Hemp Agriculture
The cultivation of hemp for its agronomic properties dates back as far as the earliest records of cannabis. The United States, in particular, boasts a long history of hemp cultivation. In the early colonial period of the United States, hemp was prized for both its fibrous stalk—used for sails, clothing, paper—as well as its nutritious seeds—used for oil and in livestock diets.
The article below from The Literary Digest dated January 27, 1923, details a brief history of U.S. hemp agriculture by extensively citing Mark Troxell, who wrote about the importance of hemp in The American Thresherman, a publication produced in Madison, Wisconsin. According to Troxell, Kentucky was the largest producer of hemp in the United States until the early twentieth century when Wisconsin began using agricultural machinery to grow and harvest hemp. Troxell dubbed Wisconsin the new “hempdom” of the nation. Historian Dirk Hildebrandt writes in a recent article that Wisconsin's "hempdom" helped the state become the largest producer of hemp in the country until the end of World War II.
A new threat soon came upon the U.S. hemp industry, however, one that did not arise due to competitive agricultural practices. Instead, it was ultimately the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), created in 1930, and its first commissioner, Harry Anslinger, that would wreak havoc on the hemp industry. In just a five year period in the 1930s, Anslinger would convince many states to begin enacting legislation against narcotics including cannabis.
In Wisconsin, the Uniform Narcotics Act passed into law on July 30, 1935, and included a ban on cultivating, selling, or using “Cannabis Sativa." The Uniform Narcotics Act outlawed the cultivation of cannabis plants without any stipulation for the production of hemp. (Please see the "Propaganda and Education" and "De/Criminalization" sections of this exhibit for more information about the criminalization of cannabis.)
Just two years later in 1937 the federal government enacted the Marihuana Tax Act, creating such high tax penalties for hemp production that any cultivation became economically untenable.
For Wisconsin, the 1937 Federal Marihuana Tax Act meant grinding hemp production to a halt and trying to eradicate the feral hemp that had jumped from farm to forest and grew across the state.
A Wisconsin State Journal article (on the left) dated September 4, 1938, details a “vigorous campaign to rid Dane County of Marijuana” alongside a picture of a woman standing with a “marijuana ‘tree.’” The article replicates Anslinger’s inflammatory rhetoric about marijuana.
Dane County planned to “uproot, burn, and otherwise destroy the weed” anywhere that they found it in the county, even though almost all of the feral cannabis growing in Wisconsin would have had no psychoactive effect given that it spilled out from the agricultural hemp fields.
The efforts, in effect, were to eradicate the same plant that had helped propel Wisconsin previously to the status of hempdom of the United States.
By the start of World War II, the United States had halted hemp production in the nation and relied on imports from other countries. Due to wartime shortages, however, the United States sought a reliable crop to grow within their borders and began a campaign to increase the amount of hemp produced in order to bolster the war effort—often called the “Hemp for Victory” campaign. The effort was named after the 1942 film, "Hemp for Victory," embedded below, which mentioned Wisconsin many times.
During the war, the Marihuana Tax Act was lifted temporarily to allow for hemp cultivation. Production of hemp in the United States skyrocketed—especially in Wisconsin.
By the 1940s, as the articles to the left and below explain, Wisconsin farmers had planted 2,000 acres of hemp that produced 1,800,000 pounds of the crop—or about 80% of the hemp in the United States. Hemp mills were located in Brandon, Beaver Dam, and Juneau. The federal government even passed the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 that essentially legalized the industrial cultivation of hemp.
After the war, though, the federal government brought back the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act. This meant that—although the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 legalized hemp cultivation—the newly reinstated Marihuana Tax Act made industrial hemp cultivation less economically viable than other cash crops.
Over the next decade, industrial hemp cultivation would slow to a halt in Wisconsin and around the United States.
In 1971, when President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act into law, all types of cannabis were put into schedule 1, yet again criminalizing hemp cultivation.
The lack of differentiation between marijuana and hemp in U.S. law continued to criminalize one of Wisconsin’s largest potential cash crops. The criminalization of marijuana, therefore, caused the criminalization of hemp.
In 2018, however, Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky, introduced amendment 2667—what is known as the “Hemp Farming Act of 2018”—to the Farm Bill. The Hemp Farming Act sought to amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 in order to remove hemp from the controlled substances list, allowing for the industrial cultivation of hemp. The Hemp Farming Act passed along with the Farm Bill in 2018, making the cultivation of hemp legal again in the United States for those willing to go through the necessary permitting process. In fact, Wisconsin’s own pilot hemp program began after the passing of the 2018 farm bill and will now transition into a national project.
An unintended consequence of the Farm Bill is that cannabinoids other than d9THC can be extracted from hemp. For example, CBD (cannabidiol) is touted for its calming and relaxing effects without any of the psychoactive “high” of d9THC. With new breeding, hybridization, cultivation, and extraction techniques, CBD can be found in relatively high levels within certain varieties of hemp plants.
Since at least 2018, CBD products can be found across the United States in flower, topical, or even edible forms. Another cannabinoid called delta-8-THC (d8THC) is growing in popularity, too. Often referred to as “marijuana light” and previously thought to be found in such low levels in cannabis plants as to have negligible psychoactive effects, delta-8-THC was never outlawed in the same way as delta-9-THC. In Wisconsin (and across the United States), hemp growers are now extracting CBD oil from hemp plants and converting it into delta-8-THC, leading to a largely unregulated gray market where the product can be bought and sold in head shops, corner stores, and even festivals.
Again, the lack of legal differentiation between the different subspecies of cannabis plant (sativa or indica), the different colloquial names (hemp or marijuana), and even the different cannabinoids (d9THC, CBD, d8THC, etc.) have resuted in complicated legal and regulatory structures. As a result, these gray areas have allowed markets for trendy cannabinoids derived from whatever plants are legal at any moment.
Further Reading
Hildebrant, Dirk. “Hemp: Wisconsin’s Forgotten Harvest.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 100, no. 3, 2017, pp. 12-23.
Storck, Gary. The Rise and Fall of Cannabis Prohibition in Wisconsin. CannaBadger Media, 2019.