The Fate of Industrial Hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill – Will Our Collective Ambivalence Finally Be Resolved?

We are at a crossroads in the regulation of industrial hemp, and the 2018 Farm Bill is the time to decide which path we will choose. Congress has an opportunity to clear the path for farmers in the US to participate in this burgeoning market. With an estimated 25,000 uses, industrial hemp is one of those rare crops that has both food and agricultural uses. There is undoubtedly a market for hemp products. The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) estimates that US retail sales of hemp-based products was $688 million in 2016 – up from$573 million in 2015. Under the 2014 Farm Bill, Congress seemingly paved the way for industrial hemp to once again be grown in the US, as it granted authority for states to create industrial hemp pilot programs. However, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970 still precludes farmers from fully participating in these programs. DEA claims that it has authority to regulate all species of Cannabis sativa under the CSA, and does not distinguish between marijuana and industrial hemp. In the 2018 Farm Bill, Congress has the opportunity to clarify that the definition of marijuana does not include industrial hemp, and by doing so simultaneously clarify (and limit) the scope of DEA’s authority. In order for farmers, processors and retailers to move forward, Congress must take this action, and therefore restrict DEA’s jurisdiction to marijuana. This is the only path forward for a thriving industrial hemp industry in the US

Jumping on the Next Bandwagon: An Overview of the Policy and Legal Aspects of the Local Food Movement

This article is an exploration of this new and growing local food movement. It is not a cohesive movement, nor is it one that is organized by a particular group. Rather, it is a grassroots movement comprised of people who are interested, for various reasons, in obtaining food grown or produced where they live or in producing this food themselves. The purpose of this article is to explore what the local food movement is, why consumers are interested in basing their food purchasing choices on where their food originates, current and future regulation of local food, and where this movement may be headed in the future

Organic Agriculture Under the Trump Administration

This essay will examine the implications of the policies of the upcoming Trump administration on the integrity of the National Organic Program (NOP), the regulations promulgated under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA). Advocates fears of weakening organic standards are likely to become reality under the Trump administration. Support for organic may be dependent on high returns for large agricultural producers. However, there is a negative correlation between larger agri-businesses entering the organic market and the erosion of the organic standards. The Trump administration will likely continue down the path of supporting larger agribusinesses—to the detriment of not only smaller, more sustainable farms and businesses, but possibly to the organic regulations themselves

Developing Dialogical Academic Writing Through the Use of Student Empowered Peer Review

This dissertation makes a suggestion for a teaching practice which can be used to help fill some of the gaps which were found to exist between the goals that modern day writing theory sets for academic writing classes and those that are currently being met in traditional writing classes. After assessing which methods teachers of academic writing use in their classes at universities today, an analysis based on the Genre Studies theory of writing in conjunction with Activity Theory was carried out in order to determine whether the theoretical and practical goals that modern day writing theory sets for academic writing classes were being met. Among the gaps that were found to exist between modern-day theoretical goals and those that are currently being met in mainstream academic writing classes were that: 1) writing which is carried out at universities tends to be monological rather than dialogical; 2) students are supplied with little or no opportunity to practice writing in a stake-free atmosphere and; 3) the audiences students write for does not prepare them to become active life-long learners. Therefore, a method known as student empowered peer review (SEPR) was developed with the intention of filling some of these gaps. A study which compares the use of this method with classes taught using current methods showed that SEPR successfully fulfills many of the missing goals that could not otherwise be achieved. A comparison of the grades students received on their essays under both systems also showed that when making use of SEPR, students grades were as good as, if not better than, the grades students received when they wrote essays under the current teaching method. The dissertation thus concludes that SEPR is an alternative teaching method that writing teachers can safely apply if they want to try and meet alternative goals for their students which they cannot meet using the traditional method

Cape Disappointment in History

"A visitor on the ocean beaches stretching for about twenty-five miles northward from the cape, might think the name Disappointment significant of the many wrecks that have occurred both upon the beach and at the mouth of the Columbia River… It does not mean the disappointment of disaster, but the disappointment of one Captain John Meares, an English navigator, who was unable to verify an earlier Spanish report that a river 'San Roc' existed at the 46-degree latitude.