The Resurgence of Industrial Hemp

By Doug Fine
Published on January 8, 2021
1 / 2

Hemp's fibers are among the planet's strongest, its seed oil the most nutritious and its potential as an energy source vast and untapped.
Hemp's fibers are among the planet's strongest, its seed oil the most nutritious and its potential as an energy source vast and untapped.
2 / 2

In
In "Hemp Bound," Doug Fine learns how eminently possible it is for the long-misunderstood plant to help us end dependence on fossil fuels, heal farm soils damaged after decades of monoculture and bring even more taxable revenue into the economy than its smokable relative.

Get ready for America’s newest billion-dollar industry: Industrial hemp. Well, it’s not really new. As prohibition on hemp’s psychoactive cousin unravels, bestselling author Doug Fine explains why one of humanity’s longest-utilized plants is poised to rejuvenate the US economy. In Hemp Bound, Fine embarks upon a humorous yet rigorous journey to meet the men and women pioneering hemp’s reemergence in the twenty-first century. The following excerpt highlights a few of those hemp pioneers.

Find CBD and resources in our MOTHER EARTH NEWS Natural Health Store.

Industrial Hemp Pioneers

Dr. David West, Geneticist,

Actual Twenty-First-Century American Hemp Researcher

From his home alone in Prescott, Wisconsin, along the St. Croix River, the sixty-five-year-old West said that what is, on the surface, his unusual journey from legendary Big Ag researcher to legendary hemp researcher actually follows what for him was an obvious course. After pioneering the use of molecular markers in plant breeding (now part of the standard commercial plant identification tool kit), he “watched the seed industry get taken over by the chemical industry” in the 1990s. At the same time, he told me, “One day I saw a helicopter land in a neighboring field [in Wisconsin] to eradicate feral hemp. Now, as a plant breeder, I’m quite aware of what hemp is. I thought, What the hell is going on here?”

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368