Did anyone watch Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe last night?
It's on the Discovery Channel and it's one of my DH's favorite shows. I think I've talked about it here before. Last night's episode (it may have been a rerun) had Mike working with a farmer/stockman who raises his own grain and runs his own feedlot. Still a family farm type operation which is becoming more and more rare. The cattle were in large fenced in pens and had plenty of room to run around. Also, not the norm for a feedlot operation! The show dealt mostly with the grain bins, cleaning them, moving the grain from the bin to the feeder troughs. They talked about how hundreds of thousands of tons of corn, wheat and soybeans are fed to the cattle every year. My thought is not only could they feed lots of starving people in Africa with it (if they could get it to the actual starving people), but the excess could be made into ethanol or bio-diesel so we wouldn't be so dependent on Middle Eastern oil. But, no, all that grain goes to feed cows so the carnivorous can be happy on the way to their heart attacks and colon cancer! Such a waste. :(
I didn't see that episode, but I hear ya about feeding the starving people instead of "wasting" it to feed the livestock. People are just so close-minded about things it is ridiculous. There is a better way, but they just won't listen to us "crazy" vegans. Also, this may be totally unrelated, but I'm just running with the close=mindedness: Hemp has so many uses that if people weren't so close-minded about it, it could be a very valuable natural resource. Paper, oil, rope, clothes. There wouldn't have to be so many trees cut down if it were more accepted. The hemp that is grown for thoses purposes doesn't even have THC in it, as I understand. But just because it's related, people shun it.
I've seen a few articles about hemp. One senator up in Nebraska, I think, probably wrong, but somewhere up there, is trying to meet the Agriculture Dept.'s new rules for hemp farming. They're making him pay a huge fee for something nonrefundable before they'll consider his application and it's a sticky situation. If he doesn't pay the fee, they won't consider his application and there's no guarantee that they'll approve it and then he'd be out all that money. I think maybe hemp threatens the cotton farming interests and there's big cotton farming interests all over the southern USA. So I think they'll have a really hard time bringing hemp back. My high school economics teacher used to talk about how they used to grown hemp in Iowa (he moved from Cedar Rapids) and it went wild and was (in the mid 70s) all over the place up there. I've never been to Iowa so I don't know whether he was bullsh*tt*ng us or not. He was all for bringing hemp back way back then.
Also, this may be totally unrelated, but I'm just running with the close=mindedness: Hemp has so many uses that if people weren't so close-minded about it, it could be a very valuable natural resource. Paper, oil, rope, clothes. There wouldn't have to be so many trees cut down if it were more accepted. The hemp that is grown for thoses purposes doesn't even have THC in it, as I understand. But just because it's related, people shun it.
I haven't done any research on whether or not there is THC in hemp, but I'd be curious to know. The gov't likes you to shun that stuff if you're in the military....and I want to be on the safe side! Does anyone know for sure?
There is some THC, but a very minimal amount, as regulated by the government. I'm not sure if it's enough to show up on a blood test, however.
Industrial hemp cannot be smoked or used to get high.
There might be complicated ways to extract the little THC that is in industrial hemp, but I am sure it is neither very practical, nor very profitable.
It would take about 50 pounds of hemp to get even a little buzz :D
Well, I still think I'm going to stay away from it....Better safe than sorry! ;)