Liberate Hemp to Revive Small Farms

 

I recently had an epiphany about all the anti marijuana hysteria we are being bombarded with lately. We have all heard the arguments. The smell permeating the air in legal states, the dangerous potency of modern strains, and all that. There might be some validity to those points, but it mostly smells like phony hysteria. Try living downwind from a feed lot, or a sewer works, or a freeway, or just on a typical downtown street. Lots of objectionable smells and fumes there, and yet no one wants to hear about it, or base policies on it..

I bought my first hemp t-shirt the other day and, unexpectedly, it launched an episode of eye opening revelations. I was surprised at what a superior cloth it is compared to the cotton or polyester shirts I am used to. It just feels better. More solid, less sweaty, and all the other things it was advertised to be. So much so that I have started to consider investing in small scale hemp cloth production.

As I consider investing in hemp cloth, some real social benefits of hemp come to mind. First of all, it could produce a lot of jobs, whether in cloth production, paper production, or a myriad of other products. That is in addition to the jobs on the farms that grow it. Most of the jobs, and money, would stay in the local region, and certainly stay in the national economy.

Another benefit would be that it could be grown in small batches by small farmers. That is if hemp were not so tightly regulated (which makes it both risky to grow, and prohibitively expensive). However, with those severe regulations, and the high cost of getting a federal license to grow it, that happy dynamic of small farm cultivation is not likely to get traction. With all the federal regulation it is rendered into just another crop that will be economically viable only when grown in large plots on mono culture agri business “farms.” So the dream of a small scale hemp facility operating in close cooperation with local small farmers will remain just that; a dream, until the reefer madness hysteria around cannabis is overcome.

The big ramification of the anti cannabis hysteria is the THC content allowed in hemp plants. It has to be no more than .3%, and that has to be measured by dry weight, with the tested sample coming from the flowering top of the plant.

To put this in context, top shelf cannabis, sold out of dispensaries in states where it is legal, tests out at between 25-30%. Low end flowers and what is known as popcorn tests out at 10-15%. There is almost no market for anything less than 5%. So .3% is a ridiculously minuscule standard, far less than just one tenth the potency of anything of marketable quality.

What's more, farmers who have tried to raise a compliant hemp crop find that the THC level peaks just at the end of the season. If, just before harvest, (when it must be tested) it goes over that standard, the crop must be destroyed in an expensive process. The upshot is that few farmers will take the risk. So those who would set up hemp processing plants are likewise put under an artificially risky government regimen, with undependable supply lines, and thus are also not likely to enter into the business.

Over the years, “deep thinking” pot heads have conjectured that it was the tobacco and alcohol industries that worked so hard to keep pot illegal, to eliminate that form of competition. Other, even “deeper” thinkers speculated that it was the cotton and lumber interests who were using anti cannabis hysteria to keep hemp from competing with their products.

All of that thinking seems conspiratorial and suspect, because those concerns are run by hard headed business people. Business will, if there is profit to be made in some alternative to their product, usually put some of their eggs in that competitive basket. Tobacco and alcohol producers could, and probably do, buy marijuana farms. Lumber and cotton growers could also invest in hemp production, and would be hyper-aware of any emerging stream of profit.

Leaving those pot induced brain storms behind, there still must be some reason behind the reefer madness hysteria, and that reason does seem to be directly tied to preventing a free market for hemp. It is asserted here the reason is that the quasi prohibition of hemp is a wicked, long term attack on the small, self sufficient family farm.

For someone with a small, self sufficient, farm the traditional practice was to grow most, if not all, of the food for your own consumption, and then sell any excess. It is a feasible plan in most places, but what is needed to make the plan work is a dependable cash crop so that cash needs of the otherwise self sufficient farm can be met.

Hemp was always that dependable cash crop. It is extremely drought resistant, and when it was legal, there was always a ready market for the crop, because paper gets used up, and clothes wear out. In many ways, legal hemp was an economic pillar of the small family farm. It truly appears that ginning up this anti marijuana hysteria has always had the nefarious purpose of making small, self sufficient, sustainable family farms not economically viable.

Which contributes to making healthy rural communities not viable. Combine that with federal farm price subsidies, which drive up the cost of land by making farming less risky for corporations, and the decline of the family farm and rural communities seems inevitable, if not intentional.

All of this seems to have had the goal, long since accomplished, of literally changing the American landscape. The mass of the people have been driven into the cities, making almost everyone dependent on corporate controlled food supplies. Much of that food is artificially unhealthy, which also drives the people into dependence on the dubious blessings of the petroleum based medicines produced by the big pharmaceutical companies. All of this is very bad for the health, of both the people and the natural environment.

We need to rethink this whole system, and we should start by rethinking hemp. Stop allowing the truly hysterical voices opposing marijuana to bamboozle us into effectively prohibiting the cultivation of hemp. Liberating hemp can be a vital first step in re-invigorating the small family farms and rural communities of America.

MAGA Red Wave in '26 and Housing

 

My last post explored the possibility of, instead of just eking out a win, or more probably eking out a loss, in the 26 midterms, MAGA riding a red wave to a permanent cultural shift if we handle the illegal immigration mess with a hard headed, justice tempered with mercy, approach. Similarly, housing is another challenging issue which MAGA could convert into a culture shifting red wave if we could rid ourselves of the fear the establishment Republicans use to blind us to our own best interests.

Wall Street is basically bamboozling Main Street on this because the middle class concern about the housing market is all about preserving property values. That middle class obsession with property values is not only misplaced, but it puts many of the good people of this country on the side of wickedness.

Many of the working people, the middle class, have a large share of their wealth tied up in the value of their property. Because of that, many are scared that if truly low cost housing was allowed, via a truly free market, that the equity in their house might decline, and therefore their wealth,(their old age savings) might be lost, or diminished. So the middle class can be counted on to defend strict, value enhancing, zoning laws. This, even though such laws create homelessness by preventing low cost housing from being built. The moral blindness that drives this thinking doesn't make these middle class folks exactly wicked, but it does make them complicit in wickedness.

The thing these “good” people don't see, their blind spot, is that the real value of their house won't be diminished by allowing more low cost housing to be built. Just as in the case of a growing economy, when it is said a rising tide lifts all boats, so a lowering tide will lower all boats. What that means, in this context, is that the real wealth, not the monetary wealth, of middle class housing won't really decline if more low cost housing is built.

By way of explanation, let's be real here. Most of us will live in our house until we either die, or we move into a nursing home. If, when we die and pass that property on to our heirs, it will be worth just as much housing as it is today, even if the monetary value of all housing has declined. So the heirs will be able to use it as housing, or transfer the equity to other housing, at just about the same rates as today.

The same holds true if one must convert that wealth into x number of months in a nursing home (with the government taking over the costs when that equity is expired). The folks working in those nursing homes will be living in housing that is less expensive if the market has declined, and so the number of months (x) that old house will pay for in a nursing home will be about the same.

Ont the other hand, the real bad actors in this scenario, the investors, the developers, and the bankers might lose a great deal of real wealth if the housing market was more free and fair. Since they expect to convert their property wealth in to monetary wealth, a free and fair housing market, with declining monetary value, will probably cut into their vast wealth. Stop and consider the depth of wickedness they are engaged in here, and that they scare the middle class into supporting.

In the name of propping up property values, they move heaven and earth (and zoning boards) to prevent the building of almost all low cost housing. To do so, they enlist the previously mentioned middle class, who happily carry this wicked water. Then we have a situation more cruel and barbaric than the most barbarous cultures in history. The poorest of the poor are denied the God given right to erect the most basic structure to get out of the elements.

“Oh no,” we are pompously informed ,”we can't allow people to live like that.” Meaning, we can't let them build the most efficient housing they can with the materials nature and God provide. Instead, we force them to live in tents, or sleep on urine and feces encrusted sidewalks in the most crime ridden areas of our major cities. How terribly compassionate of us.

If any low cost housing is built, it is way overpriced, owned by the government, and rented out to only the depressed and despairing. Then it is used to micro manage their lives for as long as they will put up with the micro management.

What's more, this greed driven squelching of a free housing market has profoundly negative effects on the morality of our nation. The nearly impossible price of home ownership has driven most young people out of the market. That has resulted in a steeply declining marriage and birth rate as responsible young people put off starting a family until it is affordable. This situation is a dire long term threat to our civilization.

Even further, since young people still have the same sexual drives as previous generations, the seeming impossibility of achieving a stable family life has caused the dubious allure of various forms of sexual deviance, from heterosexual fornication on down, seem reasonable. Thus much, if not most, of the sexual deviance afflicting modern American society can be traced to the greed of property developers, and the middle class dupes that help them.

These days, a lot of well meaning people hoping for a moral revival will quote II Chronicles 7:14

“if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

While some few do take this sincerely to heart and try to refrain from some abiding sin, most are more focused on the wicked ways of the other fellow, including the aforementioned sexual deviance. Certainly, the wickedness of their own obsession with property values escapes their notice, and yet that, on closer inspection, is probably the very thing God is referring to, and wants us to turn from.

It would be relatively easy to change things (God willing), and it wouldn't take any big government subsidies. Just lighten up on some zoning laws, and maybe make some long needed modifications to how we allow land to be owned.

What I am referring to here is a concept I have long advocated, called micro incremental housing. Allow people, usually young people, to buy, not rent, micro plots of land, as small as 5' x8'. And then allow them to build, or have built, extremely small, but expandable domiciles on the plot of land.

With this concept, the house, and land could start very small, but by design be expandable in micro increments, as the probably low paid worker could afford it. That way, a person just getting out of school, even high school, could afford to get started in a house, which they would own and be secure in. In the course of just a few years of regular work and frugal living, they could own a small, two bedroom, two story house.

Any number of building technologies could be used for this, from hay bales, to used tires, to (as I read about) a guy in South America designed a system of adult sized lego style building blocks made from recycled plastic grocery bags. Human ingenuity is the only limit to what new uses of our high tech capabilities (3d printing) could be creatively used in this effort. The only real barrier to overcome is the wicked fear that prevents us from allowing the poor to be free economically.

As said, it won't take government involvement. No socialism needed. Just some good hearted land owners, or some visionary churches or civic organizations, offering the land for sale, by the square foot, for what it typically costs to buy agricultural land. And the original sellers will get that money back when the new owners buy the plots reserved for them.

Yes, in the name of sanitation and health, there will be some zoning required, and some water needed. While that might be a problem, in the face of agri-business use of that water for irrigation at the rate of thousands of gallons an hour, it is reasonable to assert that humans in houses should be a somewhat higher priority..

As in the case of solving the illegal immigration mess, I don't want this blog to sound like a dire warning about what will happen if folks don't listen to my ideas. Rather, think about how much this will benefit us if we would actually do it. Think of the benefits that might accrue to our society if we could do this good thing.

The young could plan on owning their own homes, at a young enough age that they can start families at a young age, as God intended. Marriage and child bearing (family formation) would increase, probably accompanied by a proportional decrease in sexual deviance. On a different note, since low paid workers could live, in these low cost houses, on a much lower wage, we would probably be able to attract manufacturing jobs back to these shores. Our workers could live on a wage that would be competitive on the world market.

Combined with tariff and immigration reforms, our economy might get to humming so well that we would want to attenuate it so as to not drive other nations into bankruptcy. That would be a nice problem to have.

All of which brings us full circle back to the mid term elections of 2026. If MAGA could do this, break the thrall that the establishment, country club Republicans have over the party by freeing the housing market, it would benefit us greatly at the ballot box. Sincerely working to break the logjam in low cost housing will attract young voters (MAGA's worst demographic) in droves. Doing it without resort to big government socialism will keep the economic conservatives on board. The only losers would be the ultra wealthy establishment, and who will they turn to? Communists like Mamdani?

To sum up, solving the housing crisis with freedom, like solving the immigration mess with compassion, could both be factors in a MAGA red wave in 26.