Give us hemp

Source: times-herald.com

Hemp, marihuana, marijuana, once many hundreds of acres grown here, and proven to be valuable in many ways, was outlawed by a bill imposing a tax on it. Most are familiar with the cannabis oil controversy going on now. Cannabis oil, proven beyond a doubt to improve one’s health and slow/stop convulsions in children, can't get by the political hacks professing to be our guardian angels.

Hemp, entirely legal to grow 'til 1937, was used to make medicine, paper, clothes, and a product similar to cement which was water and fireproof. Clothes lasting twice as long, were stronger, and softer than cotton, ropes, excellent food from the seed and best of all, medicine, all from the hemp plant. This plant can be grown so that very little of THC is in the plant now called marijuana.

One acre of hemp produces fabric equal to 2-3 acres of cotton, paper pulp equal to 2-4 acres of trees and needs no pesticides, herbicides and little fertilizer. It also chokes out weeds, is easier to maintain and harvest, grows most anywhere, frost resistant etc. Once a major crop here, now outlawed, why?

Some think politics, money, the drug industry, but we need this product. We can grow it with a negligible amount of the "high drug" in it. Whiskey, commodes, shower heads, light bulbs, taxes and much more controlled by politicians who can't control hemp plants. Is there more to it than we are told?

Three Operations Named to Research Industrial Hemp Production in North Dakota

By TJ Nelson
Source: kvrr.com



NORTH DAKOTA -

North Dakota Ag Commissioner Goehring has chosen three operations to help determine whether industrial hemp can be successfully grown.

Black Dirt Inc. in LaMoure County, David Lommen in Grand Forks County and Clarence Laub in Grant County were among 11 successful applicants for the research program.

A committee determined they have the top proposals.

Hemp produces fiber and oil and can be used in everything from clothing to food.

Some North Dakota farmers hope it can become a profitable part of their operations.

Hemp Consumes Radiation, Mitigates Heavy Metals From Soil

BY MONTEREY BUD
Source: marijuana.com

It would appear as though the industrial applications of the hemp plant are seemingly infinite.

While it’s long been understood that hemp can produce a plethora of every day products– such as fuel, textiles, construction material, clothing, food and paper –hemp can also apparently draw toxins from the soil.

According to an online report, hemp can help erase some of the nastier environmental mistakes made in mankind’s recent past. Not only can humans benefit from consuming hemp protein, wearing hemp clothing, and writing on hemp paper, hemp is known to be extremely useful in the elimination of cadmium and other toxic metals from the Earth’s valuable soil, including radiation.

“Hemp is proving to be one of the best phyto-remediative plants we have been able to find,” said Slavik Dushenkov, a research scienst with PHYTOTECH.”

Thanks to the hemp plants overwhelming success in removing radiation from soil surrounding Russia’s Chernobyl disaster, hemp is now high on the list for consideration in drawing out radiation from the soil surrounding Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility.

Thanks to Phytoremediation, the rather complicated manner by which hemp cleans up our polluted soil and allows plants to tidy up the environment or “remediate” toxic soil, the process of cleaning up our precious resources contaminated by human activity has just gotten a little bit healthier for the planet.

Read the full text on, “How Hemp Can Clean up Radiation From Fukushima Nuclear Disaster” here.

CSU Pueblo contemplates cannabis research institute

Jessi Mitchell
Source: koaa.com

PUEBLO -

Class is back in session at CSU Pueblo, and a proposed cannabis research institute is the talk of campus.

University administrators say the institute is still in the planning stages, but it will be the first school of its kind to examine every aspect of cannabis, from hemp to medical and recreational marijuana. There are still some legal hurdles to jump, however.

In the Pueblo sunshine, the cannabis plant is flourishing, and the CSU Pueblo administration is eager to get a closer look at how it affects the brain at various stages of life, how chemicals beyond THC can be used, and how the plant impacts different people in different ways.

"A lot of these issues are very complicated, and what better institution to be helping study those than a university?" asks provost Rick Kreminski.

The school plans to host conferences for professors and students to share their findings, along with publishing a journal. With the explosion of the marijuana industry across southern Colorado, researchers will be able to conduct case studies in their own community.

Students on campus are mostly on board with the idea, enthused about the opportunity to learn more about the plant. Sophomore Julius Agbeke says, "Weed's been legalized, so it would be nice to start doing research about it, see what we can do. Maybe we can make money off of it, our campus over here, so it would be a pretty cool opportunity."

Others are worried that marijuana's legal status on the national level could cause funding problems for the university, which recently had some budget and staffing cuts. Joshua Redmond, a senior, says, "I'm concerned about the federal budget and the amount of money our school receives from the federal government, so I'm more concerned with whether or not they'll be able to keep a steady budget."

The feds do allow hemp research already, and observatory studies of marijuana with volunteers. Kreminski says, "If veterans, chemo patients are self-reporting that they are using marijuana in that case, you can do those studies and there's no federal issues there."

The university plans to get some of the research funding from grants and Pueblo's city and county governments, but administrators emphasize that everything will be conducted within federal regulations.

"Everyone seems to be very excited about the possibilities," says Kreminski. "We have a lot of support from local legislators and we'll just have to see where things go."

Administrators have not set a timeline for the start of the cannabis research institute yet, but professors are actively working on their ideas for research.

Florence City Council workshop to address hemp industry

Source: canoncitydailyrecord.com

Florence council workshop to address hemp industry

The Florence City Council will meet for its regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday at the Florence Municipal Center, 600 W. Third St. Prior to the meeting, a workshop will be at 6 p.m. for an industrial hemp discussion workshop.

During the regular meeting, which is rescheduled from Monday because of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, the council will have a public meeting for the Public Works street assessments. The council also is expected to take the following action: make an appointment to the Board of Zoning Adjustments, consider a resolution to support a USDA grant, and consider first reading of an ordinance authorizing the mayor to execute a municipal grant agreement. The meeting is open to the public.

Kansas needs hemp as cash crop option

By Dane Hicks
Source: ottawaherald.com

What if, when the Taylor Forge metal fabrication plant in Garnett shuts down this month as previously announced and puts an end to 28 local jobs, its former employees were able to drive across town to find comparable employment at a local plant that processes locally-grown industrial hemp?

And what if, in addition to rotations of corn and wheat and soybeans, farmers in Anderson and other Kansas counties had the option to grow highly-profitable industrial hemp to sell to that local processor?

And what if, a local company similar to the one that formed the East Kansas Agri Energy ethanol plant in Garnett owned that processing facility, made excellent profits selling processed hemp fiber, oil and seeds to treat cancer and brain seizures and to use in place of plastics and cotton in a huge range of products and healthier foods? And what if that company paid dividends, as EKAE has done, to its local investors?

Hemp would be cool in Kansas, that’s what.

But right now, too many people in Kansas think industrial hemp is marijuana, and that misunderstanding among lawmakers and the public makes hemp growing and processing illegal in our state. That misunderstanding means we’re losing money and economic vitality to other states that are better educated and more aggressive.

Hemp products sold in the U.S. right now — most all made from plants grown in foreign countries — are raking in $500 million a year in U.S. sales — and our farmers who could grow the plant in Kansas aren’t making a dime of it.

Hemp ain’t pot. It’s similar in physical makeup, but it has a THC content of 0.3 percent or less — you could smoke a bale of it and never get high. It’s known in illegal drug circles as “Hippies’ Disappointment.”

The State of Kentucky gets it. Since our culture has moved toward heel and hiding cigarette smokers to the barn door, demand for tobacco — a former cash crop in Kentucky — has dropped to the point many farmers have left farming altogether. But the state agriculture department is pursuing hemp as a replacement for tobacco under a special provision of the new U.S. Farm Bill, and Kentucky is well ahead of other states in developing this futuristic crop.

Kansas can get there, but our Legislature needs to act this session. State Rep. Willie Dove, R-Bonner Springs, has a bill that would authorize the Kansas Department of Agriculture to license industrial hemp growing in the Sunflower State and get the industry kicked off here as a new option for farmers and an investment opportunity for entrepreneurs. It’s the same track Kentucky took to start developing the industry there.

The closing of Taylor Forge in Garnett drives home the importance of having job options in our communities. Kansas’ economy as a whole needs the opportunities hemp provides.

Our small towns have gotten too used to bad economic news. Kansas legislators should legalize hemp to give us another option to grow prosperity.

A little good news for those who want hemp to replace sugar on Maui

By Anthony Pignataro
Source: mauitime.com

For those of you who look over Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar’s 36,000 or so acres of Central Maui that won’t be growing sugar anymore this time next year and think that maybe we might start growing hemp on at least a portion of that land, there’s good reason to be optimistic. Really optimistic, if state Rep. Kaniela Ing, D–South Maui, gets his way.

“Hemp warrior, Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R-Kailua) and I are putting forth a bipartisan proposal to transition HC&S’s cornerstone crop from sugar to industrial hemp,” Ing posted on Facebook on Jan. 13. “Coupled with direct severance and training assistance, this could save hundreds of plantation jobs on Maui.”

A recent report filed with the state Legislature also states that hemp might pan out after all as a major crop in Hawaii. Two years ago, the Legislature passed Act 56, which set up an industrial hemp research project (to the tune of $78,860). In December 2015, the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources filed a 10-page report with the Legislature that outlined the results of the research project. In short, industrial hemp might just work in Hawaii.

Because of the Drug War, it’s been illegal to grow industrial hemp in the U.S. for a few decades now. And even though a 2014 federal farm bill allowed universities to carry out limited industrial hemp research projects, it took 11 months for UH to get the OK from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Obviously the politics of hemp growing still need work, but as far as the science is concerned, UH’s feasibility study was pretty positive.

“[I]n the current 2015 trials, subtropical fiber hemp grew very well,” states the UH report. “Evidence has been gathered suggesting that 3 crops a year could be grown in our State. Evidence indicated that this would yield between 27-38 tons dry weight of stalks per year depending on densities planted. Similarly, between 31 and 35 tons dry weight of stems and leaves could be obtained per year which could be used as animal forage. A subtropical seed hemp cultivar also grew well. Evidence suggested that 2 crops a year could be harvested and yields of about 2.5 tons of seed could be obtained per acre per year.”

The study also explored hemp-based building materials (“hempcrete”) and cattle forage, as well as using hemp seeds themselves as food. “At one point Canada grew 40,000 acres of hemp per year,” states the report. “All but 10,000 acres went into other crops but the remaining hemp acreage was for seed hemp. They market packets of hemp seeds which people sprinkle on their cereal during breakfast, their salads, or make into cookies. The value of seed hemp is potentially very high. The 2.5 tons/year translates to 88,000 ounces/year. If there are 2 ounces of hemp seeds per candy bar this means each acre of hemp could support 44,000 candy bars a year.”

Keep in mind though that this was all just a simple university research project–the federal government still takes a dim view of hemp.

“Seed importation was a challenge,” the report notes. “The main reason is that industrial hemp is classified by the DEA as a Schedule 1 narcotic.”

Unless and until the federal government loosens its collective collar on hemp, it will remain a subject of research projects, rather than a major crop grown on Maui.