New law allows industrial hemp crops in state

[Coyotl]

Last edited Sun Sep 29, 2013, 05:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: sfgate.com

California farmers could be growing industrial hemp - not marijuana, mind you - by spring after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that would permit California farmers to grow the long-banned distant cousin of the trippy herb.

But only if the federal government lifts its hemp cultivation ban.

The new law permits the growing of industrial hemp - which contains trace amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the active psychoactive component in cannabis - for the sale of seed, oil and fiber. Nine other states have passed similar laws.

There is a potential agricultural windfall in California, where $500 million worth of hemp products were sold in 2012, according to industry figures - but all the raw hemp was imported from China, Canada and eastern Europe.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/New-law-allows-industrial-hemp-crops-in-state-4853156.php

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What will the Feds do?

[Champion Jack]

1. It only makes sense

[LuvNewcastle]

2. How hard is it to distinguish hemp from marijuana? I mean by sight.

If it's too hard for DEA agents in planes to tell hemp from mj, they probably won't allow it to be grown. Otherwise, it would be too easy to grow mj plants in a hemp field.

[intaglio]

3. DEA does not use the visual spectrum

the infrared signature is used and I believe the signatures are distinct.

[Coyotl]

5. Quite easy to distinguish by sight alone.

Hemp is a very different strain and a different species than most weed grown for THC content (C. indica).

[bemildred]

10. Industrial is grown bigger.

Production of cannabis for consumption has become an arcane art these days, but you never want the plant putting effort into getting big, you want it putting effort into making big buds.

[NBachers]

13. If industrial hemp is grown with trippy pot, the hemp will pollinate the trip weed & wreck it

and it won't be wrecked in a good way.

[LiberalFighter]

22. If it is a crop then having it under jurisdiction of USDA should help

All hemp that is not recorded with the FSA would be considered suspect if planes are used to locate mj.

[dotymed]

4. Maybe the K st. lobbyists

have already greased the palms needed to make federal exceptions for growing hemp.

If that is the case, it will probably all be grown by corporate farms.

I really do hate being so pessimistic but my lying eyes have seen too much.
Yes, we do need to grow hemp, it is an amazing plant that can generate much needed cash and taxes (if the corporate farms
actually have to pay the taxes), also the fiber and oil can be transformative.

Marijuana should also be legal to grow and sell, but there is a big difference between the two and I do not want to
confuse the two.

While I am all for a large, well functioning government that employs (not contracts) many people in a productive, well
paid capacity, I am not for the fucked-up version we now have.

We have to get corporate money out of "our" govt. and allow people (not corporations) freedoms to prosper (with enough living wage paid, govt. employed inspectors).
Before Reagan turned govt. over to Wall st. and K st. we were on a better path. Instead of preceding Presidents working to restore the govt, to pre-Reagan, more fair, operations, we have those presidents emulating (openly) Reagan. bizarro world.

[indie9197]

6. feds will do nothing

I don't think they will even attempt to address this issue. Another example of how bad government hurts free enterprise.

[bemildred]

7. It is not some distant cousin, it's the same plant. nt

[Coyotl]

8. Difference between Industrial Hemp and Cannabis

The primary difference is in its use. Hemp and Marijuana both come from Cannabis Sativa

.... Industrial hemp contains only about 0.3% - 1.5% THC (Tetrahydrocannabinoids, the intoxicating ingredients that make you high) while marijuana contains about 5% - 10% or more THC. Hemp fibre is the longest, strongest and most durable of all natural fibres. Hemp cultivation requires no chemicals, pesticides or herbicides. Grown in rotation with other crops such as corn and legumes, hemp farming is completely sustainable. Hemp produces four times as much fibre per acre as pine trees. Hemp tree-free paper can be recycled up to seven times, compared with three times for pine-pulp based papers. Hemp is easy to grow, and actually conditions soil where it grows. The seed and seed-oil are high in protein, essential fatty and amino acids, and vitamins. Hemp would be an ideal source of biomass for fuel, and hemp Ethanol burns very cleanly.
Hemp and humanity have been linked for over 10,000 years. Hemp was our first agricultural crop, and remained the planet's largest crop and most important industry until late last century. Most of the non-Western world never stopped growing hemp, and today hemp for commercial use is grown mostly by China, Hungary, England, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, India and throughout Asia.

Differences Between Industrial Hemp and Marijuana

Industrial hemp is a variety of cannabis sativa that has a long history of use in the United States.

However, since the 1950s it has been lumped into the same category of marijuana, and thus the extremely versatile crop was doomed in the United States. Industrial hemp is technically from the same species of plant that psychoactive marijuana comes from. However, it is from a different variety, or subspecies that contains many important differences. The main differences between industrial hemp and marijuana will be discussed below. .....

http://hempethics.weebly.com/industrial-hemp-vs-cannabis.html

[bemildred]

9. Yes. nt

[mountain grammy]

11. Too good to be true! Let's ban it!

[Sunlei]

12. wish they would. excellent rope, cloth, feed meal,heavy oil from seeds. lots of uses!

Koch now 'owns' the entire worlds cotton rope industry..he will probably block our countries progress re 'hemp fiber' until the end of time.

[hunter]

14. Monsanto will genetically engineer a variety...

That will produce both fiber and cheap smokes, harvested in a single pass by machine.

A cannabis cigarette will cost nearly nothing to produce, but only FDA approved cigarettes will be legal and the pharmaceutical companies will sell them for $20 each.

The Wall Street Journal, in a special hemp edition printed on hemp paper, will heavily promote the stocks of corporations participating in these new ventures.

The Koch brothers will sell fluffy soft hemp toilet paper made of hemp fibers treated with dangerous chemicals. They'll sell the resulting waste sludge as animal feed and fracking fluid.

I can see where this is going...

U.S.A. Number One!!!

[maindawg]

15. about time

Thank you Gov.Brown. I cannot fathom why a plant is illegal to grow. The hemp plant was a big part of the american experience for the last 400 years until CAPITALISTS decided that it was bad for business. Every American farmer grew hemp. Hemp burns hotter than coal. Can be used for the production of virtually anything you want to produce. Food, fuel, plastics, paper products, textiles, hell you can pave roads with it. In Cal. you can grow 4 or 5 crops a year and its actually good for the soil. Does not deplete the soil. Eats more carbon than any other plant.
Building materials. Gasoline, alcohol, ...........thats why they outlawed hemp. Then people were brianwashed for 50 years.People like my dad who sucked 50 nicotine sticks a day used that propaganda to deliberately try to destroy my life as a 17 year old student. People who used that misinformation lie to destroy millions of people lives in their own selfish lazy excuse to justify their actions. Ignorant people, greedy capitalists and psycopaths in what has become one of the darkest periods in our history.
In the future, people will learn about this horrible injustice and compare it to the institution of slavery in the level of evil.

[maindawg]

16. fix the link

[RandiFan1290]

17. I have to buy my hemp from Canada

There is no reason US farmers shouldn't be able to grow these crops.
I take hemp oil and protein powder everyday and it is just amazing.
ETA:

[Uncle Joe]

18. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Coyotl.

[Enthusiast]

19. I hope this will make

cutting old growth forests less appealing.

[Coyotl]

20. If only the forests were allowed to grow that long.

I live in a National Forest and the trucks go by my window every day this summer with loads of small trees. A lot of trees are cut for pulp. I was working in Chile for a bit and discovered the Japanese had buyers going door to door to buy trees from yards, large poplars. They were buying trees one tree at a time for paper pulp. Chile is almost totally denuded of trees. Humans are deforesting the entire planet. Growing hemp will slow that process.

[Enthusiast]

21. Back in the day, when I

was still physically capable of deer hunting, I knew the location of many old trees on national forest land here in Ohio. These old forgotten majestic ones are forever logged away in my memory. Some of them must have been centuries old. When I would run across such a specimen when scouting, it would take my breath away. I know where there is a giant poplar. It was so large when I found it that I didn't recognize it as a poplar. Go hemp!