– Dane Hicks, The Anderson County Review, Garnett, Ks.
So far, Republicans who run the Kansas
Senate haven’t come up with a good explanation as to why they want to keep
Kansas farmers from making money with a state industrial hemp crop.
This legislative session, it’s time to
stop dilly-dallying and pass a bill to legally grow and process industrial hemp
in Kansas.
House Bill 2182, from 38th
Dist. Rep. Willie Dove of Bonner
Springs, would have opened up the industry for Kansas farmers last session. It
would have opened an industry already embraced by 34 other states whose farmers
and small business people are already making money off the crop, plugging those
funds back into their economies and creating jobs. The Kansas House passed the
bill, but it languished in the Senate Natural Resources committee, where
chairman Dan Kerschen, a Republican from Garden Plain, wouldn’t even give it a
hearing.
Now, Kerschen has forwarded his own
bill, SB 263, which would ship the potential for hemp off to K-State for
“research” before any steps are taken to legalize it – another way to
effectively kill the crop for years or maybe decades and keep it from benefiting
the state’s farmers now, when they really need it.
The opposition has been obscure.
Industrial hemp isn’t pot – you can smoke a whole bale of it and never get
high. It’s a different genetic animal than marijuana, as 34 states have already
realized to their own profit. But lobbyists for Kansas law enforcement believe
they’ll have too much trouble distinguishing industrial hemp plants from
marijuana – even though law officers in 34 other states seem to have no trouble
with that.
What industrial hemp does do is serve a
burgeoning market in the U.S. and abroad. Health foods, organic body care,
clothing, construction materials, biofuels, plastic composites – the list goes
on. Hemp products pulled down a cool $688 million in sales in 2016 – all of
which went to producers and processors in places other than Kansas. True – you can
buy hemp products in Kansas – and send your dollars out of state – you just
can’t grow it here.
And there’s rarely been a time other
than now when Kansas farmers needed more options for another cash crop. Prices
for corn, wheat and soybeans lag in a nationwide glut of commodities, with
farmers forced to acquire more land and more costs to plant, or pray for better
weather to increase yields. There’s no doubt Kansas Farmers need the hemp
option.
And Republicans in the Kansas
Legislature need it too. They’re already carrying a damaged brand into the 2018
elections due to school funding mandates from the state supreme court and
lagging tax revenues from a Brownback economic plan that went bust. Republicans
desperately need an economic win, and legalizing industrial hemp with its
immediate economic impact would illustrate that the party is still in touch
with its pro-business platform.
With an improving national economy and
the new 2018 federal tax package, investors will be itching to put their money
to use in businesses that offer solid returns. Passage of industrial hemp would
clear the way for those investors to put their money to work in Kansas-based
processing operations as well as family farms. It is an economic wave Kansans,
particularly Republican leadership, can’t pass up.
Get out of the way, Kansas GOP, and let
our farmers and businesses make money on industrial hemp.
– Dane Hicks is editor& publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Ks., and chairman of the Anderson County Republican Central Committee.
