Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Move over marijuana. Your straight cousin is about to become the latest cash cow for agriculture in America.
In case you missed it, the biggest news to come out of the 2018 Farm Bill is the federal legalization of hemp, a cannabis species that doesn’t get you high. The legislation, signed into law in December, sets up a structure for regulating commercial or “industrial” hemp in a way that will encourage its growth nationwide.
Before this latest farm bill’s passage, more than 20 states had already legalized the production of hemp. But now it’s going mainstream — and in places like New Mexico, it’s sure to give a boost to agribusinesses all over the state.
If you haven’t heard any farmers, ranchers, bankers or entrepreneurs talking about it yet, you will. It’s going to be big business in rural areas that depend on agriculture, and in cities where the product will be sold in any number of incarnations.
Here’s a partial list of what can be made from hemp, and is already being made elsewhere: as a milk substitute and protein supplement, alcohol, shoes and clothes, rope, paint, soap, reusable diapers, building materials (good for insulation), paper products and biofuels.
So why has it been illegal all these years? The answer to that lies in its American history:
Hemp has been cultivated by humans for thousands of years, but in the 1930s, the U.S. cotton and timber industries saw it as a threat to their market shares, and the unscrupulous newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst led the charge against it. Through his newspaper and his political influence, he mounted a campaign to demonize marijuana, tying the similar-looking hemp to it, to protect his interests in the timber industry.
In 1937, Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act banning the production of virtually all cannabis products, including hemp (although the hemp ban was temporarily lifted during World War II so it could be used to make rope for the U.S. Navy).
This ban on all cannabis products was followed by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which criminalized marijuana and hemp throughout the U.S. The federal prohibition has remained in place ever since — until the most recent farm bill was signed into law by President Trump.
Like marijuana, however, in recent years several states have gone around the federal ban on hemp and legalized its commercial operations. The new farm bill will be establishing new regulatory standards regarding interstate commerce, thereby breaking down the barriers that have kept hemp contained as an industry.
A recent Brookings Institution report outlines three key components of the new federal law: (1) The hemp produced can’t contain more than 0.3 percent THC (nowhere close to enough to get someone high); (2) states can create their own hemp regulations but they must be approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and (3) violating the new federal hemp standards is punishable under criminal law.
“Ultimately, the Farm Bill legalizes hemp, but it doesn’t create a system in which people can grow it as freely as they can grow tomatoes or basil,” according to the Brookings report.
“This will be a highly regulated crop in the United States for both personal and industrial production.”
In other words, don’t add it to your garden. That will still be illegal. At least for now.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at: