Wednesday, September 5, 2012

#5: Hemp: Saving our Earth and Stimulating our Economy


The short video Hemp for Victory was made during World War II to encourage American farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. During this time many of the fibers we used came from other countries, and they were short in supply. The video goes through the steps of creating hemp fibers to make things such as thread and ropes. I think that hemp should still be used regularly today, and as the video mentions Kentucky provides the perfect soil for the crop to flourish. Is it is not hard to maintain and creates rich soil for the next crop to be planted in.
            If we were to move to mainly hemp fibers grown within America we could continue to stimulate our economy. As it stands right now hemp products are very expensive because farmers do not subsidies for growing it. If the farmers were able to have the government back them up on growing hemp it could easily become one of the cheaper products to produce and buy, thus creating more stimulation in our economy. Plus if the hemp is grown within our country by American farmers the money stays here in America.
There are many uses for hemp, many of them more environmentally friendly than our current solutions. Houses are now being built with hemp, hemp plants can lift heavy metals from polluted soil. Hemp paper is stronger and also does not require us to cut down as many trees and wait for more to grow. And hemp biomass fuel produces no sulphur and can be effectively used as a relatively clean power source due to its 95% fuel to feed ratio. I think because the government has such a bad taste in their mouth from hemp being associated with “smoking weed” they have a hard time giving money to farmers that do produce it. If they even just gave it a chance I think they would easily realize that hemp would become a large cash crop for America.

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