Modern Cannabis Infused Lifestyle

The New Billion Dollar Crop that Popular Mechanics Predicted in 1938 is Becoming a Reality 80 Years Later

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Hemp has always been a very important plant for humanity and used for a huge variety of purposes throughout history.

Besides its use as food and medicine, hemp also produces outstanding quality long fibre that has been used for centuries for clothing, sails and ropes among many other things.

The challenge with hemp fibre used to be the lengthy and heavy labor intensive process of retting.

Retting is basically a rotting process when moisture and microorganisms separate the fibre from the woody core of the hemp.

The retting process required the farmers to leave the crop out on the field for several weeks, and turn it from one side to another depending on the weather.

This process is not only lengthy and hard work, but it also depends heavily on the weather and therefore carries risk. Too much rain could damage the crop for example.

This process had stood in the way of ‘industrializing’ hemp… until the machine called decorticator was invented and fine tuned during the first third of the 1900’s.

This machine was improved and patented in the US by George Schlichten in 1919.

Schlichten, a German immigrant had spent nearly two decades and a huge sum of money to create a machine that can separate the fibre from the woody plant tissues.

By the time his creation was ready, he had a hard time finding investors in the post war economy and he passed away in 1923.

Germany's hemp industry

The decorticator resurfaced as a ‘new invention’ in the 30’s and that is when ‘The New Billion Dollar Crop’ article came out in the Popular Mechanics magazine.

The excitement of the article was based on the decorticator, that could finally streamline hemp fibre production.

As the title of the article suggests, the science and technology magazine predicted that hemp would become the new billion dollar crop due to this machine.



The article explains that how great of an opportunity this is for farmers as it is a great crop to grow, but the extra work and risk with ratting made it less attractive.


It made a lot of sense to grow hemp and the authors were very positive it would take off from there.


There were two obstacles listed in the article that stood in the way of hemp.




The federal regulations mentioned in the article were the Marijuana Tax Act that President Roosevelt signed on 2 August 1937 and it ultimately ended up outlawing hemp production in the United States.

Now, as the prohibition is tumbling down after 80 years of anti cannabis propaganda with ridiculous campaigns such as the Reefer Madness misinformation campaign, we are re-discovering hemp and cannabis and hemp is becoming the billion dollar crop that the Popular Mechanics magazine predicted it to be in 1938.

Ironically, the Popular Mechanics magazine was acquired by Hearst in 1958. Hearst is the publishing company founded by William Randolph Hearst, who used his media empire to change public opinion about cannabis and demonize marijuana.

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