Law Of The Land

It’s really a dynamic time to be involved with hemp, not least because of the rapidly-approaching changes in the law. In 1937, hemp was classified as part of the Marihuana Tax Act, making it federally illegal to grow, even for industrial purposes, and the plant has been criminalized in the United States ever since. The association with marijuana continued with the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. But as individual states have legalized cannabis, the idea of hemp cultivation has become more widely accepted, and the movement for industrial hemp legalization strengthened. With the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill, the movement scored an historic victory in the form of amendment Section 7606, which permitted domestic hemp production under a research pilot program. As of 2018, thirty-nine states have enacted laws allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp.

As it turned out, 2018 would be the year of federal legalization. On April 12, 2018, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) introduced the bipartisan Hemp Farming Act to the United States Sen-ate Agricultural Committee. The bill’s purpose: Shift oversight responsibilities to the USDA for the first time in history. It gained steady support from Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), plus a May 16 endorsement from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who signed on as a co-sponsor.

“Robust support for the new language has come from many, including Senator Angus King [ Independent-Maine], and strong agriculture support has been received from senators including Senator John Hoeven [R-North Dakota] and Senator Thom Tillis [R-North Carolina],” wrote Ben Droz, Legislative Liaison for the organization Vote Hemp.

Droz pointed out three new amendments filed to the existing Farm Bill, all led by Kentucky Represen-tatives James Comer, Andy Barr, and Thomas Massie. Comer’s amendment removes industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act and places it under the jurisdiction of the USDA as an agricultural commodity. Barr’s amendment creates a “safe harbor” environment for financial institutions that provide services to hemp businesses authorized under the Farm Bill’s pilot program, as well as their third-party affiliates. Massie’s amendment changes the language in the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of “marijuana.”

“The Massie amendment would be a savior to many farmers who have had to perfectly good crops because of an arbitrary THC limit,” Droz concluded. (Under the Controlled Substances Act, industrial hemp has been defined as cannabis grown with 0.3% or less THC.)

On June 13, the Senate Agricultural Committee voted 20-1 to pass McConnell’s Farm Bill. Despite op-position from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the sole “No” voter who pushed for an amendment to modify the bill’s language so that “cannabinoids, extracts and derivatives” would be excluded from legal definitions of hemp, the bill moved to the Senate floor exactly as is.

Finally, on June 28, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill 86-11. By October 2018, the House was also looking favorably upon the measure. After some back and forth between the divisions of Congress, the bill was finalized on December 12, 2018 and signed officially into law on December 20, 2018. This marked the first time that federal law in the United States has approved the removal of certain cannabis products from the Con- trolled Substances Act.

(Some ambiguity about future enforcement remains; to learn more, visit VoteHemp.com.)

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson said, “It is the patriotic duty of every American to grow hemp.” Two hundred years later, an exceptionally wise Canadian added, “Always leave the soil better than when you found it.”

This was Rupert Stephens, a Vancouver-based berry farmer and songwriter whose son Arran went on to found the renowned organic food company Nature’s Path. In his keynote address at NoCo’s Hemp Summit, Arran mentions that hemp is a vital crop in organic agriculture for many reasons, particularly its capacity for soil remediation. The plant’s deep roots have the ability to absorb large quantities of contaminants without harm, and unlike corn or soybeans, hemp doesn’t draw excess moisture from the ground. Our entire planetary health, and thus humanity’s health, says Stephens, depends on maintaining nutrient-rich soil.

Considered a pioneer of organic agriculture, Arran observes that the movement actually began long before he got into it. In the 1940s, when chemicals developed for warfare were shown to produce great yields and commercial farmers were encouraged to use the resulting pesticides on their land, organic practices were adopted in protest. “As long as there have been chemicals,” Stephens comments, “there has been an organic response.” (His father stopped using nonorganic materials in 1950.)

Soil health is actually the crux of the next step, regenerative agriculture. “Regenerative is beyond organic,” Beegle asserts, “and where we’re at as a planet, we have to move ahead in that direction.

On Fertile Ground From AG To Economy

One such soil health expert applying regenerative dictums to every possible sector is investigative writer Doug Fine, author of the bestselling books Farewell My Subaru, Too High to Fail, and Hemp Bound. Known colloquially as the “organic cowboy,” Fine dedicates his life to a pure and unifying relationship with the land. He operates Funky Butte Ranch in New Mexico, where he herds goats and raises awareness of all things sustainable. Fine believes so passionately in the power of cannabis plants that he’s even testified to the United Nations about legalization (and if you meet him in person, he’ll tell you that every article of clothing he’s wearing, down to his underwear, is made of hemp).

Speaking at NoCo’s Farm Symposium, Fine describes how going regenerative was a logical progression for him. “If you’re getting into hemp, first thought is, how is this going to be part of humanity’s survival? The cannabis industry is the most impactful for development since the automobile and Silicon Valley. This is a farmer driven Renaissance for humanity within the digital age.”

As Fine explains, cannabis gives us its benefits in diverse areas, and its contributions to the sequestration of carbon – thus its ability to remediate soil and combat climate change – is so far unmatched by any other plant. “Soil sequestration may be more awesome than people are aware of,” he notes. “[We need to] really build soil in a regenerative way to sequester lots and lots of carbon. As a society, we are all soil farmers now, and hemp is just so functional across so many different platforms that it can form the cornerstone for a whole biodynamic economy.”

The man’s as good as his word: Fine constantly challenges the paradox of holistic communing with nature and maintaining modern technological standards. He teaches classes on how digital-era urban dwellers can readapt to agricultural lifestyles (“some call them primitive skills classes, but I call them essential skills”), and urges people to incorporate soil and animal husbandry into their daily knowledge bases.

“I personally love getting my hands dirty,” he comments, “but even if one doesn’t, this is, again, about survival. I do think anyone, no matter what you’re doing with your life, is wise to have as much integration with livestock as possible. I’m holistic at heart, and I believe that native soil with complex local biomes, that’s the way to grow. The development of this whole soil economy must be brought about in such a way that it is not contributing to climate change, but providing a potential solution for humanity.”

Fine stresses that we need to examine what makes sense for our families, how we can assimilate plant-based materials into all facets of our lives, and buy mainly locally-sourced products. That can be as simple as moving beyond combustion – say, taking the solar panels that increasingly come standard with average homes and using those to power batteries made from biofuel rather than fossil fuels. Getting acquainted with local and regional farmers, researching the methods used to produce crops in your area, are also key. Even neighborhood manufacturers of clothing and household products could be giving you better quality than large corporations do.

“If a local cobbler is charging you $300 for shoes that will last 10-15 years,”

Fine says, “that’s not much compared to the long-term effect of name-brand shoes that cost $100 but have to be replaced every year. Do the math and realize that the initial price tag is not always the final price tag.”

Don’t underestimate the importance of DIY methods, either. “It’s fun, simple, and easy to be regenerative,” heralds Fine. Back at Funky Butte, his young sons are experimenting with hemp pens that use blueberry-and-pitch ink and they may have discovered a basis for natural glue made from pinesap.

“For me, it’s about the coming return to a bio-based economy versus a synthetic and chemical-based economy,” Fine reiterates. “Hemp is part of it, but it’s not the only plant.”

It is, however, the basis for the organic cowboy’s most exciting new projects. He’s currently working on a book that encompasses “all the things I wish I knew when I started,” including the cultivation, extraction, processing, and nutritional components of growing hemp in a regenerative system. Fine is also a consultant for the Colville tribe in Spokane, Washington, who planted 120 acres of the crop on their land in 2018. Additionally, he helped engineer an inaugural program at the University of Hawaii, allowing the state its very first academically-sanctioned research in hemp cultivation.

And from a human perspective, Fine believes we have to build cooperative models that activate farmers at each level of industrial production so they can fully profit from the goods they raise. “That’s thinking seven generations ahead. Do we want just a few sources for the rest of our lives [i.e., dependence on fossil fuels and timber], or do we want to support a lucrative, regenerative economy?”

Remember Your Roots

But if we are to have a true regenerative economy, all people must have the opportunity to share in the wealth. Acclaimed environmentalist and former Vice Presidential candidate Winona LaDuke, executive director of the Native American advocacy organization Honor the Earth, exhorts the audience at NoCo’s Hemp Summit to be inclusive: “We want to be part of the next economy. I don’t want it just to look like you cool people; I want it to look like us cool people too… [When the money comes], we want to be at the table, not on the menu.”

Since 1989 LaDuke has worked to achieve sustainability and reclaim tribal land through the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP), a nonprofit organization operating out of the White Earth reservation in western Minnesota. Through WELRP she revives cultivation of traditional Native crops such as wild rice, but in recent years she’s added hemp to the mix, commenting that her area of Minnesota ran several hemp mills until the 1940s. “We know what a sustainable economy looks like,” she declares. “I want to bring something back to my region that makes sense for us.”

LaDuke is fighting a war on two fronts right now, trying to promote the hemp revolution in her hometown and protesting the encroachment of Line 3 (also known as Keystone XL) of the Tar Sands Pipeline into her territory. This summer the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission rejected a motion to consider the impacts of the pipeline’s expansion on tribal culture, and on June 28 gave Enbridge Energy official approval for the line. The TransCanada Corp broke ground on Keystone XL in September 2018 near the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, despite lawsuits from three First Nation tribes – the Rosebud Sioux, the Fort Belknap Indian Community, and Gros Ventre – which claimed the Trump administration’s approval of the line violated the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851and 1868, making the pipeline’s construction illegal.

In mid-November 2018, a federal judge in Montana blocked Keystone XL from its planned expansion through that state, as well as South Dakota and Nebraska. The judge’s ruling faulted the Trump administration’s approval of Line 3, saying that the State Department’s reversal of an Obama-era decision that denied the pipeline permission to expand was incomplete and lacked proper explanation

Finally, on March 4, 2019, it was reported that Enbridge would be delaying the start of the pipeline by at least a year, emboldening activists across the region to believe, like LaDuke does, that the line will never be built. Still, the situation is far from resolved and the indigenous community suffering because of it. Past pipelines haven’t created jobs, only damaged both tribal lands and tribes further.

According to LaDuke, her people’s best hope lies in a regenerative economy. But the citizens on the White Earth reservation need more training in farming hemp, and greater access to resources. “

Share with us—bring us a supply chain!” LaDuke exclaims. “We need regenerative economy, because empire is not stable. The next economy needs to have us all

Somewhere That’s Green

The further development of hemp-derived products will tremendously impact our economic evolution, especially when it comes to drop-in materials. Several NoCo exhibitors specialize in producing hemp-based substitutions for paper, construction, and plastic, and the results are astounding.

Sunstrand, the largest provider of sustainable products in North America, creates plant-based goods including home insulation (safe to touch), automotive fillers, even surfboards. “We work primarily with bast plants [that are] rapidly renewable,” says Adam Block, Sunstrand’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Crops like hemp, flax, kenaf, and bamboo can all regrow within a year, whereas wood is “natural but certainly not rapidly renewable.”

Founded by biocomposite expert Dr. Trey Riddle, Sunstrand is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky with additional facilities in Alberta, Canada and Pamplico, South Carolina. Production is a large operation, but the main idea is simple: High-quality, cost-effective, and naturally-derived materials that will outperform the standard products.

“There’s a big misconception that green is expensive, or weird,” Block notes. “Or it’s extra, it’s hippie stuff.” But Sunstrand breaks those stereotypes. “It’s three things: Cost, performance, and sustainability. It doesn’t have to be ‘Pick two’… that’s where Sunstrand comes in. We [can] control the supply chain, from grow all the way through to deliver a specific, highly-engineered, technical material.”

Part of Sunstrand’s business model is to contract with local and out-of-state farmers so the company can oversee the manufacturing process from beginning to end. They give seeds to farmers, who grow “to our specifications, with our support, and we have a process called ‘retting,’” where microorganisms and moisture swell plant stalks to separate fibers and woody cores (“hurds”).

Block is especially proud of Sunstrand’s satellite expansion strategy: “We want to impact many local communities. It helps us diversify, so we can get crops from different areas at different times. To this point, everything we’ve done has been because industry asked for it. We are transitioning into more of a sales and production organization because industry wants it… This has a real impact beyond the environment; [it’s socio-cultural too, so] our level of corporate responsibility is enormous. And it’s made in America.”

Some particularly cool products include hemp coreboard that can be used in place of timber plywood, animal bedding, electronics, and bioplastic fillers that can slot into bike frames and boat cabins. (Bioplastic means any plastic originating from biodegradable materials instead of fossil fuels.) Meanwhile, Sana Packaging takes things back to the consumer cannabis industry with hemp-plastic disposable tubes and con- tainers for vape cartridges, rolls, and edibles. While they haven’t expanded beyond consumable products yet, they plan to get into biodegradable water bottles in the near future.

“We’re using nature to solve nature’s problems,” Sana’s co-founder Ron Basak-Smith remarks. “We want to use this material and make it so normal.”

In a panel on sustainably replacing everyday items, Basak-Smith mentioned what he’d like to see next – hemp coffee cups, filler for 3-D printing, and wearable accessories (proceeds from which can then be donated to legalization efforts). We’re still several years away from total biodegradable integration, but the possibilities are endless.

Have a Heart

Maybe it’s easy to adore hemp because the plant has a heart (the term for the vitamin rich edible insides of its seeds). At the PureHemp Village, run by the refining company PureHemp Technology, they’re unveiling the pride of the expo, a life-size statue known as Hemp WoMan, with an equally adorable core.

“When we made her, we made a heart. We gave it to people, and they all put it to their hearts, and now she has it inside her,” explains Jeff Cole, one of the minds behind the statue.

Crafted completely from hemp and holding a tiny Planet Earth, Hemp WoMan celebrates the idea that every living thing is connected, and that the magical plant will be humanity’s entryway to a better future. She’s part of Perfect Vision 2020, a global crusade for renewable energy that aims to unite, educate, and establish a world driven by plant-based products and biofuels.

Hemp WoMan is now on a national tour, with planned additions increasing her size until a 60-foot version of the statue is finished in 2020 for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Then she will be set aflame, symbolizing the end to an economy dominated by fossil fuels. “From this symbolic death and from the ashes,” reads the Perfect Vision mission statement, “a renewed consciousness embracing organic farming, green jobs, and a healthier planet will emerge.” (For more information, visit PerfectVision-2020. com.)

Whatever changes lie in store for the hemp industry, let’s hope the mission remains a constant. May all those dedicated to the plant remember that they are magic too, for daring to risk everything on this versatile crop. They believe in a brighter tomorrow, a future where plants and humanity have given the Earth her gift of harmony once again. Let’s keep that perfect vision in our mind’s eye and make it real. Hemp has a heart – let’s show it that we do too.