Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norrie with you.
Speaker 2: Filmmaker Doug find back with us after about four years.
Speaker 2: He's also a best selling author Regenerative hemp Farmer and
Speaker 2: solar Powered goat Herder. His latest book, American Hemp Farmer,
Speaker 2: was nominated as the Santa Fe Reporter's Book of the
Speaker 2: Year and is now a featured documentary that has won
Speaker 2: the Best New Mexico Documentary at the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: Santa Fe Film Festival. Willie Nelson calls Doug's work a
Speaker 2: blueprint for the America of the future, and Doug's focus
Speaker 2: for fifteen years plus has been sustainable living for regular folks. Doug,
Speaker 2: welcome back, have you been?
Speaker 3: Oh? Thanks so much for having me back, George. Life
Speaker 3: is great here in New Mexico.
Speaker 2: Thank you, looking forward to this tonight. Exactly what is
Speaker 2: a solar powered goat herder?
Speaker 3: I guess you could say we're all solar powered, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, we need that son. But having grown up
Speaker 3: in the New York cub Verbs and looking at my
Speaker 3: life today with solar panels on the roof doing goats,
Speaker 3: giving us our you know, zero carbon mile local milk,
Speaker 3: and homeschooling the kids and all that stuff. It's a
Speaker 3: different lifestyle than I would have expected when I when
Speaker 3: I started.
Speaker 2: Out, well, good, good for you. Now hamp been Cannabis
Speaker 2: marijuana virtually the same, except there's a difference in the
Speaker 2: THC levels right as one.
Speaker 3: Hundred percent correct. The only difference throughout history, people generally
Speaker 3: didn't have a delineation, you know. I started in modern
Speaker 3: modern times when when psychoactive cannabis was was banned for
Speaker 3: seventy seven or so years, But for most of history,
Speaker 3: people just used the plant for what it was useful for,
Speaker 3: whether it was rope, clothing or ceremonial.
Speaker 2: Now, the hemp was legal back in the early thirties
Speaker 2: until William Randolph Hurst decided to try to get this
Speaker 2: thing illegal. What happened.
Speaker 3: The head of alcohol Prohibition, Henry Anslinger, had on his hands,
Speaker 3: a sizable budget and a lot of people that he
Speaker 3: wanted to keep their jobs when alcohol Prohibition ended, and
Speaker 3: it was sort of an explicit effort alongside some yellow journalism,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, with Hurst, to just sort of create
Speaker 3: a problem that didn't exist. Take one of humanity's longest
Speaker 3: utilized plants and sort of make it enemy of the people,
Speaker 3: and that really sunk in. You know, some people still
Speaker 3: feel that way, and it took a while for me
Speaker 3: to realize just how useful this plant is. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm even wearing hemp clothing right now.
Speaker 2: I remember years ago, I was doing my local Nighthawks
Speaker 2: show at Saint Louis and I had a guy on
Speaker 2: who was processing hemp as fuel, and he was driving
Speaker 2: around Saint Louis and what he called his hemp Mobile.
Speaker 2: And the thing worked. It really ran.
Speaker 3: On a diesel engine. It runs great. I can vouch
Speaker 3: for it too. Some colleagues of mine bought, you know,
Speaker 3: third hand, an old Mercedes limo that supposedly used to
Speaker 3: belong to the wife of Philippine ex Filippine dictator Marcos
Speaker 3: and Melda Marcos's limo, and they put it was a diesel,
Speaker 3: it has to be a diesel engine, and they put
Speaker 3: hempseed oil on it and I wrote in it and
Speaker 3: it drove smooth and quietly, So I can vouch that
Speaker 3: that really really works. The issue being hempseed oil is
Speaker 3: such an incredible nutritive component, just straight up food for
Speaker 3: the whole family. That the question is, huh, do we
Speaker 3: eat it or put it in our vehicles?
Speaker 2: Doug put things in perspective for us in terms of legality.
Speaker 2: Now with marijuana, cannabis, and hemp, where does all that stand?
Speaker 2: What's legal? What isn't?
Speaker 3: The hemp plant, which at this moment means a very
Speaker 3: low level of the as we discussed, the psychoactive THHC
Speaker 3: is fully legal in all fifty states. The catch is,
Speaker 3: it's a catch I don't like, but it's a reality.
Speaker 3: If one wants to cultivate it, one has to get
Speaker 3: a permit from the government, which comes to inspect your ranch.
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of government coming on my property.
Speaker 3: They come once a year when you have a state
Speaker 3: ham program, and they take a sample to make sure
Speaker 3: that the plant is below that THHD level. Given that
Speaker 3: I only cultivate when I when I'm cultivating here on
Speaker 3: the ranch, I only cultivate for things like food, seed development,
Speaker 3: and fiber, there's nothing psychoactive. It's odd. It's not to
Speaker 3: my kids. They're saying, right next to it, we're grow
Speaker 3: the hemp, we grow tomatoes, and right next to that
Speaker 3: we grow beans. Why is the government coming here to
Speaker 3: test this other food that we eat this seed. So
Speaker 3: it's it's legal about you know, you might say with
Speaker 3: an asterisk. When it comes to psychoactive cannabis, it's it's there.
Speaker 3: There's a road to legality. Uh. It was recently changed
Speaker 3: in that federal scheduling of narcotics from Schedule one the
Speaker 3: most dangerous to Schedule two. But it's fully legal in
Speaker 3: many states, including my state of New Mexico. There's less
Speaker 3: regulation uh for growing personal quantities of psychoactive cannabis than
Speaker 3: there is if you want to grow hemp for food.
Speaker 2: And why, Doug, have you gotten behind this push to
Speaker 2: get the American farmer to grow more hemp? What's what's
Speaker 2: the benefit here?
Speaker 3: There's a benefit to us the customer, and there's a
Speaker 3: benefit to farmers. I'll start with us. Hemp speed has
Speaker 3: a what many nutritions consider an ideal balance of omega
Speaker 3: fatty acids, making a nine, six and three. So in
Speaker 3: other words, it's very good, good for you. It has
Speaker 3: gamma in aic acid in it, which is difficult to
Speaker 3: find in foods that aren't meat. I happen to eat meat,
Speaker 3: but for those who don't, it's a compound associated with
Speaker 3: anti inflammatory properties and other health bearing properties. So it's
Speaker 3: a genuine, genuine super food. So there's a benefit to us.
Speaker 3: You know, there's there's a struggle around the world really
Speaker 3: with the diabetes obesity. Hemp is really a positive on
Speaker 3: that nutritively. The other reason why I got behind it
Speaker 3: so strongly is that many farmers is you know, no
Speaker 3: news to anyone. We we all know there's a farm aid.
Speaker 3: We need a farm aid because farmers need aid. Farmers,
Speaker 3: especially independent farmers, are struggling. And because hemp has a
Speaker 3: high value. If these regulatory hurdles can be erase and
Speaker 3: hemp is cultivated a critical critical mass, I'm talking about
Speaker 3: you know, millions and millions of acres, because we have
Speaker 3: several hundred million acres of corn, soy, and wheat and
Speaker 3: we don't necessarily want to eliminate those. But if we
Speaker 3: get hemp into that those heavy hitter into the ballpark
Speaker 3: of acreage that's going to be I mean a lot
Speaker 3: of family farms in rural communities have a chance in
Speaker 3: economic recovery.
Speaker 2: Interesting take. Can hemp also be used as paper?
Speaker 3: It sure can. In fact, I have and used as
Speaker 3: stationary part hemp paper, it's about thirty percent hemp. The
Speaker 3: draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson was
Speaker 3: written on hemp. It was because the fibers were so
Speaker 3: very common. It was tended to be pulped into lower
Speaker 3: grade paper, no less thirty or usable. But when you
Speaker 3: actually wanted to tell the king you were, you know,
Speaker 3: declaring independence, then you kind of put it on parchment
Speaker 3: or something super fancy like that. But hemp was a
Speaker 3: go to And I can tell you from researching for
Speaker 3: the American Hemp Farmer film and book. I'm very lucky
Speaker 3: to be invited to George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, where again,
Speaker 3: for the first time since seventeen ninety nine, hemp has
Speaker 3: been cultivated. George Washington, our first president, was a tremendous
Speaker 3: fan of hemp. It's not very widely known why he
Speaker 3: was such a fan of it. It's because he used
Speaker 3: it in his fishing netting when he fished the Potomac River,
Speaker 3: which sometimes provided the majority of his Mount Vernon farming income.
Speaker 3: So hemp was very, very valuable to our founding fathers.
Speaker 2: And I had also heard that hearst back in the thirties.
Speaker 2: One of the other reasons he didn't want Hemp around
Speaker 2: is because he owned a lot of forestry and was
Speaker 2: manufacturing his own paper mills for his newspapers, and he
Speaker 2: didn't want Hamp to get in the way of that.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 3: Well? You know, I when I when I when you,
Speaker 3: when you hear that part of the history, you you
Speaker 3: you think it very likely is true. I often say
Speaker 3: when I hear some of the stuff of like well
Speaker 3: and may connect the dots. He didn't like Himp. He
Speaker 3: did have investments in these other things. Was an obvious
Speaker 3: conflict of interest, you know, contributing to this terrible journalism
Speaker 3: that villainized one of humanity's longest uh cultivated plants. But
Speaker 3: I'll tell you, George, if I had a time machine,
Speaker 3: that would be a place I'd go, some sort of
Speaker 3: wood panels club where the where the uh where the
Speaker 3: you know uh prominent business folk of the day gathered.
Speaker 3: I'm sure over a brandy he might have admitted that
Speaker 3: just just that. But thank heaven, uh, Hemp is back.
Speaker 3: I have the high ranking person at Mount Vernon. What
Speaker 3: would George Washington say if he had heard Hemp had
Speaker 3: been banned and she said he would he would think
Speaker 3: that was criminal.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so it's legal. Now what are you proposing?
Speaker 3: First and foremost lowering some regulations to make it easier
Speaker 3: for farmers to cultivate hemp, especially independent farmers. But I'll
Speaker 3: tell you how I would love to see it used.
Speaker 3: In the American Hemp Farmer film, we profile these farm
Speaker 3: young newlyweds in Vermont and they grow farm to shelf
Speaker 3: organic hemp. They grow from the flower side of the plant. Oh,
Speaker 3: there's you know, there's multiple parts of the plants that
Speaker 3: are very marketable. We've already talked about the seed, which
Speaker 3: is pure food and by the way, no THHC or
Speaker 3: psychoactivity in that. You know, children can eat hempsey and
Speaker 3: do you eat hemp seed? It's to go to kind
Speaker 3: of food before soccer practice in many parts of the world.
Speaker 3: So that's the seed side. But in the film We Cultivate,
Speaker 3: we cover these farmers in Vermont who grow for the
Speaker 3: flower components non psychoactive with their called cannabinoids within the flour,
Speaker 3: such as CBD. Many people have heard of CBD since
Speaker 3: it's popularly used for natural pain reduction and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. So in answer your question of what I'd
Speaker 3: like to see or flour. I'd like to see many,
Speaker 3: many independent farmers bringing value to their communities by not
Speaker 3: just selling a raw farm commodity to a middleman and
Speaker 3: kind of not making much money, not doing much for
Speaker 3: their community, but rather marketing farm to product their hemp
Speaker 3: CBD products so that they the farmers, receive eighty ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the dollar that we customers pay instead of
Speaker 3: the ten cents or so that most farmers, let's say,
Speaker 3: received for their corn. And the only other side of
Speaker 3: the plants we haven't mentioned two things. One is fiber.
Speaker 3: Fiber is tricky because it requires large acreage. Right now,
Speaker 3: China kind of lea it's the fineberg market. But hemp clothing,
Speaker 3: I can tell you it's extremely comfortable. I'm wearing jeans
Speaker 3: right now as the original Levi's were made from hemp,
Speaker 3: and it's unbelievably durable. I will still be wearing the
Speaker 3: same pair of hemp jeans in ten years. They're not
Speaker 3: going to rip. Their extremely strong. And the last side
Speaker 3: of the plant that's really important are the roots. We
Speaker 3: have a lot of stress included soils. Obviously around the
Speaker 3: nation and around the world, hemp has a remarkable quality
Speaker 3: as what's known as a Fido remediator a clean soil.
Speaker 3: And we can talk more about that in the specifics
Speaker 3: of that and studies that have shown that, but for now,
Speaker 3: to answer your question, what I would like to see
Speaker 3: is when we look at farm reports, farm markets and
Speaker 3: we think about these major crops that are important to
Speaker 3: America's food supplying farm farm economy, that HEMP be up
Speaker 3: there with the big the big players like a corn,
Speaker 3: soy and wheat and cotton.
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