With Linda Booker, producer of Bringing It Home

Hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin to cannabis sativa, has been an essential crop around the world for thousands of years, and still is in most countries. Why not in the U.S.? This discussion with Linda Booker, producer of the new documentary on industrial hemp Bringing It Home reveals the profound qualities of this truly remarkable plant, that make it ideal for textiles, building materials, food products, bio-plastics, auto parts and more. The film is based on a father’s search to find the healthiest building materials for his environmentally sensitive daughter, and the construction of the nation’s first hemp house in Asheville, North Carolina. As Linda shares here, the film was a journey of discovery as she learned about the astounding utility of this carbon-sequestering, weed-resistant and highly profitable crop currently grown in 31 countries. It became all the more puzzling that hemp farming is illegal in the U.S. when in reality this renewable resource is used to make thousands of sustainable products and offers solutions for global warming, nutrition, poverty and deforestation. Our exchange goes into details about hemp building and other uses, and initiatives to change the laws led by groups such as Vote Hemp and Hemp Industries Association. Hopefully this entertaining and highly informative film will help wake up the American public to the sham that hemp prohibition is, and inspire the political changes needed to make this vital natural resource available to U.S. farmers, industry and consumers.