Is there a future for Hemp farming and Growing in the USA ?

Jim Barton is finally harvesting a crop of hemp, the cannabis variety used in colonial times to make rope, sailcloth and other goods.

But the 80-year-old Kentucky farmer isn't celebrating the successful drive to loosen marijuana laws that also moved Congress to allow pilot plots of his non-intoxicating version of the plant.

"Marijuana has always been the problem with hemp," said Barton, taking a break from a green Deere combine on a farm outside Lexington. "Marijuana is a danger. Hemp is not."

Confusion over the two plants has kept hemp-growing illegal in the U.S. for generations. As attitudes toward marijuana ease — voters in Washington, D.C., Alaska and Oregon on Nov. 4 became the latest to legalize it for recreational use — hemp has gained support for experimental legal cultivation. Success could help Kentucky farmers struggling with falling tobacco output and lower revenue from corn and soybeans.

While the size of a potential market is difficult to estimate, hemp's uses are staggering: 25,000 possible products in agriculture and food, textiles, recycling, automotive, furniture, paper, construction materials, and personal care, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some farmers are also planning to market a strain for medicinal purposes and sell it across state lines.

While pot advocates remain some of hemp's most vocal proponents, "there are stereotypes people want to walk away from," said Anndrea Hermann, president of the Hemp Industries Association, which has no position on marijuana legalization.

"We have a lot of steps to take before we are really launched onto a mainstream scale," she said.

Blurred lines between hemp and marijuana literally stunted Barton's first crop, as a shipment of seeds was delayed by drug- enforcement officials and this year's planting got in later than desired, creating plants about half as tall as hoped.

Hemp was a major crop in the United States from colonial times until the mid-1800s, when other crops became more lucrative. Planting revived in World War II, peaking in 1943 after the Japanese takeover of the Philippines deprived the U.S. of its main fiber for ropes and parachutes. Farmers, including Barton's family, grew it at the urging of the government to help win the war.

The market collapsed afterward, as competitors regained market share and new types of fibers were developed. Legal restrictions also expanded with concern over marijuana use. Plantings disappeared altogether by the late 1950s.

Now, recreational use of pot is legal in Colorado and Washington State and at least 30 states have some form of decriminalized or medical pot, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

A farm bill passed this year permits pilot projects in 14 states, including Kentucky, for hemp.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who opposes legalization of marijuana, touted his support for hemp in his successful re-election campaign. With the Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate, he's in line to become majority leader.

Hemp is grown in more than 30 nations, led by China. Even though it couldn't be grown in the U.S., sales of hemp products, such as oilseeds and fiber, reached $581 million last year, up 24 percent from a year earlier, said the Hemp Industries Association, a trade group.

"I see hemp's future as one where it's not a hemp protein bar, it will just be a protein bar," said Hermann, the group's president. "The product won't be 'hemp,' it will be a naturally gluten-free, lactose-free, high-amino-acid oil. Hemp happens to be an ingredient."

Traveling among test plots planted in combination with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Joe Hickey is seeing two decades of advocacy bear fruit. Hickey was with actor and marijuana activist Woody Harrelson in 1996, when the star of "Natural Born Killers" and "Cheers" was arrested for planting four hemp seeds in a field about 50 miles southeast of Lexington.

"I was the one who called the cops on him," Hickey chuckles, remembering the preplanned role he played in a milestone event publicizing the pro-hemp cause.

The crop he fought for is now legal — and has buyers. Hemp Oil Kentucky, based in Lexington, last week announced that Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap and Nutiva, an organic-foods company, agreed to buy their products. And Hickey's no longer calling the cops on Woody. The two are now business partners at Baswood Corp., which develops wastewater-treatment technology.

Hickey shakes the pollen off a hemp plant in a secluded field, sending a white cloud of dust into the air.

The pollen is a key reason why authorities shouldn't fear his hemp fields, Hickey said. Marijuana relies on unfertilized female plants, which have the highest levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that gives that plant its euphoric effect. Hemp, which has negligible amounts of THC, uses male plants that can fertilize marijuana via pollen drift, wrecking their THC content in the process.

"Give it three generations, and all the THC would be gone," he said. "You want to destroy outdoor marijuana fields, grow hemp everywhere."

Tom Hutchens, a retired tobacco breeder now trying to adapt foreign hemp varieties to U.S. growing conditions, calls himself a realist.

Acceptance of hemp fostered by changes to marijuana laws is a double-edged sword, he said. Attitudes toward the drug could reverse, setting back hemp. And opponents are watching for mistakes — anything that confirms to them that if one is illegal, the other should be, too.

The only way to instill confidence will be tight regulation of hemp, and strict separation from marijuana, Hutchens said.

That's not as easy as it sounds. Legal hemp complicates marijuana eradication by making it more difficult to identify the illegal crop, said Jeremy Slinker, commander of the Kentucky State Police Cannabis Suppression Branch.

This year, the agency relied on the state's Agriculture Department to keep track of pilot-project hemp plots. With GPS coordinates for each field, distinguishing hemp from marijuana was manageable as he and other officers flew helicopters overhead.

Yet GPS can be off by a few hundred feet. In one case, suspected marijuana was growing near a legal hemp field — by the time officers were able to say with certainty which was which, the suspicious crop had been harvested.

Meanwhile, neighbors of hemp-growers would call police to report marijuana cultivation, leading to investigations that a year ago would have been simpler. "We'd find it, we'd eradicate it, and we'd arrest someone," Slinker said.

Such problems would multiply as hemp production expands, he said.

"We are all completely new to this," he said. "Criminals always find new tactics, and we don't have the time or resources to become hemp inspectors."

Even legal marijuana, should that become prevalent in the future, would likely be regulated differently from hemp, making law-enforcement headaches inevitable.

"We're kind of learning along with the test-growers," he said. "In one year, two years, we'll have better answers."

Choosing friends carefully will be crucial to industry growth, said Ken Anderson, chief executive officer of Original Green Distribution, a Minneapolis provider of hemp-based materials such as drywall, marketed as a sustainable, natural fiber. When Minnesota enacted a medical marijuana law this year, the state asked Anderson for advice on operating its state dispensaries.

Anderson refused.

Crusading for hemp is his life's passion. "My business has nothing to do with marijuana," he said. "The two need to be considered separately," which he said is a challenge given what he calls a "fight-the-man" constituency of drug-legalizers among hemp's proponents.

"At a certain point, you have to work with the man," he said. "That's when you'll start to see the scale this industry can achieve."

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What Studies Say So Far about Hemp CBD

By Robby Gardner November 18, 2014

In the United States, hemp is often confused with marijuana. It’s a consumer misconception that has, for decades, slowed the market potential for hemp in the food, dietary supplement, textile, and even lumber industries. The dietary supplement industry, in particular, has a lot to gain from hemp, and not just with hemp oil and hemp protein. A substance called cannabidiol (CBD) has shown nutritional potential for years, yet the taboo around Cannabis has kept CBD off the radar. Now, with hemp gaining a better reputation, it looks as though its little compound is finally poised for big market growth. And much of that growth could be in stress and anxiety formulas.

What Is CBD?

CBD is a phytocannabinoid that is found in industrial hemp and marijuana, which are two different varieties of theCannabis sativa plant. The current market for CBD as a dietary supplement is based on industrial hemp, not marijuana, because marijuana also contains significant amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a phytocannabinoid that is psychoactive and, thus, capable of making a person high. Industrial hemp contains only negligible amounts of THC—no more than, say, poppy seeds contain opiates—and so it will not get you high. The plant is, thus, safe for human consumption and useful for components including CBD.

While CBD is not psychoactive like THC, it can still have a profound influence on the human brain, but first—is CBD legal?

Legal Status of CBD

In order to understand if CBD is legal for sale and consumption, one must look at the legality of hemp oil, which can be tailor-made for high concentrations of CBD.

Hemp oil is listed on the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule (with no restrictions on CBD content) meaning that hemp oil is a legal U.S. import. This is important because federal law prohibits the farming of hemp in the United States. Hemp can only be purchased as an import. Some state laws override this federal law, but most of these, for now, just legalize hemp farming. At the time of this writing, Colorado and Kentucky are the only states that have laws permitting the farming and sale of hemp, and these are both very recent laws. The market for U.S.-grown hemp, thus, relies almost entirely on legal imports from established markets. Canada, Europe, and China are some of the world’s biggest hemp producers, so they control the U.S. market supply and will for at least a while longer.

As long as CBD-rich oils are imported, or farmed in states where cultivation and production is permitted by state law, CBD-rich hemp oils are legal. But they are not legal if their THC content is above 0.3%.¹ This threshold keeps the distinction between hemp and marijuana in place.

Scientific Studies on CBD

As for how CBD works, CBD and other phytocannabinoids influence the brain by interacting with the brain’s very own cannabinoids, called endocannabinoids.

“Generally, phytocannabinoids like CBD can help to restore a more balanced ‘tone’ within the endocannabinoid system,” says Stuart Tomc, vice president of human nutrition for CBD oil supplier CannaVest Corp. (San Diego). “As such, CBD may positively, broadly affect various processes that control brain signaling, via neurotransmitter function, ion channel and membrane dynamics, inflammatory responses, and even gene expression.” It’s worth noting thatCannabis compounds aren’t the only ones capable of interacting with the brain’s endocannabinoid system. Compounds from flax and Brassica species, for instance, have shown potential to interact with the endocannabinoid system, too.^2–3 With that said, why is this brain system so important?

The endocannabinoid system has broad influence over areas of the brain involved in sensations such as pain perception, movement, emotion, cognition, and sleep. For this reason, the endocannabinoid system likely has big sway over some brain health conditions. A blockage of cannabinoid receptors called CB1 receptors has been linked to behavioral effects consistent with antidepressant activity.⁴ Enhancement of anandamide, the first discovered endocannabinoid, may relieve chronic pain associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.⁵ Post-traumatic stress disorder appears to involve cannabinoid pathways, too.⁶

For all of the ways the endocannabinoid system can influence brain health, CBD’s own interaction with the endocannabinoid system could translate into some very significant health effects, and previously published studies so far offer positive indications. For extensive reading, a 2012 review of CBD studies provides a thorough overview of most of the existing human clinical trials (34 in total) on CBD for healthy and/or clinical patients.⁷ Here are some of the trials that stand out.

Anxiety

To explore the impact of an ingredient on anxiety, scientists often first look at that ingredient’s impact on cortisol levels in the human blood after ingestion. Cortisol levels are heightened when animals are under extreme duress, and when Brazilian researchers investigated the effect of CBD doses on human cortisol levels in 11 volunteers in 1993, they found that CBD decreased cortisol levels significantly more than placebo. CBD subjects also reported a sedative effect from the treatment.⁸

Also in 1993, the same researchers compared the effects of CBD and two anxiety medications, ipsapirone and diazepam, on a group of 40 healthy individuals assigned to a simulated public speaking test. Using a Visual Analogue Mood Scale (VAMS) to assess personal anxiety before and after the public speaking test, the researchers determined that diazepam lowered anxiety before and after the test, while the ipsapirone and CBD only lowered anxiety after the test.⁹ Years later, in 2004, another team of Brazilian researchers analyzed CBD, but they upped the dosage by 100 mg (now 400 mg of CBD). Compared to placebo, subjects in this study reported significantly decreased anxiety and increased mental sedation. Brain imaging tests suggested that such effects were mediated in specific regions of the brain.¹⁰

Aside from a potential influence on healthy volunteers, CBD has shown some promise in subjects with established social anxiety disorders. Two studies in 2011 yielded favorable results for CBD supplementation in this type of population. In the first study, CBD use was associated with decreases in subjective anxiety and was accompanied by (presumably significant) changes in regional cerebral blood flow.¹¹ The second study tied CBD to reduced anxiety and discomfort in response to a simulated public speaking test.¹²

Curiously, the presence of CBD alongside THC, in marijuana, has even shown potential to alleviate THC-induced anxiety and psychosis.^13–14

Sleep

Early research suggests that CBD consumption can also affect sleep in a positive way—in particular, it may block rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—but such an effect may be more related to CBD’s anxiolytic (anxiety-inhibiting) properties than direct sleep regulation, per se.¹⁵ While the basis for this CBD-and-sleep theory is largely made in rodent studies, some research has been done on sleep-impaired but otherwise healthy humans.

In a 1981 Brazilian study, researchers at the Escola Paulista de Medicina in São Paulo assigned 15 insomniacs to a CBD dose (ranging between 40 mg and 160 mg), placebo, or nitrazepam, a hypnotic drug indicated for relief from anxiety and insomnia. With the highest CBD dose, sleep significantly increased, although dream recall was reduced, compared to placebo.¹⁶ The reduction of dream recall is presumably due to a reduction of REM sleep, wherein dreams are most active.

Also relating to sleep, somnolence, a state of feeling drowsy or sleepy, has been reported with CBD consumption. While the onset of somnolence may help humans sleep, such an effect should also be examined further for the sake of other CBD uses not related to sleep.

Schizophrenia

In light of the notion made earlier that CBD may attenuate the psychotic effect of THC, such anti-psychotic potential might conceivably help subjects with schizophrenia. This population can be burdened by acute psychosis, but also by anxiety.

Unfortunately, the outcomes from CBD studies on schizophrenia patients are a mixed bag. Where a 2009 German study found 600 mg of CBD to be as effective as amisulpride (an anti-psychotic drug) in reducing psychotic symptoms after four weeks,¹⁷ a Brazilian case series in 2006 found CBD well-tolerated but not necessarily effective for treatment-resistant schizophrenia.¹⁸ And of two studies conducted in 2010, one found CBD useful for managing schizophrenia, and the other did not.^19–20

Market Outlook

The ongoing CBD research discussed herein provides broad market potential for the CBD supplements already in trade today. While concerns such as stress and poor sleep may provide avenues for selling CBD oils to the general population, manufacturers can also capitalize on some much more particular health concerns. Epilepsy, a health condition not discussed in detail here, provides one of the biggest opportunities for CBD today. In fact, the state of Missouri passed a bill earlier this year that legalizes the sale of “hemp extracts” containing CBD as prescribable medicine, but only for children with a rare form of epilepsy called intractable epilepsy.

Creating demand for CBD oil shouldn’t prove difficult, but creating a pro-hemp industry around the world is still a challenge.

“There are many international markets that are well ahead of the game when it comes to CBD,” says Andrew Hard, public relations director for CBD oil supplier HempMeds (Poway, CA). “Unfortunately, the United States is a huge influence on drug policies internationally, which has probably kept these [other] markets from growing as much as they could. We’re hopeful that as the attitudes and laws towards Cannabis in the United States change, the world will adjust accordingly.”

Fortunately, the laws are already changing, and none have proved so significant for hemp as the 2014 U.S. Farm Bill. Signed by President Barack Obama at the beginning of the year, the Farm Bill contains a provision that legalizes hemp research pilot programs in states where cultivation is legal under state law. Through state and university agriculture departments, interested parties can now cultivate hemp and start to learn about its local harvest and local marketability. Since climate and soil conditions are far different in the United States than they are in, say, Canada, this research phase will help industry determine just what U.S.-grown hemp is made of. One thing about U.S. hemp is certain, though: it can be bred for high amounts of CBD.

Robby Gardner
Associate Editor
Nutritional Outlook magazine
robby.gardner@ubm.com

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Hemp Is on its Way to Your Car Battery?

The first digital-age domestic hemp crop is being harvested as I write. The subtle decrease in seismic activity currently puzzling Virginia geologists can be traced to Thomas Jefferson ceasing to spin in his grave for the first time in 77 years.

For a century USDA biologists conducted taxpayer-funded hemp cultivar research for farmers, after all. They did this in a Virginia meadow that is today the Pentagon. And why wouldn't they, in support of a key crop supplying the Navy with rope and earning millions for farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky (when millions meant something)?

Then there was this weird quirk (Google "cannabis prohibition" if the cause of the quirk is news to you), and it took a tucked-in provision in the 2014 federal Farm Bill to allow hemp research to restart.

As I learned while researching my latest book, Hemp Bound, this longest utilized of agricultural products (today defined as "cannabis with less than point three percent of psychoactive THC") is offering up a genuine opportunity to provide food and energy independence for the U.S. and beyond while stimulating a multi-billion-dollar agriculture-based economy. It might even lead to fewer resource wars. Just that.

This is what happens when you cultivate a plant for 12 millennia. It develops a broad range of helpful properties. Want some in-the field proof?

Last week, on a suspiciously hot late September morning, I was standing in the middle of a two-acre hemp plot in Sterling, Colorado, absentmindedly nibbling ripe, Omega-balanced seeds right off the flower, while conducting an interview. I was surrounded by hemp plants taller than I. Every now and then a piercing train whistle from Warren Buffet's BNSF nearby freight line interrupted the bee chatter.

Bill Billings, John Deere ball cap-wearing president of the Colorado Hemp Project that had commissioned this field from 67-year-old local farmer Jim Brammer, was answering my question about how the fiber side of this harvest (from a Chinese cultivar) was going to be used.

"Supercapacitors," he said. He said it off-handedly. What struck me was the absence of braggadocio. It was like he was suggesting the crop was going to be used for livestock bedding (a profitable, if longstanding fiber app for hemp in Europe and, starting in 2015, the Thoroughbred market in Kentucky).

Supercapacitors are next-generation battery storage components - the kind of technology that's going to allow a solar-powered ranch like mine to charge a week's worth of energy from an hour of sunlight. Seems the ridged shape of hemp, when reduced to nano-sized carbon atom sheets (called graphene), causes it to outperform previously leading modes of experimental (and, by the way, environmentally unfriendly) energy storage at, according to a paper delivered at the 2014 meeting of the American Chemical Society, 1/1000th of the cost. Just that.

Billings and the deciders at the Boulder-area tech company with which the Colorado Hemp Project is partnering for the Sterling harvest asked me to keep the specifics out of this piece because the deal's still being finalized. But the buyer is an established player in the nano arena and its CEO told me via email, "We're interested in hemp because we believe hemp will change the way energy is created, charged, and stored."

Brammer, the overalls-clad farmer who sowed this Sterling crop, told me that hemp drank half the water the previous season's GMO corn crop did. He also applied no pesticides or fertilizers to the hemp, and the dang crop in places was 10 feet tall. "I didn't put nothing but water on this field this year," he said.

And the plants were so flower dense! Canadian farms harvest an average of 800 pounds of hemp seed per acre, leading to $250 per acre profits right from the field. That's five times soy profits. Those 800 pounds per acre, by the way, fetch north of $20 per pound retail. That's why in this Tri-cropping model I hype vertical control of the industry by production communities: we're talking $336,000 in revenue for a 20-acre hemp farm in Vermont. And that's just for the seed.

Beyond the raw seed itself, value-added products like hemp protein juices and the Slovenian hemp/clay/mint toothpaste my family is plowing through at the moment just increase the earning potential for today's struggling farming communities.

The Canadian industry is growing 24 percent per year. It's poised to pass a billion dollars in revenue itself this year, its 16th in the modern era. Crew told me Canadian hemp oil (and seed cake) processors can't keep up with demand. This is good for American farmers.

It's also good for the planet: while all this money is being made, putting small farmers back to work, hemp is cleaning monoculture-damaged soil via its famous phytoremediation qualities. And as Brammer confirmed, no harmful pesticides are being added. "None needed," says the Canadian Agriculture Department page dedicated to the plant.

Hemp is already changing the playbook for the embarrassingly low one percent of Americans who farm today (down from 30 percent when cannabis prohibition began in 1937). Sustainability mixing with profitability - this is why it matters that Brammer was seeing what a non-GMO crop can do. Sterling, Colorado is in Logan County, a part of the state so conservative that 42 percent of county voters chose to secede from the rest of the state last year. I'd seen this kind of rural local pride in Kentucky and Belgium in recent weeks as well: hemp is off the table as a culture war issue.

In the Bluegrass State, it's a Kentucky Heritage issue for the former world hemp industry leader. Those heady days are still in the cultural memory. Don't try to trash talk the cannabis plant in Lexington, in other words, where I attended a hemp industry meeting on the 28th floor of the Lexington Financial Center Building last week. There pinstripe suits were the norm, a Republican state senator (Paul Hornback) was in attendance, and hemp bullishness was de rigueur.

The Colorado Hemp Project seeds, by the way, were scrumptious, and imported versions of it are already in your supermarket, at that $20 a pound. Hang tight. Local hemp is on its way. I can introduce you to the farmers. For now. Soon you won't need my help.

I knew as I munched that I'd be looking back in a few years in awe at how fast the U.S. hemp industry has grown even from these impressive beginnings. Colorado, Vermont and Kentucky, the three most active hemp states of the 19 with hemp cultivation laws this inaugural post-Farm Bill season, have, combined, fewer than 2,000 acres planted this year (both of Hemp Bound's 2013 hemp farming heroes, Michael Bowman and Ryan Loflin, were at it again in '14 as well). Colorado is the only state that permitted commercial cultivation this year, ahead, let us hope briefly, of federal law. "For research purposes" is still the law of the land.

Research plots though they may be cultivating, farmers in Kentucky have also been allowed to sell their harvest. In fact, every molecule of seed and fiber from every hemp field I visited this debut season had a buyer. That's both saying a lot and not. It's not much acreage, but it's a dang good way to look back on an industry in 20 years: every single farmer always has had a buyer for everything she grew.

Furthermore, I think we'll see an impressive 15-fold increase in hemp acreage in 2015, to 30,000 cultivated acres.

More even than Canadian processor Crew's plea in Hemp Bound for American hemp cultivators to meet the double-digit increase in demand for the seed harvest, I love seeing the "hemp farmers wanted" page on Vermont oil processor American Seed and Oil's web site. This industry is hiring!

And it is comprised of classic American go-getters. My email inbox just pinged with a cc:d note from 40-year-old Kentucky farmer and non-profit executive Mike Lewis, an Army vet whose Growing Warriors project is providing some of the hemp fiber that will go into the paper for a coming project of mine. He can get the fiber to the pulp mill "in a couple of weeks," he said to Morris Beegle, the fellow pioneering domestic hemp printing care of his Colorado Hemp Company. Think of the carbon-savings when not only is the entire publishing industry tree-free, but the hemp pulp doesn't need to be shipped to or from overseas.

"But, hey," you might be asking, "Is the infrastructure in place to develop a new industry, albeit derived from a very ancient ag product that was successful from Neolithic times through 1937?"

All I had to do to answer that question in the Sterling hemp field was turn around. Remember those startlingly loud BNSF train whistles? Their sources were half mile-long lines of freight cars chugging by every 20 minutes, in easy walking distance from where I stood stuffing my face with protein and magnesium.

I predict that within the next two decades, today's domestic diesel-powered transportation grid (including trucking) will be at least partly powered by U.S.-grown hemp oil. This, I hope, will be part of a transition to a hemp graphene-based electric transportation system charged by the sun and wind, supplemented by hemp biomass power at a distributed, regional, community-owned grid system. This is safer for America than one centralized master grid.

Furthermore, the fracking rigging with which the cars were loaded down this September day (a fracking industry employee at the Sterling field with me kept pointing out "directional drill pipes" and "flex drill collars" in some of the open BNSF cars, and I could see multiple active fracking rigs scarring the landscape on the drive from Denver) will give way to trainloads of hemp seed and fiber by the millions of tons. It's win-win. Trains and trucks powered by plentiful, domestic, carbon-friendly hemp, delivering lucrative hemp to markets worldwide. Even the hemp-harvesting tractor bodies will be made from hemp fiber. If this sounds crazy to you, next time you're in a Mercedes, kick the door panel. It won't dent or budge: it's made partly of hemp fiber today.

But how do we get there? What does a hemp-intensive economy look like on the ground? To answer that, we head 1,100 miles east from the Sterling food/battery field. I learned when I set-out to kick petroleum in 2006 for an earlier book that such a big slice of the project we humans have in front of us (if we want to survive) involves developing regional economies -- food economies, energy economies, industrial economies. Think of this as the dawn of the post-Globalization era.

Because of what all my research concludes is this locavore imperative, it shouldn't have surprised me that another indelible memory from the Hemp Harvest Tour went down on the farm of a Kentucky veteran who began fighting for food security when his brother came home wounded from Afghanistan and had to apply for Food Stamps. This became what you might call the Hemp Heritage branch of the tour.

On a more properly autumnal afternoon, I wound south from Lexington through hills and hollows to the Rockcastle County farm that the bearded Lewis has turned into hemp headquarters for the Growing Warriors food security project of which he is executive director. There at New Constellation Farm I found myself in the barn holding hand-broke hemp bast for the first time. Lewis and I had just processed the fiber in question.

We did it care of a wooden hemp break. These are simple levered devices about the size of a horse that have been used for a few millennia to remove the plant's valuable bast (long) fiber after the outer bark softens in the field through a process called retting. After the bark is peeled and the bast fiber removed, the shorter hurd fiber is caught in a bin underneath the machine, for use in applications like hempcrete (a building mixture comprised of hemp hurd and an organic binder like lime that insulates better than fiberglass and is all the rage in Europe) and the above-referenced livestock bedding.

The break we were using was a shiny new device built by Lewis' farm manager Kevin Lansi based on a traditional and ubiquitous design like the 70-year-old one Kentucky hemp pioneer Craig Lee and my pard Mose Putney had just discovered in the barn of a 5,000-acre antebellum hemp plantation that's today the Walnut Hall Thoroughbred Ranch. Lee and Putney had kindly invited me and my Kentucky host Josh Hendrix (founder of the Kentucky branch of the Hemp Industries Association) along on their sleuthing.

A mechanized but expensive machine called a decorticator allows farmers and processors to skip the risky and time-consuming field retting stage. Without one of those doo-hickies, the harvest relies on muscles, rather than electrons. But I was surprised to find that retting hemp fiber isn't that hard. I kind of expected that it would take a hundred sharecroppers a month to process a pound of fiber. In fact, a play-by-play goes like this:

Lift hemp break lever. Lay handful of retted hemp stalks on the platform below. Clomp clomp clomp with the lever. Easily pull off bark, exposing treasure of the world's strongest natural fiber therein. Add to pile.

I recall that the moment the first tangly cord of that Kentucky fiber hit my hand in the Growing Warriors barn my palm enacted a sort of cinematic double take. That's because it was soft as silk and stronger than steel. Believe me, I tried to rip it, karate chop it and stomp it.

What shocked me was not that hemp's durability rep was deserved (I'd held the production line bast fiber that goes into those Mercedes door panels), but that Kentucky farmers were nailing it right out of the gate. "I do a lot of reading," Lewis admitted. Still, I thought this field-retted, hand-processed hemp had to be inferior to what the experienced big guys were doing in Europe.

Nope. This bundled skein of fiber was good enough for that most ancient and demanding of hemp applications: textiles. Listen up, struggling South Carolina clothing mill communities: later that day, a local seamstress named Stephanie Brown picked up a armful of said fiber from Lewis. "This'll be on my loom tomorrow," Brown told me proudly.

And so an industry returns. Sure, we're likely to soon be talking about machine-processed hemp by the thousands of tons. That's terrific. What Lewis, Brown and crew showed me was a start, from (modern) year one. As Newton teaches us, launching is the hardest part. Once you do, everything is scalable.

For Lewis, as important as hemp is, even more important is developing a rural locavore industry of any kind. "Kentucky is lucky because our topography long ago created a network of small farms, rather than huge plantations," he told me as we strolled New Constellation's four hundred eighty six acres (two dedicated to hemp this year, twenty-five next year). "Hemp is perfectly suited here for a broad range of regional industries made up of networks of independent farmer/entrepreneurs."

Vertical control of your industry: work for it in your own community. Then you don't have to worry so much about Wall Street's vicissitudes.

Start with rural community-owned hemp processing that breeds vibrant regional economies. Add local energy through biomass gasification, hemp-based batteries to store it, drought-resistant plants, soil phytoremediation and seed oil superfood to the mix, and forget fantasy. There is no eventual actual hemp role in our future too grandiose to astound me at this point.

In other words, get ready for an entire hemp market sector that will be included in the top-of-the-hour business wraps. The reality of hemp on the ground as its first federally authorized crop in the 21st century is harvested has exceeded even my most sanguine expectations.

Phew. It wasn't a mistake to have (human and goat) kids in the 21st century. After I milk the goats this morning, I'm off on a hike up the eponymous Funky Butte with both species, and I'm feeling more confident about my replicants' future than I have since last year's second "Millennial" flood this decade wiped out the Funky Butte Ranch driveway again.

Part of the reason for my confidence is I know that from the top of the Butte I can map out the five acres I plan on devoting to hemp the moment full commercial legalization arrives. Call your Senators: S-359 takes us beyond "research" cultivation and gets us all planting: The Industrial Hemp Farming Act. God Bless America and God Bless Those Hemp Farmers.

Postscript: Everlasting thanks to Josh Hendrix and Jason Lauve, without whom the harvest tour wouldn't have happened. I'll never forget it. Other than when some leftovers exploded in Josh's Ford around a tough Bluegrass State curve near his grandfather's ranch, there wasn't an un-blissful moment on the whole tour. Josh, 29, is founder of the Kentucky branch of the Hemp Industries Association and Jason's hemp CV is too long to list: suffice it to say the forty-four-year-old was a principal player in hemp's legalization in Colorado, and as I write is on his way to a hemp decorticator facility in North Carolina. He is also one of the key players that made the 2014 Sterling crop a reality.

Doug Fine is the author of Farewell, My Subaru, Too High to Fail, and most recently, Hemp Bound. Books and films: Dougfine.com Twitter: @organiccowboy.

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