Thursday, July 9, 2015

For drought-struck farmers, there's always hemp

Opinion
Source: nationmultimedia.com

I was sorry to hear about farmers suffering problems from this drought. However, poor decisions by the country's leaders constitute much of the equation.

For starters, growing rice is a water-sucking enterprise. Allowing farmers to grow hemp would be smarter in several ways: Hemp can grow in marginal soil, doesn't need chemical applications, tolerates drought, and has higher commercial value - not just for its highly nutritious nuts but also for its hurds and stems, which can be used in a hundred practical applications. 

BMW and Volvo use hemp products in their cars. Europeans and Americans are buying crushed hemp stalks to mix with cement to make high-quality building materials. They buy most of those stalks from China, where it's legal for farmers to grow the stuff, as it is in a dozen other countries. 

Yet Thailand is still bound by the archaic American laws outlawing hemp. US laws are slowly moving towards reason, but Thailand will likely remain decades behind the loop. 

Ken Albertsen

Chiang Rai



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