The Would-Be Billion-Dollar Crop
Tracing hemp’s complicated history—and future—with industry pioneer Eric Steenstra
In 1938, Popular Mechanics dubbed hemp the “new billion-dollar crop” with over 25,000 uses and applications. That level of popularity never materialized. “If you look at it, it’s an amazingly beneficial plant. The fiber produces incredibly nutritious seed. You’ve got the cannabinoids. You can make building materials from the woody core. Even the roots have value,” said Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, a DC-based advocacy group.
Eric was first turned on to the material when his friend Steve DeAngelo shared a book with him called The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer. “Jack was the guy. He had rediscovered hemp in the late ’70s, early ’80s. Without him, I don’t think any of this would have happened,” Eric said. “He self-published his book and went all over the country to college campuses to talk to anybody that would listen and try to get the book out there. Through that process, he was able to educate. From what I understand, there were millions of copies of the book eventually sold. It got published in multiple different languages. It was across Europe and a number of other areas. The book had a massive impact.”
While still not ubiquitous today, hemp is making its way into the mainstream. Fashion designers like Mara Hoffman are utilizing the natural plant fiber in their collections and beauty brands are infusing products with its oils. In its heyday, hemp was used for far more than that. The first American flag was sewn from its fabric and Henry Ford built a car using a plastic made from hemp. What accounts for its disappearance in between?
“You really didn’t learn about hemp in school,” he said. “It just kind of disappeared after hundreds of years of being part of American history. I mean, hemp was grown all over the U.S. before World War II.”
“We like to give the analogy that you’ve got chihuahuas and St. Bernards, or sweet corn and field corn. They’re in the same family, but they’re different.”
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 set off the downfall of hemp. All of a sudden, if a farmer was growing it, he had to pay a tax and get a stamp that said: producer of marijuana. “Before that happened, they never thought of what they were growing as marijuana,” Eric said. “And so there was a stigma attached to it.”
According to cannabis historian Emily Dufton, speaking on Trace Materials podcast, the cannabis plant, and its derivatives, became a political issue. “Generally, when political officials need to stay relevant, they create new crises to focus on,” she said. When prohibition ended in 1930, Harry Anslinger became the Treasury Department’s first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. With racialized threats of marijuana use coming from the South, he found a new substance to go after. “Basically the ‘reefer madness’ of the1930s, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, and all of that is born out of Harry Anslinger’s desire to keep his job — and he does for 30 years.”
“If you look back, you can see elements of deep racism involved in the original prohibition of cannabis,” Eric said. “There were these news stories trying to whip people up in the fear that if the youth or Black people were to smoke cannabis or hemp or whatever they called it at the time, that they were going to come after your daughters. It’s really horrible.”
For a brief time during World War II, when abaca fiber imports from the Philippines were cut off, the government brought hemp back. “After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the U.S. realized that they needed a source of fiber for ropes and for parachute webbing and such,” Eric said. In response, patriotic farmers planted 36,000 acres of it; but the enthusiasm was short-lived. “As soon as the war was over, they kind of dumped all that up, but they built all these plants to process it. It was a shortsighted way to look at it.”
Eventually, by 1970, the Controlled Substances Act basically explained that “marijuana covers all cannabis plants. They didn’t even make any distinction for hemp anymore,” Eric said. This was the legacy of Anslinger’s campaign — one that Jack Herer spent years trying to reverse.
After reading up on the tumultuous history of hemp, Eric went on to cofound a sustainable clothing company with his friend Steve called Ecolution. With all the challenges they faced — back then, every company was importing hemp, as it was banned stateside — they and their peers gathered in Arizona in 1994 and starting a trade group called the Hemp Industries Association. “By 2000, a group of us from the industry decided to start Vote Hemp as a separate arm to work specifically on trying to get the law changed. It was initially an all-volunteer effort to see if we could push this forward and try to bring hemp back as a crop.”
The initial goal was to legalize hemp, bring back commercial farming, and push back against any laws or efforts holding back the industry. “By 2014, we were successful in getting state pilot programs into the Farm Bill, and in 2018, we got full legalization. So we’ve shifted our footing. We’re continuing to work on improving state laws. We’re trying to ensure that the policies at the federal level and the state level are supporting the growth of this industry so that it can be successful longterm.”
Eric’s work with Vote Hemp is, more than anything, aimed at educating members of Congress and their staff about “what the market was, what the potential was, and how American farmers were being left out of the picture. That’s ultimately what helped us change the law: convincing them that there was a missed opportunity here.”
“It may take 10 or 15 more years before we get there, but I believe that hemp will once again be a major crop in the United States. We want to make sure that that can happen.”
With the 2014 Farm Bill, hemp was moved from a controlled substance to, essentially, a crop regulated by the USDA (rather than the DEA). “Those were great steps in the right direction. But it still allowed states and tribes to be able to regulate hemp under federal law. If a state or a tribe wants to oversee regulation, they have to submit a plan to the USDA and the USDA has 60 days to review it and approve it or ask for changes. Then, once a plan is approved, that state or tribe is able to regulate hemp under the authority of the USDA.”
Only one state has let the USDA take over its regulation: New Hampshire. “I think, generally, it’s more beneficial to farmers to have the state be more involved in regulating the crop,” Eric said.
There are a number of other changes Vote Hemp is working on. The definition of hemp, for one. The group has tried to get a higher level of THC approved. Right now, it’s defined at 0.3% THC, which has led farmers to see their crops destroyed. “We think that’s just an unacceptable situation,” Eric said.
“Right now, we actually have a petition out, pushing to try to get Congress to define hemp a little more broadly, up to 1%, so that we won’t have problems with farmers having their crops destroyed.”
Ultimately, Eric would like to see this plant used to its fullest potential — after all, Jack Herer believed it could save the world. But for that, he argues, we need investment in infrastructure.
“It’s not yet a commodity and that’s one of our challenges. If you produce corn or soy, you can take it to your local grain elevator. With hemp, it’s a much smaller, more private market. That’s going to take some time, but I think investments in processing are going to be critical. Right now, a lot of the energy and excitement is around plant extracts, CBD [a non-psychoactive substance derived from cannabis], that type of thing. The extracts will always be an important part of the market, but over time, we’re going to see a lot of the larger acreage will be dedicated to the grain and the fiber side.”
For a thorough overview of the past, present, and future of hemp as a material, we recommend the Trace Materials podcast. For additional resources, visit the CFDA’s hemp overview. And keep up with Eric and Vote Hemp’s latest projects here.
