Governor Kristi Noem needs to stop working so gosh-darn hard and go shopping. If she’d take a retail-fashion-me time, she might change her mind about keeping our farmers out of the grown and stylish hemp market.
Just look at all these great hemp fabric products an eager reader pointed out to me in the Patagonia catalog! Patagonia has hemp caps:
And even this rugged field journal, good for taking notes while surveying flood zones:
Plus for the man around the house, a little something special:
All these products and more could be made of South Dakota hemp, if only Governor Noem could see the possibilities….
Logically, under Noem’s expressed fears, this only adds to the confusion of law enforcement – how in the world are they supposed to distinguish hemp clothing from marijuana cigarettes? How will they know if people buy the hemp clothing just to light it up in big bonfire parties so groups of miscreant farmers can inhale the smoke to get dizzy?
And to make matters worse, I bet these these hemp duds aren’t even insurable, preventing insurance agents from making their commissions on the sale of policies covering the losses from the get-dizzy bonfire parties? Just another hidden trap designed to interfere with the income potential of insurance agents!
SDHP k-9’s all signal on patagonia.
As if Noem hasn’t done enough to farmer’s, Axios and the NY Times are sharing farmer’s struggles:
“The record floods that have pummeled the Midwest are inflicting a devastating toll on farmers and ranchers at a moment when they can least afford it,” the N.Y. Times reports.
“Many in the region fear “that this natural disaster will become a breaking point for farms weighed down by falling incomes, rising bankruptcies and the fallout from President Trump’s trade policies.”
“Farms filing for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection rose by 19 percent last year across the Midwest, the highest level in a decade … Now, many of those farmers have lost their livestock and livelihoods.”
But they’re just not ready for hemp. Farmers, just let your governor tell you when you’re ready. For now, her pat on your head will have to do.
Hopefully these hemp cloths will be bullet-proof now that Noem allows shootin’ irons in the capitol.
If you could show that hemp would soak up or contain any oil spills from a pipeline, then everybody would be happy….
I’d be more happy if we didn’t have any further oil spills or leaks.
Either you stop using fossil fuels (i.e. if it is good and noble enough for others to do, it is good and noble enough for you to do), or you do what you can to reduce said spills/leaks and prepare to mitigate their effects. You cannot get down to absolute zero risk and still have fuel delivered to run your truck or SUV.
I understand you don’t really want to use fossil fuels. And certainly not using fossil fuels would remove the need for a pipeline. But let’s be honest…given what things currently cost, we don’t want to pay what is required to do that in our own lives. It is easier to tell someone else to stop using fossil fuels, and the plan is always better if somebody else pays for it.
And sorry, but even a pipeline that would deliver oils made from hemp would leak or spill too.
I missed the part in the original post that linked the veto of the industrial hemp legislation to pipelines and fossil fuels.
The deceased equine no longer needs pummeling
Kal Lis, I missed that part too. It seems that Dakota Free Press readers are doomed to read about evil fossil fuels no matter the subject of the thread.
Got it. Hemp apparently isn’t useful for reclamation or filtration or improving water quality.
My bad for trying to think out of the box.
With all due respect, none of this sounds like it’s about water filtration:
“Either you stop using fossil fuels (i.e. if it is good and noble enough for others to do, it is good and noble enough for you to do), or you do what you can to reduce said spills/leaks and prepare to mitigate their effects. You cannot get down to absolute zero risk and still have fuel delivered to run your truck or SUV.
I understand you don’t really want to use fossil fuels. And certainly not using fossil fuels would remove the need for a pipeline. But let’s be honest…given what things currently cost, we don’t want to pay what is required to do that in our own lives. It is easier to tell someone else to stop using fossil fuels, and the plan is always better if somebody else pays for it.”
My Enigma machine didn’t get let’s use hemp for water filtration from “If you could show that hemp would soak up or contain any oil spills from a pipeline.” It got “Let’s just bring the pipeline thread to the hemp clothing thread”
I’ll bite:
Governor Noem and the rest of us need no fossil fuels from Keystone XL to order great hemp fashions from Patagonia. Our economy is humming along just fine without pumping tar sands through West River to China. Without Keystone XL, we’ll pay less in shipping for our hemp bibbers and caps and field journals because UPS won’t pay the Keystone XL premium on gasoline for its trucks.
Opposing TransCanada’s pending fossil fuel pipeline is good for the hemp industry, our pocketbooks, and the environment, even if your drive a truck out to the protest site.
Kai Lis,
It is not like one thing doesn’t lead to another on this blog. Instead of considering using hemp to mitigate risks of spills, the response was a preference not to have leaks and spills in the first place. If you really want no spills or leaks, you need a better alternative in place to render such a pipeline moot.
However, few people here really want to build a better pipeline…most don’t want any pipeline. I just think efforts are better directed at developing the fossil fuel alternatives (which means paying for the additional electricity infrastructure that will be required for electric transportation).
Cory,
Having more oil in the global supply chain does have its benefits. It reduces petro dollars to Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, so there is a national defense interest (which would further use federal dollars better spent on social programs). Other nations have lower fuel costs and therefore more money to spend on American products (perhaps even hemp). If you want to ship renewable technologies made in the USA to elsewhere, that is going to require large shipping vessels powered by fossil fuels, not catamarans.
Petro dollars?? Please.
“But legal experts, along with the congressman leading the House Russia investigation, tell NBC News that the most important question investigators must answer is one that may never have been suitable for the criminal courts: Whether President Trump or anyone around him is under the influence of a foreign government.
“It’s more important to know what Trump is NOW than to know what he did in 2016,” said Martin Lederman, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Obama administration. “It’s more important to know whether he has been compromised as president than whether his conduct during the campaign constituted a crime.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/schiff-real-question-if-trump-under-influence-foreign-power-n984911
Russia is calling the shots here regarding petro dollars both here, and in Venezuela. Saudi Arabia owns the refinery that is able to refine the heavy oil from Venezuela as well as this crap coming in from Canada. We taxpayers will just pay for the clean up on oil that will leak in the Pierre Shale.
So more oil on the market doesn’t reduce the price of oil?
No one wants that increase, can’t make money in a glut. We here are at full capacity right now for production with rigs at a low point (down 30 in January) with the US nudging down production rates. There is not enough infrastructure to handle it right now. In Minnesota, the ageing tar sand oil pipeline can only handle a third of its capacity due to its old age and deterioration (Rapid City Journal March 20, 2019). BTW, take a look at that decrepit pipeline to see our future with Keystone XL. Our infrastructure is a bad joke and is failing more each day. OPEC has cut production to keep oil inflated as the only real market for oil right now is China and her continued growth.
So you don’t want to fix pipeline infrastructure because that would facilitate the delivery of even more oil to reduce the costs of transporting hemp (sorry, I guess I have to bring everything back to hemp in this chain…).
Yes!! By bringing hemp back to this chain, it follows the thread (pun intended). In hemp’s case, the only good oil is CBD!! Grow hemp and grow solar together!! Call it a twofer.
Ha! Nothing like some good thread humor to tie things together…
What if the CBD oil spills? Any water issues there?
No problem with the spills as there will be plenty of sick patients to make sure the oil is lapped up without a trace of contamination… for their good health and love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nWNXO3CZkU
jerry
Have you heard anything about the broken and deteriorating pipeline called the Enbridge in Minnesota?
Maybe our friend Debbo may know something.
Roger, yes, I have read a very good article in the Rapid City Journal regarding that Enbridge 3 and its deterioration. Low and behold, they also want to build a new one…under a reservation..imagine that. Bot have now been delayed with the same reasoning as this in Wyoming
” A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing in the West.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Rudolph Contreras marks the first time the Trump administration has been held to account for the climate impact of its energy-dominance agenda, and it could have sweeping implications for the president’s plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management “did not sufficiently consider climate change” when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on roughly 300,000 acres of land in the state.” Washington Post 03/20/2019
Finally, at long last, the great answer to white supremacy, climate change and the courts.
Roger, sorry for inserting myself, but Minn guv wants to stop the project and Enbridge says they don’t care what the guv has to say, they have a deadline and construction will continue.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/enbridge-line-3-faces-challenge-from-minnesota-s-new-governor
Since Jerry’s post wasn’t up when I posted mine, please disregard mine. Thank you.
mfi, there are no insertions ever, good point about the responsibility of a governor that can actually override the PUC, imagine that. Here we don’t have one, we just have a corporate lackey.
mfi and jerry, thanks to both of you for your comments. I recall reading about Enbridge sometime ago, but wasn’t aware there was current information available, thanks again.
Robert has a point, “It is not like one thing doesn’t lead to another on this blog.” 😊
Mike’s right about Minnesota. The latest I found in the Strib is 3/9/2019, https://goo.gl/KcWquQ
“Enbridge Energy is delaying the startup of its planned Line 3 replacement crude oil pipeline through northern Minnesota by a year.
“The Canadian-based company said Friday it now expects the new pipeline to go into service in the second half of 2020. Enbridge officials had hoped to put the pipeline into service in the second half of 2019.
“But Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently said his administration will keep pursuing an appeal of an independent regulatory commission’s approval of Enbridge’s plan.
“The state Public Utilities approved the project last summer. But the Minnesota Department of Commerce argued that Enbridge failed to provide legally adequate long-range demand forecasts to establish the need for the project.”
That’s the gist of it. The tribes are continuing to pursue all legal avenues, as are various Minnesota environmental groups.
Enbridge says they need to replace the leaking line to protect the environment. Opposition says, don’t ship any oil at all.
Enbridge was the #1 spender on bribing (lobbying) the Minnesota legislature in 2018.
There is an opinion piece in the Strib by Will Weaver, author of the book, “Barns of Minnesota.”
Several of the enormous, nearly flat-roofed milking barns have collapsed due to heavy snow on the roofs. Weaver uses that as a starting point to think about modern farming, after pointing out the 100 year old, steep-roofed wooden barns still standing.
Weaver does not advocate for returning to “the good old days,” saying that ship has sailed, but he does wonder if “We have reached the breaking point with industrial-style farming. Maybe it’s time to get serious about a more decentralized, diversified and sustainable approach to food production. But don’t blame our current barn troubles on the milk producers themselves. These families work harder than most anyone you know, but they are trapped in business models that have never quite worked well for agriculture.”
https://goo.gl/NkZTvy
Is Weaver correct? Rather than continue toward ever larger monocultures, is a more decentralized, diversified and sustainable approach the place to look to save our planet and the farms that remain?
Of course hemp is a very promising part of diversification, but for Noem . . . . . . . .
This is how that plays out:
Opposition stops pipeline.
People still drive trucks and SUVs.
Oil is delivered by truck and rail instead.
More environmental and safety issues occur than would have by pipeline delivery.
More lawsuits occur regarding newer problems.
Opponents win lawsuits, oil is not delivered at all.
Alternatives to fossil fuel are not in place and are not affordable.
People cannot travel when and where they want to.
Next election occurs.
This is what is playing out.
The federal courts say that climate change is real….
No to new drilling oil and gas on federal land because climate change is real.
People buy electric cars to travel
GM reopens the shuttered plants
Workers go to work at these plants…until robots take their place…then they get into making products with hemp
People travel where they can afford to travel as they will now have better jobs with better pay
We elect Democrats nationally and change our world. We keep Gnoem as a reminder of what a nincompoop looks and sounds like.
Whoops, $40.00 per barrel oil maybe about to happen. Talk about putting the binders on production in the US, this would clinch it.
“Oil ministers recently gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, the epicenter of an oil rush that took place a century ago. They came for the 13th meeting of the ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC states.
Before the meeting, all eyes were on Saudi Arabia and Russia, the leading powers of the OPEC and non-OPEC countries respectively. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and his Saudi counterpart Khalid al-Falih had taken two different approaches to oil prices. Saudi Arabia, whose economy is in deep crisis, is eager to see oil prices rise to US$95-$100 per barrel (the benchmark oil price is now at $67 per barrel). Russia, which has a more diversified economy, had planned on a price point at around $40 per barrel. The tension between them was to have stolen the spotlight for the meeting.
As it happened, however, all eyes went toward Venezuela and Iran, which now hope to be bailed out from their perilous situations by China and Russia.”
You forgot to make the energy required for all of those electric cars. That’s why I said the alternative was not ready…in part because the recharging capacity is not there.
And no, you cannot burn hemp to boil water, make steam, drive a turbine, and recharge your vehicle (sorry…had to get back to hemp).
solar panels and hemp growth, problem solved. Clean water as a plus.
“About 75 percent of people applying for hemp licenses are focused on CBD, largely because of the money to be made in the budding industry. Farmers can make up to $90,000 per acre of CBD-focused hemp, Wiatrowski says.
“In its first year, the program had seven applicants and six growers. So far in 2019, there have been 310 applicants, 200 growers, and 110 processors, according to [Minnesota Department of Agriculture] data. The dramatic increase strongly correlates to the increasing popularity of CBD, according to Margaret Wiatrowski, a program director with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.”
There are also more and more people growing hemp indoors for the CBD oil. You don’t have to be a farmer to grow hemp and make some $$$. West River ranchers could build hemp growing barns. (Just remember to put a good slope in the roof!)
I don’t know. I think SD farmers might be interested in making $90,000 per acre. Even if that number is a big exaggeration, only half that wouldn’t be too bad either.
Looks more and more like Noem is even worse for SD’s farm economy than Frantic Flaccid Fool. Why does the GOP hate farmers so much?
This from a weekly tabloid named City Pages, published in Minneapolis by the Strib. No paywall. https://goo.gl/BS8rRy
There are hemp lice?
Axios tells us just how bad Frantic Flaccid Fool and flooding are for farmers. Then there’s Noem in SD piling on. I give them all Fs!
goo.gl/5N49py
Oh well, maybe we’ll just let Australia take the lead on hemp.
In Wautauga County, NC, a January Extension Service meeting on how to grow hemp drew 250 people, one of the biggest crowds the Extension agent there has seen at such meetings.
Hemp requires well-drained soil and can be damaged by early flooding, just like other crops. But the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance says hemp grows well with 20 to 27.5 inches of rain over the season. Purdue says 25-30 inches, and plant just a bit before corn.
Leafly says hemp needs four months to grow, and an acre produces four times as much paper as an acre of trees, which take more than four months to grow.
Paper. We could grow paper for that lovely field journal Kristi is modeling.
Good thing the governor left the farmers in the ditch, again.
Hemp prices are flying. Supplies are short.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/23/cbd-is-booming-but-us-farmers-struggle-to-keep-up-with-demand.html