Plan floated for urban hemp farming in U.S. city of Detroit
Non-profits could be set up to manage the urban hemp fields, he suggested.
Hemp Today
Nov 23, 2020
Excerpt:
A cannabis activist and city official in Detroit, Michigan, USA said he has Mayor Mike Duggan’s ear, and the mayor’s support, for an initiative to grow hemp on vacant lots in the city.
Greg Pawlowski, a Detroit city planner, said discussions with the mayor grew out of a line-item budget review which showed the city spending $3.5 million per year cutting grass on vacant land parcels. “We were talking about using that money in a different way; using vacant parcels to grow hemp, and create job opportunities,” Pawlowski told MITechNews.com, which covers entrepreneurship, technology and the cannabis industries in Michigan.
Pawlowski said the mayor showed interest in the idea of growing hemp on 35,000 lots left vacant after demolition of homes and other buildings. With much of that land polluted, planting hemp could help with soil remediation, according to Pawlowski, and the plant’s fiber could be harvested for production of automobile trim parts, an application already being used by some carmakers.
Pawlowski said Duggan already has policy analysts looking into the legalities of growing hemp in the city. Some re-zoning would be required, but it’s possible test parcels could be planted next spring, he said.
