Factoid #7 – Popular Mechanics and the Billion Dollar Crop

Yes, it is a fact that back in 1938, Popular Mechanics ran a story announcing that even then, hemp was a billion dollar cash crop. Still, after 80 years of deception, our government has failed to allow Americans to bank on it, while China, India and even Canada import over 600 million dollars worth of hemp products into the US robbing equally millions of American jobs.

Hemp -The Billion Dollar Crop
Even Popular Mechanics has known for decades that hemp was a staple in the field of a growing technology. Making such a claim was intended to educate the world of hemp’s potential until anti-marihuana sentiment won out when pharmaceuticals, tobacco and synthetic fabric manufacturers became too powerful. Very little education was known of the distinction between the two varieties of cannabis. Since the leaves are identical, hemp was wrongfully lumped in with the THCA strain of marijuana.
Popular Mechanics would go on to showcase the Soy/Hemp car made by Henry Ford in 1941. Hemp was also used to fabricate other parts of Ford’s cars, including seats, insulation, etc.
We are all waiting for the day when Popular Mechanics can finally write a follow-up on industrial hemp as America’s newest cash crop where it rightfully belongs. In the meantime, foreign countries continue to cash in on America’s need for the products while we are not allowed by our own government to opening cultivate it. Yet the hypocrisy continues.
Perhaps a “Trillion Dollar Crop”? If Congress and the Senate could put aside politics and realize the economic potential of industrial hemp farming in America, the results could be exponentially rewarding in terms of jobs, GDP and trade balance.
https://youtu.be/JbeFqGArfRU