Hemp: God's Gift to Humanity

" (Bouril) His reverence of the Cannabis plant is surprising to many, but was not unusual in colonial times, especially among farmers who would obviously value a cash crop that "grows like a weed."".
             American farmers are the strongest pushers of a reform in the laws banning hemp cultivation. When farming wheat, barley, and canola, they make only about $25 dollars an acre, which is not even enough to get by for many, but in Canada, where industrial hemp is legally grown, farmers make about $225 per acre farming hemp, and the price continues to rise due to the seemingly exponential growth in demand for hemp products. (Ackerman) A single acre of hemp produces the equivalent of up to 3 acres of cotton, or up to 4 acres of trees. This is because hemp can be harvested a mere 120 days after being sown from seed. Within the next 25 years, the global demand for hemp is expected to double, and hemp is the only hope of saving the earth from the already crippling deforestation (Bouril). The legalization of industrial hemp cultivation in the United States would boost our global trade, increase national funds from taxation, and give new hope to poor farmers all around the country.
             Although the most demand for hemp is placed on the production of paper and cloth products, seemingly limitless numbers of other uses have been surfacing. Compressed hemp is twice as strong as wood. Wide use of a hemp-based wood substitute could eliminate the need to import lumber; much of which is taken from ancient rainforests. Hemp derivatives also provide alternatives to plastic, gasoline, coal, and drywall just to name a few. Hemp's wide array of uses is due to its many useable parts. The stalk of the Cannabis plant is composed of long and short fiber, as well as cellulose-rich hurds that can be made into composite plastic alternatives. Along with the industrial uses, the hemp plant is also used all around the world as a source of protein-rich food (Kane).