Epilogue, Part One

Watching Cannabis Displace Corn in the First Digital Age American Hemp Fields

Note: For publishing world reasons, I was bestowed a few more months to work on this book than I thought I would have. That thrilled me, because it allowed me to keep at the research until today, a little past midway through the 2013 U.S. hemp-farming season. The rest of the book results from that fortuitous turn of events. —DJF, August 25, 2013

Since I was at the moment watching a country band fervently belt out music of the Show me the birth certificate variety in a conservative farm town in rural Colorado, while perhaps a hundred yards away a ceremonial hemp planting was about to take place, you’ll understand why I say that July 4, 2013, was one of the few times I’ve ever had to actually pinch myself. (Another was when, as a congressional intern in 1988, I heard George H. W. Bush announce that his running mate was a fellow named Dan Quayle.)

Nope. Even though there were other factors contributing to the fantastic—and for a journalist covering a forty-year-long drug war, almost phantasmagorical—qualities of this day, this was not a hempster-patriot’s daydream. Everything was really happening. To name one thing, at that very moment sixteen hundred miles to the east, an American flag made from hemp was, thanks to the fellow alongside whom I was eating jambalaya and ignoring lyrics, flying atop the U.S. Capitol. This must’ve been how the average Vermonter felt when word filtered north that the colonies had actually won the Revolutionary War. “Really? So fast? Against such a better-funded adversary?”

And the Founding Fathers were on our fifth-generation farmer Michael Bowman’s mind. He was the reason for both today’s hemp planting (he chose the day and the location) and the Old Glory hoisting in DC (he lobbied his congressman—more on that in a little while). Here in the economically challenged farm town of Byers, its population of eleven hundred down 6 percent since 2000, Bowman, in front of my (and a Denver ABC television crew’s) eyes, was going to make a hemp statement that he called “a shot heard ’round the Beltway.” He wanted a meaningful day to commemorate the start of what he routinely calls “a new agricultural system.”

This was taking place on land owned by his longtime and very conservative rancher friend Gary May. Bowman was going to plant one of the first American hemp plots since World War II on a tiny patch in the back forty of the May Farms big tourism operation, in fact. “Colorado’s number one agri-tainment destination,” May’s voicemail tells us. That means things like tractor pulls, weddings, and Replacements concerts. The hemp was going to share the space with corn, not far from the May pumpkin patch that, along with hay bale rides, highlights the autumn-time May Farms Harvest Festival.

“In every major movement, there has to be people ready to lead by example,” Bowman had told me an hour earlier as he pulled out a five-hundred-gram package (around four cups) of European hemp seed from my rental car in the crowded May Farms dirt parking lot—which was adjacent to a stables. “That’s what we’re doing today. Our own Independence Day two and a quarter centuries ago started with a shot. We’re leaders in Colorado on this issue. We know we need to make a transition to a new farming mind-set, in order to make a real difference for our grandchildren—for my own grandchildren. That’s our ammo: planting hemp in a GMO cornfield.”

“Hemp displacing corn,” I recall musing dreamily as we shuffled with the crowd inside May Farms’ vast event facility. This was a big metal barn-like structure that can hold a thousand, easy. From the outside it looked like you could host a rodeo. Inside it was comfortable, with picnic tables feathered around the dance floor.

“Now you know my master plan,” Bowman said. “The transition back to the crop of our forefathers.”

“You’re a conservative,” I observed.

He laughed and looked at his bag of smuggled seed. “Yes, I guess I am. Oh, look! Jambalaya.”

This was to be a symbolic planting Bowman had decided on for 2013. Headline: Hemp Seed Planted on Independence Day. Not in headline: Actually a very small plot that might or might not be tended through the season.

Part of the reason Bowman decided to go this route (he had until very recently been telling media, including me, that he aimed to plant a hundred acres this year) was that his octogenarian parents still planted corn, wheat, alfalfa, and other rotational crops at the family farm in Wray, the one we earlier discussed. These crops were connected to multiple USDA programs that, in light of those direct DEA threats against Bowman, he didn’t want to put in jeopardy. At least not prematurely.

Which leads to the other reason he decided to wait—as even most bit-chomping Colorado hemp farmers were waiting—until the 2014 season to plant a full crop. The state’s hemp cultivation advisory committee—with the support of the Colorado agriculture commissioner—would be instituting its legislatively mandated commercial planting regulations starting with the 2014 season. In fact, Bowman was on that committee.

“As far as the state is concerned, next year Coloradan farmers can grow legally and commercially, without the need for federal approval,” he told me in the jambalaya line.

Whatever the reasons, Bowman could hardly have chosen better than this spot an hour east of Denver. Picturesque down to the classic grain silos, Byers, Colorado, like much of the America heartland, is literally dying for a crop to rescue it from its drought-inspired decline. Local patriarch May’s property was the site of the town’s Independence Day celebration. Everyone was here—five hundred people easily at any one time—and by the time of the planting some were still conscious.

I’ve never seen folks mean their Fourth revelry so deeply. As they made their way between the refreshments tables and children’s train, they wore American flag shirts and giant foam stars-and-stripes cowboy hats the way college sports fans paint their faces in the team colors on the day of the Big Game. Myself, I was expressing my love of country by showing up entirely clad in hemp: collared shirt my Sweetheart made me for my birthday and Canadian-made hemp pants. My sun hat even had a hemp band.

This was a very specific America being celebrated at the Byers bash, comprised of a demographic that chants “U! S! A!” at its Olympic broadcasts. I felt like I was in a King of the Hill episode. Yet when Bowman told him what he was doing at the shindig, our jambalaya chef Mo, inventor of Cajun Queen and Papa Mo all-purpose seasoning, said, “Why are you planting so little?”

This attitude wasn’t just typical of what I heard from the Right side of the political spectrum at the Byers July Fourth celebration; it was reflective of the nearly unanimous view. That a pro-cannabis viewpoint is proving not to be a “pinch me” reaction to hemp anywhere in the heartland in turn felt journalistically significant to me. It’s contrary to cannabis’s reputation. Heck, right as Mo was giving his pro-hemp shpiel, the band was playing “Okie from Muskogee.”

The conservative embrace of the plant is, in the end, why the war on cannabis is over. It’s one of the few things nearly everyone agrees on. Since when do 80 percent of Americans agree on anything, as they do that the drug war is a failure? If President Obama stepped to a podium tomorrow and said, “Hemp hemp hooray, the Digital Age Homesteading Act goes to Congress tomorrow,” his approval ratings would go up. Nationwide. Kentucky might even go Democratic.

In other words, watch for big policy change when MoveOn and Tea Partiers and everyone in between agrees on an issue. For his part, the sixty-five-year-old May was what everyone told me was characteristically garrulous about his ol’ liberal buddy’s ceremonial planting that day. He spoke as an agronomist.

“I am an eastern Colorado farmer,” he said, joining Bowman and me for jambalaya after parking the golf cart he used to oversee the day’s festivities. “I need to take two looks at my crops: the economic and the agronomic view. The agronomic view is the approach of another rotation crop that might help me become more productive in an area of the world that gives me no promises of water. When I look at my thousands of acres of dryland wheat, my thousand acres of corn, I need to consider all opportunities. This might be an opportunity to make something work economically, especially if we can get some processing going nearby.”

In the midst of a very Toby Keith–heavy set, I asked if May cared at all about drug war rhetoric. “I try to stick to the agronomic,” he said. “I’m trying to produce food for the people of this country. If hemp moves into the rotation for me, I’m more than willing to plant it. So we’ll see what happens in Colorado in this next year. If there’s really a market.”46

I sat back in my chair to listen to what was probably the nine thousandth lifetime policy discussion between Bowman and May, both people who can get along with anyone. It wasn’t long, though, before the political talk turned to the goings-on in the actual dirt—because that’s where the facts reside. Rainfall levels don’t lie. In fact, one of the coolest parts of the day for me was listening, as a suburban-raised recent convert to Southwest ranching, to these two fellows, who had local farming in their blood for a combined total of ten generations, talk shop.

“This cultivar’ll take a twenty-seven-degree freeze, which is nice,” Bowman observed of his seed.

“I like that it doesn’t have to go in in March, like canola does,” came back May. “I mean, June first, you’re almost in there with millet.”

“He’s trying to keep a struggling community alive,” Bowman told me after May sped off to put out a fire surrounding the classic car contest judging. “This was Colorado’s first county. If Gary decides to plant a full hemp crop himself in future years, and I think he will, a lot of people will see it. He’s got a corn maze, and pumpkin picking in the fall, and as you can see we’re right on the freeway—a tall crop would probably be visible to drivers.”

So that’s why Bowman chose this planting site. “Gary thought, Hmm, I wish there was a crop that could provide income while helping us deal with drought,” I said, chewing contemplatively.

“And he came to hemp,” Bowman said. “At least he’s considering it. Which is why it’s so astonishing that what we’re doing here today is so political. It shouldn’t be.”

I picked up the bag of seed. “Doesn’t look like a felony,” I admitted.

Bloated with southern cuisine, Bowman and I shuffled out to May’s back forty after lunch and a brief tour of the crises-ridden classic car show (calm appeared restored). We came to the site of the hemp ceremony—near the middle of a rectangular field at the moment home to ten acres of somewhat sad-looking corn. I scooped up a handful of grainy dirt. “I keep thinking Sahara when I see the heartland topsoil these days,” I said.

“Welcome to the Central Great Plains of the United States of America in a time of climate change,” Bowman said. “We’re in the middle of historic drought. All the crops are drought-stressed around here. Our aquifers are drying out, too, so we can’t pump the water the current crops need.”

“Drought-stressed sounds a little euphemistic,” I murmured, dropping the hot handful of GMO-worked dirt. “This corn looks sick. Like stay home from school sick.”

Bowman shrugged. “This is the new normal. It’s a serious challenge before us, and we’re here today to find solutions.

“This,” he added, peeling open the seed bag, “is a rescue operation. A recovery crop. Replacing, as you say, corn with hemp.”

It’s a recovery operation in the field and in the history books, I thought. Because we’re talking about reclaiming the mantle of the early independent agricultural principles on which the United States was founded—in the name of sustainability. Bowman was saying that a locavore, GMO-free, and yet lucrative economy is the most patriotic model for the future.

He made his way to the heart of the field, looking comfortable among corn rows, which I observed aloud.

“I’ve grown a lot of corn in my life,” Bowman confirmed. “Including a lot of GMO corn. I was cornfed.” As most of us are these days.

“No planting machinery?” I asked.

“We’re doing it the way our forefathers did before automatic seeding,” he said, digging his paw in the seed bag for a handful of what could, in a decade or two, be among America’s most profitable crops. “We’re scattering it, and then tamping it down for good seed–soil contact. I’m well-versed in the technique from my family’s own ranch.”

And so the time had come. “This is a crop to be rediscovered and used to create a new twenty-first-century economy for America” were Bowman’s preparatory words.

“I’m going to let that classic car exhaust fill the role of the John Philip Sousa march that ought to be playing right now,” I commented, then added, of his seed-scattering pose, “That’ll be the statue, right there, hold it!”

I took a photo as the first handful of seed arced over some desperately thirsty corn. The motion conveyed a horseshoe pitch.

“First shot fired,” Bowman said. It seemed right. We stood in respectful silence for a few seconds, a breeze making one nearby cornstalk appear to salute.

“How’s it feel to be an official hemp farmer?” I asked.

“It’s the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done.”

“God bless America and everything,” I said. “But let’s face the facts. Technically that’s a federal crime you just committed and I, as Peter Tosh puts it, am going to advertise it.”

Bowman’s beaming, guileless farm boy mouth sort of melted from its default grin for a moment. Then he sprinkled another handful of seed. “I guess it is a federal crime,” he said. “The DEA has jurisdiction right now over a crop that should be under the Department of Agriculture, and they’re worried about job protection in their agency. But that’s one of our easier challenges. This justly rebellious spirit is how our country gained independence. We’re going to create a new industry to transform agriculture. America’s going to be stronger with hemp in her fields.”

He looked down at the bag. “A few left—let’s go back inside and throw it into a protein shake.”

Still, I wondered aloud, “Why do this so publicly? Why flaunt federal law with a couple hundred seeds that probably won’t be harvested, very shortly before, but still before, the federal government is ready?”

“This is about freedom, about gaining independence from federal farm programs that might have had their purpose, but which keep us ranchers chained to a very specific set of crops. We’re talking about opening markets, and all kinds of legitimate commerce that’ll result. It’s long past time that American farmers be allowed to do this.”

Bowman is polished enough in his soundbites, but I saw where his greatest strength lay this day after we headed back inside the event building: making the case to folks who listen to a lot of Lee Greenwood. Over the course of the next two songs, he worked the room, dance-walking. I watched as, one by one, he pressed palms, very much the hemp politician, winning over good ol’ Americans to hemp.

“Five hundred grams of viable hemp seed, that’s what we planted today,” I overheard him telling a young woman pushing a stroller. “It’s from France, that’s all I can tell you. It came from a farmer friend over there. It’s a little cooler there, but this cultivar should be fine here.”

He’d made the same point to the Denver television crew, trying to open farmer minds, media minds, all minds. Since Bowman kept making the economic case for hemp, it occurred to me that, on top of all the practical reasons, Byers is also a homonymically apt name for the location of a patriotic planting. That’s because as soon as you harvest this crop, there are indeed buyers. Have I hammered home the point that there is not nearly enough supply to meet hemp seed demand in North America? Right now.

“You like hemp preachin’, don’t you?” I asked during a quiet moment at May Farms (I think the song playing was “God Bless the USA”).

“It’s effective because it’s all true,” he said. “I’ve found that anytime someone gives me five minutes, and I get to discuss the facts, hemp’s role in the founding of our country and where we’re going next as a nation, that person is a convert. I think I’m batting a thousand on that. When I talk about Henry Ford growing a car from this American fiber that’s stronger than steel, and fueling it with ethanol from the same crop, this speaks to people.”

To say that Bowman’s a busy guy these days is a severe understatement. Ever since he had that grand success as an activist ushering in Colorado’s landmark renewable energy mandates in 2004, he’s been a full-time sustainability lobbyist at the state and national levels—U.S. senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) calls him The Human Hand Grenade. And it was while working on hemp’s U.S. House passage late last spring that he had the inspiration for the hemp flag. After the Denver TV crew left Byers and as we prepared to do the same, Bowman reminded me that the hemp Stars and Stripes was at the moment flying over the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.

“Seemed to me one of those irreversible gestures,” he said of putting the bug in Congressman Jared Polis’s ear to make the flag hoisting happen—congressmen are always shooting up flags for constituents to honor someone or some event. “I was in the House gallery when the hemp amendment passed. I thought that once a hemp flag flew, it couldn’t be un-flown.”

In the last moments before we’d pulled out of May Farms just ahead of the nearby fireworks that remarkable Independence Day, I recall watching Bowman, as is his wont, maybe even his unique specialty, shift comfortably from Beltway lobbyist to local rancher.

“The DEA doesn’t need to lose jobs on hemp,” he told Gary May and me over one last bowl of Mo’s spicy work of art. “They can help us enforce the industry’s regulations from a supportive standpoint—crop inspections and testing, farmer registration. Just like Canada did with its Mounties. I consider my job to be convincing Congress to change the DEA’s prism to one of being part of the hemp industry. I’m an optimist. Even their position will evolve.”

Then, not ten minutes later, I heard Bowman call out his parting words to May’s teenage son, Grant, as we hopped back in the car. “Those hemp seeds’ll sprout in about three days,” he said, leaning out the window. “Keep an eye on ’em if you can.”