Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogel Bomb and in fields across the United States, hemp is about to take over. It was once a staple of revolutionary age farms. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington all grew it, and caretakers at Mount Vernon still reap it. But it was banned for decades in the United States for somewhat unfortunate association with its party
hardy cousin cannabis. But now that Congress has passed a new farm bill that contains provision that will legalize and regulate the plant, hempfields are poised to start edging out some of America's more traditional crops, from corn to cotton. The hemp plant holds great promise for belaggered farmers everywhere, though for many it remains largely misunderstood. We spoke with Corey Sharp, the CEO of Hemp Logic, which provides services
from seed to sale. The website claims to fledgling hemp farmers. Sharp said, my web traffic quadrupled right after the farm bill passed. I'm getting fifty emails a day when I was getting ten. I get asked this all the time. Does it feel like a gold rush? Yes, it absolutely feels like a gold rush. And I'm the guy supplying the shovels and the wagons and the supplieseen law allowed the growing of hemp by states and some universities for research.
The year before, forward thinking Colorado allowed a farmer to grow a hemp crop, the first in decades in a closely watched experiment. By seen nineteen states were growing hemp on some twenty five thousand acres, about three times more acreage than the year before. Now, with the passage of this new farm bill, the shackles are off sharp predicted it's going to blow. It's wide open. It's the wild wild West. We also spoke with Eric Steinstra, the president
of the advocacy group Vote Hemp. He said that in seventeen growing hemp was an eight hundred and twenty million dollar industry in the United States and that in ten years there's no telling how much that might balloon. Quote, We're going to see a multibillion dollar industry. We're going to see hemp become a full commodity where it's not now. It's not a huge crop, not traded on the exchanges that kind of thing. I think we will see markets developing products in new ways to use this crop in
ways previously not thought of. I think we're going to see this become the number one crop in the United States eventually. I believe that the rise of hemp may come and cost two crops that require lots of water and pesticides like cotton, soybeans, and corn, and the allure of hemp is strong for many reasons. It grows more quickly than crops like corn, but with less water and
fertilizer and less need for herbicides and pesticides. Sharp however, cautions that while it can grow like a weed, it must be controlled for the crop to have any value. He said, I always tell people you want to grow two hundred acres, grow too. You have to be very, very careful with the passage of the farm bill. Hemp overcomes, at least for many, a huge stigma its association with cannabis.
The two come from the same plant, Cannabis sativa, but sharing a species doesn't mean that they share a genome. A vote Hemp points out that Chihuahua's and St. Bernard's share a species too. Cannabis and hemp were lumped together in the Marijuana Tacks Act of ninety seven and again with the Controlled Substances Act of nineteen seventy, but hemp doesn't contain nearly the levels of the psychoactive ingredient tetra hydrocannabinal or th HC, the stuff that creates a high
that cannabis does. Hemp is less than point three percent t HC, according to the Ministry of Hemp. The hope from hemp backers and future hemp farmers is that with this new provision in the Farm Bill, hemp will again become legit in people's eyes, and that its myriad uses will benefit all as a food of fuel, or its fibers being spun into clothing or used in construction, just to name a few. Steinster said, it's kind of amazing
how far we've come. All of a sudden. When we started on this, people like politician Mitch McConnell had a beef with us. They absolutely did perceive this as being somehow connected to marijuana legislation. It took a lot of just basically knocking on doors, sitting in meetings, and crafting the message, focusing on the economics of this, the potential for farmers and businesses, and that was a message that resonated with members of Congress. Today's episode was written by
John Donovan and produced by Tyler Playing. For more on this and lots of other practical topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.