A brief look at hemp

This is the first post for the page so to begin this blog we'll take a brief overview of hemp and its great potential.

Now hemp is a product many people automatically associate with marijuana. The first thing that anyone needs to know about hemp that it is not marijuana. Marijuana is a cannabis plant that contains a Tetrahydrocannabino (THC) content of 3% or higher. Hemp is a cannabis plant that contains a THC content of 3% or lower. Many of you may be asking why the THC content matters when differentiating between hemp and marijuana. The answer is simple, with marijuana the psychoactive effects of THC have an effect on the mind, with hemp it's quite the opposite. When you smoke hemp you'll just get a headache. No high, no feeling of euphoria, and no munchies. It is important to make a distinction between the two because hemp is illegal to grow because of the paranoia over marijuana back in the 1930's.

The value of hemp has been realized for thousands of years. From the early Chinese to the early United States of America, hemp was grown because of how valuable of a resource it is. Hemp can be used to make clothing, rope, soap, lubricants, biodiesel, food, paper, and plastics. These are only a few of the products that hemp can make. Popular Mechanics published an article back in 1938 called "Hemp: The New Billion Dollar Industry" and it said that hemp could be used to make over 25,000 different products.(Just to remind you , a billion dollars was much more money than it is today. Even with inflation taken into account you'd need to look at many other factors. All we can say for now that hemp would of had huge economic potential.)

One of the most appeasing things about hemp is that it's easy to grow. It needs little to no pesticides, is good for crop rotations, and will choke out the weeds. If you know anything about how the current farm industry is now it's unsustainable, pesticide and fertilizer driven, and is harmful for the environment. Hemp is a crop we could use for crop rotations to put nutrients back into the ground. At the same time we're producing a valuable crop that has great potential for industrial use.

Remember, this is the first post for the blog. I plan on going into more detail with each subject that was listed I plan on going into more detail. I also plan on writing about other sustainable options for the future. The world we live in today isn't sustainable. Media pundits and politicians might say otherwise but if you truly look at it you'll realize that if we don't take care of our environment we have no future. Hemp is part of the solution, not the entire solution.