Fields of Green – Reflections on the Hemp Industry

Cannabis will change the world.

Prohibition has robbed humanity of being able to explore the many benefits that cannabis has to offer. We already know that cannabis has been used for thousands of years for medical, spiritual, and recreational proposes.

Having dived into the exploding hemp industry over the past 5 months, I have just been amazed at the growth, talent, and new discoveries we are making. The passage of the 2018 Farm Bill is ushering in a new era of cannabis that could not have been directly foreseen.

The craft hemp flower industry and community is vibrant and growing every day. Small, family owned farms are churning out federally legal hemp that is of impressive quality. While I have only reviewed flower from two farms, there are dozens more who are turning out amazing product, check out the hempflowers subreddit. We are now getting to the point where growers are experimenting with cross breeding and creating new and more amazing strains for us to enjoy.

The legal status of hemp allows for inter-state commerce, something that the medical and recreational marijuana programs in states do not get to enjoy. This makes prices competitive and encourages healthy growing competition. While there are of course bad actors in the industry, they get found out and don’t last very long.

This is how the cannabis industry should be. Vibrant, craft, and with a decent community to share knowledge and experiences. I am amazed at the amount of new things I have learned and discovered about this plant in just the past few weeks.

With the proliferation of hemp comes additional research. We are able to isolate and explore the minor cannabinoids that were never before available for us to study or use. CBN, CBG, and CBC are being isolated and extracted for their health benefits while variants of delta-9 THC, which live in a quasi-legal state, are also being extracted and shared. Delta-8 THC products have hit the market and it looks like soon THCv products as well as isolated THCa products will follow suit.

Personally, I’m excited to explore these discoveries and find new ways to enjoy the many benefits of the cannabis plant. We will come to a point soon where the legal hemp market will intersect with the federally-illegal marijuana market and hopefully legalization will happen. It is unsustainable, in the long term, to only have half this plant federally legal and the other half not.

Cannabis is one plant and needs to be treated as such.

Venture on, fellow Cannanauts!