US Senate votes to legalize hemp farming

[SBH]

The US Senate recently passed a bill to legalize growing industrial hemp which could become a very good crop for Puna farmers.

https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/ind...production

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/394741...-commodity

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomangell/2...883664418a

“The sheer size of the hemp market is staggering. The total domestic value of hemp retail products sold in 2015 was $573 million, according to the Hemp Industries Association. In addition, the U.S. annually imports $500 million of hemp and hemp-related products, adds Alex Green, GenCanna’s head of media and communications. The nutraceutical active ingredient global market is $20 billion per year, while the pharmaceutical active ingredient global market is $13 billion per year.”

https://about.bgov.com/blog/hemp-advocat...prospects/

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Hawaii started a program a few months ago. There was a news story recently that they’ve already approved a number of applicants. From their press release, May 18th:

The State’s Industrial Hemp Pilot Program will begin accepting applications for licenses to grow the crop beginning today. The objective of the pilot program is to allow the cultivation of industrial hemp in Hawaii for the purposes of agricultural and academic research. The Hawaii Department of Agriculture (HDOA) will open the program incrementally beginning with the June 2018 licensing period and will issue licenses on a quarterly basis. There is an application fee of $500 and it is non-refundable.

https://hdoa.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploa...able-1.pdf

I alternate between thinking of the planet as home — dear and familiar stone hearth and garden — and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Today I favor the latter view. The word “sojourner”... invokes a nomadic people’s sense of vagrancy, a praying people’s knowledge of estrangement, a thinking people’s intuition of sharp loss: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” - Annie Dillard

[kalakoa]

There is an application fee of $500 and it is non-refundable.

Therefore, the program is a success.

[ElysianWort]

Sounds like one of the baby steps towards full national legalization.