Dear Reader,
Welcome to the fifth issue of The Vote Hemp
Weekly News
Update! Every week or so, members of the Vote
Hemp
Board of Directors and our Media Team will help
choose the best hemp news for your
perusal.
The big news this week is the North Dakota
Department of Agriculture's hearing on their
proposed industrial hemp farming rules. Please read
our press release "Public
Hearing on Hemp Farming in North Dakota to Feature
Largest Hemp Seed Contractor in North America"
in the right column. For more information on the
proposed
rules, please see the Vote Hemp North
Dakota page.
Also included herein are three other stories. The
first concerns the possibility of North Dakota becoming
competition for hemp growers and processors in
Canada. This reality is still a ways off, but we are
getting closer. The second covers the talk given by
Dr. James Klotter at the Bluegrass Heritage Museum
on the history of hemp in Kentucky. The last story
is a somewhat humorous one about some low-THC
ditchweed (feral hemp) that was growing outside the
Federal Courthouse and new Federal Building in
downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Vote Hemp continues to make great strides
towards
our goals of creating a free market for industrial hemp
and changing current law to allow U.S. farmers
to grow the crop. Please make a
contribution
to Vote Hemp today to help us in this important
work.
We need and truly appreciate your support!
Best Regards,
Tom Murphy
Weekly News Update Editor
Canada May Get Competition |
|
By Angela Hall
The Leader-Post
June 10, 2006
Saskatchewan farmers who grow industrial hemp
may
have competition from North Dakota in the coming
years.
About 24,000 acres (9,700 hectares) of hemp was
grown in Canada last year, with roughly one-third of
those acres in Saskatchewan. Commercial hemp
farming
is nonexistent in the United States, where the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA) [sic] doesn't currently
recognize
the crop apart from marijuana.
North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger
Johnson is proposing rules for the production of
industrial hemp, including a requirement that
producers consent to a criminal background check and
fingerprinting.
However, approval from the DEA is still
essential. Johnson and agriculture commissioners
from three other states recently met with the agency
to make their case.
|
Hemp Once a Boon for Kentucky |
|
The Winchester Sun
June 9, 2006
For years it earned Kentucky farmers more income
than tobacco, and a historical study of hemp is
chiefly a Kentucky story, Dr. James Klotter told a
Bluegrass Heritage Museum audience Thursday
night.
Klotter, editor and author, former executive
director of the Kentucky Historical Society, state
historian and professor of history at Georgetown
College, noted that long before the time of Christ,
the Chinese used hemp for paper. Later Europeans
employed it in sails and ship rigging and early in
America's history the British government ordered it
grown here so a supply would be available for
maritime use, he said.
Kentucky produced most of the hemp crop in the
United States, he said, growing three-fourths of it
in 1840 and more than 90 percent of it about half a
century later.
|
Courting Ditch Weed |
|
By Shannon Stevens
KSFY News
June 8, 2006
If it looks like a weed and smells like a weed,
it must be a weed, right? Someone spotted suspicious
buds growing outside the Federal Courthouse and new
Federal Building in downtown Sioux Falls. Someday
the beds will be flowers or grass, but somehow we
don't think developers had this kind of grass in
mind. Just to be sure it wasn't some other weed
posing as marijuana, we had it tested, and sure
enough, it's ditch weed, or low grade pot, right
outside the very building where people are put away
for dealing it.
No one wanted to stir the pot by going on camera
and talking about the mishap, but city officials and
a developer KSFY spoke with say it's most certainly
an accident. Crews bring in dirt for major
construction projects like this one and more than
likely, the seeds were sitting in the soil, just
waiting to sprout.
|
|
Public Hearing on Hemp Farming in North Dakota to Feature Largest Hemp Seed Contractor in North America |
|
BISMARCK, ND Ñ The first in the nation
to
do so, North Dakota's Agriculture Commissioner Roger
Johnson will hold a public hearing on Thursday, June
15 about rules expected to be finalized later this
year that would license farmers in his state to grow
industrial hemp under current state
law. The hearing begins at 10 a.m. in the North
Dakota Heritage Center, Lecture Room B, located at
612 East Boulevard Avenue in Bismarck. Members of
the media are invited to attend this historic stride
towards bringing back hemp farming in the United
States after 50 years of prohibition. The proposed
hemp farming rules may be viewed online
here.
At the hearing a spectrum of agricultural interests,
including contractors, farmers, market experts and a
certified agrologist, will testify about their
personal experiences growing industrial hemp in
Canada which expects to plant an estimated 40,000
acres this year.
[More...]
|
|