Hemp Seminar in Colorado

Caren Kershner in the Valley Courier has a great story about a hemp event in Colorado, which is getting ready for hemp farming - or at least a battle with the federal government which insists it is illegal...lots of this is covered satirically in Doonesbury, with slacker Zonker going out to grow 'artisinal cannabis', i.e. pot, so that really does miss the point. One would think that such a liberal cartoonist would have a better handle on the issue, but one has to put in to focus the reality of a lot of these lefties - they are in it for the $ and so cannot be trusted to act. Else they would have come along decades ago and not just this year! But it is nice to have them finally take notice, and always good to have anyone sign the petition to the White House at www.minawear.com/about-us/


VALLEY — Along with the passage of Amendment 64, which regulates the use of recreational marijuana, came an unexpected bonus for the state of Colorado. Farmers now have the option of once again growing industrial hemp.

But just what does that mean — isn’t hemp a close relative of marijuana? Yes, but with some significant differences. Although both are classified as Cannabis sativa L., industrial hemp has very little of the psychoactive ingredient THC. Industrial hemp also has an incredible number of uses, from foods to fuels. This month local residents will have a chance to learn more about this useful cousin of marijuana from some of the movers and shakers in the hemp industry.

Hemp Cleans is an organization that was formed for the purpose of initiating legislation to allow for the study of hemp cultivation as a means of remediating toxic soils. They have cooperated closely with Senator Gail Schwartz and the Rocky Mountain Farmers’ Union in crafting industrial hemp regulations pursuant to Amendment 64. They have traveled throughout the state speaking with farmers and other interested parties about the opportunities hemp provides for agriculture, industry and the environment. Now they are coming to speak with the Valley community.

Jason Lauve, Lynda Parker, and Erik Hunter will be visiting the north end of the San Luis Valley on the evening of Friday, May 17 in the Moffat School Cafeteria. They will offer a wealth of information based on their combined experience, addressing legalities and agricultural requirements, as well as hemp products and markets in the US. For those who don’t know, the school is just off Highway 17 in the town of Moffat.

The community will welcome them beginning with a ‘hemp’luck (in lieu of a ‘pot’luck) dinner , in order to give local participants an opportunity to meet the speakers on an informal basis before the scheduled presentation. Please bring a dish to share. Paper plates, cups and utensils will be provided. Doors will open at 5 p.m. with dinner to follow from 5:30 -6:30 p.m. The presentation will start promptly at 6:30 p.m. A question and answer session will follow the presentation. All are welcome, especially those who wish to learn more about this remarkable plant or wish to become involved in growing hemp locally. Detailed information will be available.

A second presentation is scheduled for the morning of Saturday, May 18 in the Trinidad State Junior College auditorium, 1011 Main St., Alamosa. Doors will open at 10 a.m. and the presentation will begin at 10:30 a.m. Once again, there will be a question and answer session following the presentation and at this presentation, hempseed cookies will be available for sampling.

Presenters are asking for a $5 donation from participants to cover the travel costs of the presenters, who are volunteering their time. However, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Come and find out why industrial hemp, the crop of the forefathers, is poised to make a comeback, and why Colorado is leading the way.

Jim Hightower on hemp

The hemp issue is in the news more and more - now Jim Hightower is talking about it. The article below makes note of yet another petition, this one asking the president to mention industrial hemp in his 12 Feb State of the Nation speech. The first petition is one asking him to make hemp legal - this is at www.minawear.com/about-us/ - sign both! Then write your congressman. Let's make this happen!



Four years ago, first lady Michelle Obama picked up a shovel and made a powerful symbolic statement about America’s food and farm future: She turned a patch of White House lawn into a working organic garden.
That was a great move, earning kudos from just about everyone this side of Monsanto and the pesticide lobby. But now, as she begins another four years in the people’s mansion, the first lady is probably asking herself: “How can I top that? What can I do this time around to plant a crop of common sense in our country’s political soil that will link America’s farmers, consumers, environment and grassroots economy into one big harvest of common good?”
Thanks for asking, Ms. Obama, and please allow me to intrude into your thoughts with a one-word suggestion: hemp. Plant a good, healthy stand of industrial hemp next to your organic garden!
This would, of course, drive the anti-drug zealots up the wall (a good place for them, I think). “Holy J. Edgar Hoover,” they’d scream, “hemp is a distant cousin of marijuana!”

 

Well, yes, but the industrial variety of cannabis lacks the psychoactive aspects of pot, so their hysteria is misplaced. Industrial hemp won’t make anyone high, but it certainly can make us happy, because it would deliver a new economic and environmental high for America.
Plus, hemp production is firmly rooted in American history. Question: Besides being founders of our republic, what did Thomas Jefferson and George Washington have in common? Answer: Both farmed hemp. Most of America’s founders were strong promoters of this extraordinarily useful agricultural crop, with Jefferson declaring it to be “of first necessity ... to the wealth and protection of the country.”
The first draft of our Constitution was written on hemp paper. “Old Ironsides” was powered by sails of hemp cloth. As late as World War II, the government urgently pushed farmers to grow the crop as part of a “Hemp for Victory” program.
So why are American farmers today prohibited from producing this patriotic, profitable, pesticide-free plant? Political nuttiness. Most recently, in a frenzy of reefer madness, U.S. drug police decided that President Dick Nixon’s Controlled Substance Act of 1970 not only outlawed marijuana, but also its non-narcotic cousin, industrial hemp. If ignorance is bliss, they must’ve been ecstatic, yet their nuttiness remains the law of our land today.
While our nation is the world’s biggest consumer of hemp products (from rope to shampoo, building materials to food), the mad masters of our insane “drug war” have lumped hemp and marijuana together as “Schedule 1 controlled substances” — making our Land of the Free the world’s only industrialized country that bans farmers from growing this benign, profitable, job-creating and environmentally beneficial plant.
Thus, the U.S.A. is consuming millions of dollars’ worth of products made from hemp, that hemp comes from producers in other countries, because our farmers aren’t allowed to grow it in the U.S.A. and reap the economic benefits here at home.
The good news, though, is that a wave of sanity is now wafting across America. In Colorado, for example, farmer Michael Bowman and Denver hemp advocate Lynda Parker helped pass Amendment 64 in last fall’s election. While it legalizes personal pot use, which got all the media attention, it also directs the legislature to set up a program for “the cultivation, processing and sale of industrial hemp.”
Bowman now hopes to be the first American farmer in generations to plant a legal crop of it. Appropriately enough, he hopes to do so on April 30 — the 80th birthday of family-farmer hero and hemp champion Willie Nelson.
Even red states like Kentucky are on the move. Its Republican ag commissioner, backed by its Chamber of Commerce, is campaigning to legalize hemp farming there, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is co-sponsoring a national bill with Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden to take hemp off the controlled substance list.
As Bowman puts it: “Can we just stop being stupid?” To help move us in that direction, he’s seeking 100,000 signatures on a online petition requesting that President Barack Obama include the words “industrial hemp” in his Feb. 12 State of the Union speech. I’m sure the president would appreciate my advice on this, so I suggest he say: “First thing tomorrow morning, Michelle and I are going to give a symbolic jumpstart to the development of a thriving hemp industry in America by planting a stand of it on the White House lawn.”
To sign Bowman’s petition, click here to go to the White House website.
— Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow. Click here to contact him, follow him on Twitter: @JimHightower, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

Article in Denver Post

An article appeared earlier this month in the Denver Post, titled: :"Hemp industry poised to grow in Colorado with new legal status," by Steven Raabe. This is the third article on hemp in Colorado this month (scroll down a few to read). That state is making more noise, and along with California, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina - is part of a block of southern states that are making waves politically about hemp and medical cannabis. Quite a number of previous posts have mentioned all of these states - and expect a number of future posts to do the same as Hemp for Victory tracks the progress of hemp in the US - including backing the petition by Texas based company Minawear - www.minawear.com/about-us/ is where to go if you want to sign it to make hemp legal at the federal level. Below is the article on hemp activism in Colorado:

No, not pot. The fanatics get their kicks from buzz-free hemp.

A genetic cousin to marijuana, hemp is a look-alike plant with one key difference. It contains almost no THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that makes users high.

But what hemp lacks in THC, it makes up for by being a remarkable workhorse of industrial utility. From auto bodies to textile fibers to nutrition bars — even as a cleaner of toxic contamination — hemp struts its stuff.

Boosters say hemp is poised to become a big industry in Colorado because Amendment 64 allows its legal cultivation pending legislative authorization.

Lynda Parker's eyes light up, the all-natural way, when she talks about it.

"My friends tell me I'm too evangelical," says the retired Dex saleswoman. "But there's hardly a problem in the world that can't be solved with hemp."

She ticks off an abbreviated list, just a tantalizing hint, of the practical applications. "Hemp is food, animal feed, fiber, fuel, shelter," she says. "It cleans the air, the water, the soil. Hemp could be enormous for Colorado because we're the first state to legalize it."

Hemp's most common uses are food products derived from seeds and seed oil. Fiber from the stalks of hemp plants are used in clothing and industrial applications, including as a strengthening agent in concrete.

Parker is part of an early-stage, loose-knit coalition formed to raise hemp's profile. Other members range from a medical-marijuana activist to a Ph.D. candidate at Colorado School of Mines. Their common thread is a belief that hemp is going to be big — bigger, perhaps, than legal marijuana.

The Colorado Center on Law & Policy estimates that state-sanctioned marijuana sales initially could be as much as $270 million a year, producing state and local taxes of $47 million a year. Yet a mature hemp industry — from farm to factory to storefront — might be 10 times larger than legal marijuana, backers project. Could anything possibly dampen the potential of this beneficial botanical?

Well, yes. The federal government for one.

Like marijuana, hemp is still illegal in the eyes of the feds, despite Colorado's clear electoral mandate to legalize it.

Federal officials have said little about how they will react to Colorado's new law. Some analysts say it's unlikely they will target individual users, but the outlook is less certain for federal crackdowns on larger enterprises, such as farm-scale growing.

Hemp backers say that would be an extreme injustice, given that hemp has no narcotic properties. But federal law does not differentiate between the cultivation of hemp and marijuana. Even in Colorado, the Amendment 64 implementation task force is unlikely to set up hemp regulations until next year because it has its hands full with the complexities of marijuana rule-making.

Test crop planned There are plenty of hemp products on the market — clothing, food, beverages, construction materials. But because of the federal prohibition on growing, all hemp must come from imported sources. Canada is the largest supplier to the U.S.

If Colorado were to establish a hemp-farming industry, it would be limited by a federal ban on interstate transportation of the crop. The harvested hemp would need to stay inside Colorado, where currently there are few major industrial customers.

That limitation does not deter Mike Bowman, a Yuma County farmer and alternative-energy activist. He plans to plant a test crop of 100 acres of hemp, possibly as early as this year, on land typically reserved for corn.

Hemp requires much less water than corn, Bowman notes, thus providing a potential solution to over-pumped aquifers on the eastern plains.

In Canada, he said, hemp is a more profitable crop than wheat. According to the Alberta provincial government, hemp seed production can yield up to $1,000 per acre. Canadian wheat in 2012 yielded an average of $315 an acre. But the threat of federal intervention in the U.S. and the misperception that equates hemp to marijuana are formidable hurdles.

"If hemp had a different name, it would be a lot easier," Bowman says.

Parker and other hemp proponents plan to visit eastern Colorado farm towns this week to talk up the potential.

Supplies of Colorado-grown hemp would be welcome by Ari Sherman, president of Boulder-based Evo Hemp. In a small commercial kitchen, Sherman and his four associates make nutrition bars containing hemp seed, fruits and nuts.

The company imports several hundred pounds of seed each month from Canadian suppliers.

"The transportation costs are huge," Sherman says. "It definitely would help us to have supplies from Colorado. And to create a product where the majority of the ingredients are from Colorado would be great."

The 1½-year-old company distributes about 700 bars a week to small grocers. It recently signed a deal to supply Whole Foods stores in the Rocky Mountain region and is talking with King Soopers parent Kroger Co.

There's money to be made in hemp, but that's not what drives industry proponent Parker.

"I'm a product of the '60s," she says. "If we make some money, I won't reject it, but I do this out of my passion for hemp."