Farmer First to Grow Hemp

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This week, the governor made owning small amounts of marijuana in Colorado legal when he signed Amendment 64 into the state Constitution. With the same stroke of his pen, he also opened the door to hemp. You see, the amendment directs state lawmakers to regulate industrial hemp. Right now, hemp products, from clothes to cereal, pull in hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the U.S., but farmers here aren’t getting any of that money. A federal ban on growing hemp means manufacturers must import the raw material. Well, now that Colorado’s thrown its support behind hemp, farmer Michael Bowman says he’s going to grow it. Bowman lives in the eastern plains town of Wray.