lancaster County that it has two townships and a school district bearing the name Hempfield.
Hemp is still a useful and profitable crop.
What changed?
In 1937, led by hysteria over marijuana use, Congress passed a law that pretty much killed the hemp-growing industry in the United States. Some hemp advocates have argued that the law, called the Marihuana Tax Act, was intended to essentially outlaw growing hemp, something that had been pushed by powerful industrial concerns — cough, Dupont, cough — that viewed hemp as a competitor to its synthetic fiber business.
No matter.
As the law evolved, industrial hemp was grouped in with marijuana — they are cousins, so to speak — and cultivating it was banned. It is based on nonsense. You can smoke industrial hemp until you turn blue in the face and it won’t get you high. It contains a very small amount of the psychoactive substance that gives its cousin its kick.
Yet, industrial hemp still has a multitude of uses — from rope to building materials to biodiesel fuel. United States industry still uses hemp, but because of bans on its production, it must be imported it from places such as China.
It’s absurd.
Congress has realized that, sort of. The Agricultural Act of 2014 opened the door for states to allow hemp production. Ten states have moved to legalize industrial hemp production for the very simple reason that it can be a valuable crop for farmers.
It is easy to grow, requires little care and can be sold to a number of different markets.
The only reason it remains illegal in Pennsylvania is its distant relationship to marijuana.
That could change. State Rep. Russ Diamond, a Republican who represents parts of Lebanon County, is the primary sponsor of a bill in the state House that would permit cultivation and processing of industrial hemp in the Commonwealth. The bill has the support of Rep. Dan Moul, an Adams County Republican, who said, “If farmers can find another crop to grow to help them, I’m all for the farmer.”
And that’s what this bill — and another, competing bill in the state Senate — is all about: helping farmers.
The history of hemp’s black-sheep cousin marijuana, though, leads to hysteria when the plant is mentioned in the same breath with legalization. That, again, is based on ignorance.
It’s time to give farmers the option of growing this valuable cash crop.
And, to be sure, that’s what it is. A crop.
Legalizing the cultivation of industrial hemp will not transform the state into some kind of stoner’s paradise.
But it will give farmers — who have a hard enough time making a living — another source of income.
And that, as the kids used to say, would be groovy.
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