Hemp – Page 25 – US Hemp Co

1 Aug 2013

UK study shows small market for hemp

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

FRANKFORT — A University of Kentucky study concludes there is a growing but relatively small market for hemp which could offer some farmers an opportunity to grow a niche product.
But Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, hemp’s biggest booster in Kentucky, says the crop’s potential is greater if it can be produced to manufacture interior automobile components.
The study was commissioned by the Kentucky Hemp Commission on which Comer is a member after passage of legislation sponsored by Republican Sen. Paul Hornback, a Shelby County farmer, in the 2013 General Assembly.

Senate Bill 50 provides a regulatory framework for hemp cultivation if the federal government lifts its ban. (Hemp is a biological cousin of marijuana but contains much lower levels of THC, the chemical which produces the marijuana smoker’s high).

SB 50 was opposed by law enforcement agencies and Gov. Steve Beshear, fearing cultivation will complicate marijuana enforcement and eradication efforts. After the House, which originally opposed the bill passed it on the last day of the session, Beshear allowed it to become law without his signature.

About 30 countries, including Canada, European countries and China, the largest producer and user of hemp, grow it. Increasingly, domestic importers of legal hemp products have called for an end to the federal ban.

Comer and Hornback say it would offer farmers an alternative crop and make Kentucky a leader in a growing market.
“Realistically, I think it may be another option for some farmers but it’s not going to be a major agricultural panacea,” said Dr. Leigh Maynard, chairman of the UK Department of Agricultural Economics which conducted the study.

Maynard said the study indicates hemp grown for pressing into oil used in food and cosmetics might be as profitable as corn under ideal conditions, with both yielding about $200 to $300 per acre. But presently, Maynard said, there isn’t much potential for growing hemp for fiber products.

“It does not appear that anticipated hemp returns will be large enough to entice Kentucky grain growers to shift out of grain production,” the study says, “except at the highest assumed prices for a hemp seed only enterprise.”

But it goes on to say lower grain prices or higher than expected hemp yields or prices would alter that equation. It also says hemp is subject to “price volatility” as well as market manipulation by the world’s dominant producer, China.

Comer said he isn’t discouraged by the conclusions.

“It’s about what I expected,” said Comer. “There’s just nothing out there to compare it to in trying to determine a market.”

Comer said had similar studies been conducted on the potential of soybeans 15 or 20 years ago, “they would never have predicted where soybean prices are today.”
He sees opportunity in using hemp fiber to manufacture automobile interior components, stronger and lighter than plastic and recyclable. He said Mercedes and BMW are already using hemp products for interior dashboards and door panels and it could be boon in Kentucky which has three major auto manufacturers and many parts suppliers.
If a hemp processing facility were to locate in Kentucky to supply auto manufacturers, Comer said, “The sky is the limit.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom McKee, a Harrison County farmer who is also on the Hemp Commission, originally held up Hornback’s bill in committee at the direction of House leadership but eventually voted for it. He had not seen the UK report.

“I’ll be anxious to look at it,” McKee said, “but I still think a research component is needed. I hope there is a potential market, but I don’t want farmers taking a chance on something that might not work out.”
Maynard said hemp represents “another tool in (farmers’) toolboxes,” a crop which might be sold to a niche market.

He said Kentucky possesses two of three critical components needed for a successful hemp market: it has farmers and a market, which though small is growing. But it lacks the “first line processors” which could buy from farmers and then sell to those who produce consumer products.

Even if a processing facility is located in Kentucky, Maynard said, it probably won’t produce a lot of jobs, perhaps 25 to 50.

He also said Kentucky will face competition if the federal ban is lifted, not only from Canada, but from eight other states which have passed legislation similar to Kentucky’s.

Maynard said Kentucky, which was the dominant U.S. hemp producer in the 1830s and 1840s, offers promising conditions to grow hemp, but it needs first to develop seed varieties which will prosper here.

RONNIE ELLIS writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.

CONTINUE READING…

2 Jul 2013

Pissing our life away…

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

As Gatewood Galbraith once said, “Our Father’s and Grandfather’s did not go to the beaches of Normandy so that their children could piss in a cup to get a job”…

Corporate “Drug Testing” aided by Pharmaceutical Companies who develop and produce these tests have taken our very right to be able to work away. So long as they are allowed to do this our country will never be truly free and we will have not won ANY war.

The drug testing laws have forced us to be liar’s, cheater’s and last but most important – unemployed.

There is virtually no “blue collar” job for which there is not drug testing.

Everyone already knows how unfair it is to the casual marijuana smoker as the cannabinoids remain in your body for an extended length of time – which in and of itself is a GOOD thing, but Corporate Fascist have condemed us to be “worthless”, for corporate use…

Some smaller businesses may be ignorant of the fact that the “1988 Drug Free Workplace Act (DFWA)” DOES NOT require the majority of these businesses conduct drug testing. Other’s are part of the corporate majority who will adhere to drug testing to try to lower their insurance premiums and “slap the hands” of anyone who would like to use marijuana either for personal or medical reasons. They do this in order to continue the “Elkhorn Manifesto” regime to keep cannabis out of the hands of those who would attempt to put an end to the oil based society which we now “enjoy”.

It’s all about where the profit is and how far they are willing to go to keep it.

The slaves were never set free. Everyone just became “equal” in color and was run off of their farms and into the Industrial Revolution.
The slaves are us. All of us.

Until we can get the drug testing laws eradicated we will continue on as slaves long after the “law” has been changed regarding the use of marijuana/cannabis.

It may not be in the government’s best interest to keep paying for incarceration for use, but it IS in corporate America’s best interest to keep the cannabis off the shelf.

Thats life in America…let the “private sector” handle it…

Drug-Free Workplaces do NOT have to test for marijuana (Updated) – November 21, 2012 by Russ Belville

Why Employers Drug Test

Obama Administration Pushes Drug Testing in Workplace, But Not For Everybody

WASHINGTON — The government wants businesses to drug test their workers to boost productivity and reduce health care costs, according to the 2012 National Drug Control Report released Tuesday.

@ShereeKrider 7.1.13

2 Jul 2013

Pissing our life away…

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

As Gatewood Galbraith once said, “Our Father’s and Grandfather’s did not go to the beaches of Normandy so that their children could piss in a cup to get a job”…

The drug testing laws have forced us to be liar’s, cheater’s and last but most important – unemployed.

There is virtually no “blue collar” job for which there is not drug testing.

It’s all about where the profit is and how far they are willing to go to keep it.

The slaves were never set free. Everyone just became “equal” in color and was run off of their farms and into the Industrial Revolution.
The slaves are us. All of us.

Until we can get the drug testing laws eradicated we will continue on as slaves long after the “law” has been changed regarding the use of marijuana/cannabis.

It may not be in the government’s best interest to keep paying for incarceration for use, but it IS in corporate America’s best interest to keep the cannabis off the shelf.

Thats life in America…let the “private sector” handle it…

Drug-Free Workplaces do NOT have to test for marijuana (Updated) – November 21, 2012 by Russ Belville

Why Employers Drug Test

Obama Administration Pushes Drug Testing in Workplace, But Not For Everybody

WASHINGTON — The government wants businesses to drug test their workers to boost productivity and reduce health care costs, according to the 2012 National Drug Control Report released Tuesday.

@ShereeKrider 7.1.13

25 Jun 2013

Evil Monsanto Aggressively Sues Farmers for Saving Seeds

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

Farmers have always saved seeds from their harvest to sow the following year. But Monsanto and other big seed companies have changed the rules of the game.

June 20, 2013 |

The following content originally appeared on TruthOut.

There has been mixed news for the agrochemical giant Monsanto recently. On the one hand, there was the surprise announcement on June 1 by company spokesman Brandon Mitchener: “We are no longer working on lobbying for more cultivation in Europe… Currently we do not plan to apply for the approval of new genetically modified crops.”

The embattled corporation has decided to stop tilting against the windmill of European resistance to its controversial biotech seeds. Eight EU nations have already prohibited GM (genetically modified) cultivation on their territory and banned the import of genetically modified foods from abroad.

But Monsanto’s prospects in the United States took a very different turn last month when the US Supreme Court ordered Indiana farmer Vernon Bowman to pay Monsanto over $80,000 for planting its GM soybean seeds. Bowman had purchased the seeds from a grain elevator rather than from Monsanto itself, as their corporate contract requires. The seeds had been saved from an earlier crop.

For as long as humans have been growing food, farmers have saved seeds from their harvest to sow the following year. But Monsanto and other big seed companies have changed the rules of the game. They have successfully argued that they spend millions of dollars developing new crop varieties and that these products should be treated as proprietary inventions with full patent protection. Just as one can’t legally reproduce a CD or DVD, farmers are now prohibited from copying the GM seeds that they purchase from companies like Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and Syngenta.

In one sense, these corporations no longer sell seeds – they lease them, requiring farmers to renew their lease with every subsequent growing season. Monsanto itself compares its GM seeds to rental cars. When you are finished using them, rights revert to the owner of the “intellectual property” contained within the seed.

Some farmers have saved their seeds anyway (called “brown bagging”), in some cases to save money, in others because they don’t like the big companies telling them how to farm. Monsanto has responded with an all-out effort to track down the brown baggers and prosecute them as an example to others who might be tempted to violate its patent. By aggressively enforcing its “no replant policy,” Monsanto has initiated a permanent low-grade war against farmers. At the time of this writing, the company had not responded to emailed questions about its seed saving policies.

“I don’t know of [another] company that chooses to sue its own customer base,” Joseph Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety told Vanity Fair Magazine. ” It’s a very bizarre business strategy.”

Yet the strategy appears to be working. Over 90 percent of the soybeans, corn, canola and cotton grown in the United States are patented genetically modified organisms (commonly known as GMOs). The soybean variety that Bowman planted has proved popular with farmers because it has been modified to survive multiple sprayings by Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, whose active agent is glyphosate. While Monsanto claims that GMOs increase crop yields, there is little evidence that this is the case. The chemical giant turned seed company also claims that the new technology decreases the need for agrochemicals. Yet 85 percent of all GM crops are bred to be herbicide resistant, which has meant that pesticide use is increasing as a result of the spread of GM crops. What GMOs were designed to do – and indeed accomplish – is create plants that can be grown efficiently in the chemical-intensive large scale monocultures that dominate American agriculture.

Pages

View as a single page

CONTINUE TO SITE HERE…

22 Jun 2013

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Legalize Industrial Hemp

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 225-200 on June 20 to legalize the industrial farming of hemp fiber. Hemp is the same species as the marijuana plant, and its fiber has been used to create clothing, paper, and other industrial products for thousands of years; however, it has been listed as a “controlled substance” since the beginning of the drug war in the United States. Unlike marijuana varieties of the plant, hemp is not bred to create high quantities of the drug THC.

The amendment’s sponsor, Jared Polis (D-Colo.), noted in congressional debate that “George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. The first American flag was made of hemp. And today, U.S. retailers sell over $300 million worth of goods containing hemp — but all of that hemp is imported, since farmers can’t grow it here. The federal government should clarify that states should have the ability to regulate academic and agriculture research of industrial hemp without fear of federal interference. Hemp is not marijuana, and at the very least, we should allow our universities — the greatest in the world — to research the potential benefits and downsides of this important agricultural commodity.”

The 225-200 vote included 62 Republican votes for the Polis amendment, many of whom were members of Justin Amash’s Republican Liberty Caucus or representatives from farm states. But most Republicans opposed the amendment, claiming it would make the drug war more difficult. “When you plant hemp alongside marijuana, you can’t tell the difference,” Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) said in congressional debate on the amendment to the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013.

“This is not about a drugs bill. This is about jobs,” Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) countered King in House floor debate June 20. Massie, a key House Republican ally of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, opposes marijuana legalization but had signed on as a cosponsor of the Polis amendment.

The amendment would take industrial hemp off the controlled substances list if it meets the following classification: “The term ‘industrial hemp’ means the plant Cannabis sativa L. and any part of such plant, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis.” The amendment would allow industrial farming of hemp “if a person grows or processes Cannabis sativa L. for purposes of making industrial hemp in accordance with State law.” Most states have passed laws legalizing industrial hemp, in whole or in part, but federal prohibitions have kept the plant from legal cultivation.

However, the annual agricultural authorization bill subsequently went down to defeat in the House by a vote of 195 to 234. Sponsors of the amendment hope that it will be revised in conference committee, where it has strong support from both Kentucky senators, Rand Paul and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The legislation, originally offered as the bill H.R. 525, was sponsored by Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who represent states where voters recently considered ballot measures that legalized marijuana within their states, a fact King pointed out in House floor debate. Voters in Colorado and Washington approved the ballot measures in 2012, but voters in Oregon rejected a ballot measure that would have legalized cultivation of marijuana.

Recent polls have indicated that most Americans want legalization of marijuana, as well as hemp. Though support for marijuana legalization is by only a slim majority of the public, there’s a larger divide among age groups, with younger voters more heavily favoring legalization.

None of the debate on the amendment related to the constitutional authority of Congress to ban substances. Nor did any congressman reference the first time Congress banned a drug — alcohol. At that time, Congress followed proper constitutional protocol to amend the U.S. Constitution first, giving it the legitimate power to ban alcohol (i.e., the 18th Amendment). No comparable constitutional amendment has been passed for hemp, marijuana, raw milk, or any other substance prohibited by the federal government.

21 Jun 2013

Marijuana fed pork becoming highly successful

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

SEATTLE, Washington (KING) – It’s a different kind of head shop found just down the stairs from the Pike Place market.

It’s the BB Ranch selling something that’s even better than bacon. It’s marijuana fed pork.

“The pig farmer has been feeding them marijuana for the last two and a half months of their life and they’ve been happy as hell,” said William Von Schneidau, owner of the butcher shop.

This is all thanks the voters of Washington who legalized marijuana in the last election. That’s when Von Schneidau saw the opportunity wasn’t just blowing smoke.

“And then all of a sudden marijuana, you know, became legal a few months ago and somehow, I don’t know how, I met the commercial growers and they needed to get rid of some of their stuff. So rather than going into the compost pile we said, ‘Lets try it out.’ So here we go,” said he said.

The pigs are raised in a farm about an hour outside of Seattle. In fact, these pigs are on the rock star diet. The mix contains drugs and alcohol, the booze coming by way of the spent grains from Woodinville’s Project V Vodka.

The pot pigs grow to be extra fat and really happy according to the farmer who wants to be anonymous.

Here’s the tough part of the story. The pigs love eating weed, and what gives me pleasure is BBQ pork.

So I brought some pot pork belly to my buddy Steve Freeman at Celtic Cowboy BBQ in Edmonds. And we decided to smoke it.

Steve rubbed the belly, which is basically the part that bacon comes from, with spices and tossed it into the smoker for about 45 minuets. He then seared it on a skillet.

Steve says the results are stunning.

“That’s some pretty happy pork right there. He’s done a good job with that. I really like that,” he said.

And that takes us back to the happiest farm in Washington. Yes, the pigs will become BBQ one day.

But if you gotta go, why not go out on a high.

CONTINUE READING/VIDEO….

7 Jun 2013

Ky.’s senators blocked in effort to legalize hemp

posted in: Industrial Hemp | 0

By BRUCE SCHREINER, Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s U.S. senators suffered a setback Thursday in their efforts to re-establish industrial hemp as a legal crop, but they vowed to continue their campaign after getting blocked as they tried to attach hemp language to the Senate farm bill.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul said they would oppose the Senate farm legislation.

Their amendment would have removed federal restrictions on the domestic production of industrial hemp. The crop once flourished in Kentucky until it was banned decades ago when the federal government classified it as a controlled substance related to marijuana.

Hemp has a negligible content of THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.

The push by McConnell and Paul to legalize industrial hemp comes after Kentucky’s legislature passed a bill this year to allow the crop to be reintroduced in the Bluegrass State, but only if the federal government lifted its prohibition on the plant.

“Although we’re disappointed in the lack of consideration of our industrial hemp amendment, it is only the beginning of our legislative efforts,” the Republican U.S. senators said in a joint statement. “We are committed to continuing to look at all options to win approval of this important legislation for job creation in Kentucky.”

McConnell and Paul blamed majority-Senate Democrats for blocking consideration of additional amendments to the five-year farm bill, including their hemp proposal.

“This year’s Senate farm bill is in need of serious improvement and the refusal to allow better ideas and more sensible allocations of taxpayer dollars to be considered is very disappointing,” McConnell and Paul said. “We will be opposing the Senate farm bill as a result.”

The Courier-Journal first reported the senators’ reaction to the hemp amendment’s setback.

The farm bill advanced on a 75-22 procedural Senate vote Thursday that sets up a vote to pass the measure next Monday. The bill would cost almost $100 billion annually and would set policy for farm subsidies, food stamps and other farm and food aid programs.

Republican House leaders have said their chamber will vote on the bill, possibly as soon as this month.

In Kentucky, the industrial hemp movement has firmly taken root as the plant’s advocates hope for a breakthrough at the federal level.

State Agriculture Commissioner James Comer says its reintroduction would give farmers a new crop and would create processing jobs to turn the fiber and seeds into products ranging from paper to biofuels. Dozens of countries already produce the crop.

Comer went to Washington to meet with federal officials to lobby for a change on hemp policy at the federal level.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear let the state’s hemp bill become law without his signature. The Democratic governor said he wouldn’t sign the legislation out of concerns, shared by some in law enforcement, that marijuana growers could camouflage their illegal crops with hemp plants.

« 1 … 22 23 24 25