Friday, February 01, 2013

Hemp --biofuel? bio-plastics?


In Korea, so much stuff is made out of hemp: Clothes, rope, even shoes. It was SO useful, the early US colonists were MADE to plant it.

But now, we deliberately deny ourselves this useful plant that needs little in the way of fertilizer/pesticide all because we are somehow scared of another harmless/useless plant, Cannabis.

Treehugger.com has an interesting article on it:


Hemp, which is considered to be a wonder-crop by many, is now legal in Colorado. Voters not only gave the thumb up to marijuana in November, but also to its THC-light cousin. Since hemp has so many uses, from being an ingredient in many types of foods, to skin care creams and lotions, to paper, textiles, bio-plastics and building materials, biofuels, etc... It's going to be very interesting to see how commercial production will shape up and, hopefully, how it'll influence the mindset of the rest of the country and the world.
NPR has a great little piece about this, which you can listen to or read, and theDenver Post also weighs in on the federal-state issue:
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. (source)

read more here.

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