Opinion February 28, 2021 | 2:32 pm

The cash registers are ringing all around the Caribbean!

A greener future courtesy of the tropics?

From fields of green in turquoise seas to a world of hope

Renn Loren

Today in 2021, island nations are enjoying a new source of revenue throughout the Caribbean, liberating them from their historical reliance on the whims and fears of international tourists and the delicate balance of public health and border-closing pandemics.

The most recent revision of the US stance on industrial hemp farming removes hemp from controlled substances. It essentially gives the green light to the cultivation of industrial hemp. Being that hemp is one of the most multipurpose versatile plants on the planet, the applications of a hemp harvest are nearly endless, bringing with it an equally virtually limitless potential for new job markets, financial opportunities, and growth.

With its exceptional tropical growing conditions and environmental aspects, Caribbean industrial hemp farming represents a source of revenue and an outright wealth of unprecedented proportions wholly unique to the Caribbean.

And nowhere is this potential more pronounced and grand than in the Dominican Republic. There is no quicker source of immediate jobs and profits than industrial hemp farming. Any cultivated hemp plots of land would return earnings within 90 days, and a hemp field can produce four crop yield cycles per year.

Blessed with ideal growing and processing conditions combined with a uniquely skilled and affordable labor force, the Dominican Republic stands to be the largest industrial hemp producer in the world. The math for the nation’s financial outcomes is exponentially phenomenal and could propel the country to whole new heights of unimaginable prosperity.

The positive effect such a windfall would produce for the educational systems and institutions of the island nation and its public’s access to them alone would be worth embracing this cash crop.

With one of its most educated and forward-thinking presidential administrations ever, the Dominican Republic is in a position to take full advantage of the economic powerhouse being offered by global circumstances and historical legislations.

In the words of Caribbean Hemp Company founder and CEO Gregory Ricker;

“Education is truly the sole vehicle for the advancement of humanity, no question— and the ability to fathom and take in what is being echoed. If not, the vernacular dies then and there. Every opportunity missed is a cost to the advancement of society; who is going to be accountable for the epic stagnation of a heretofore challenged leadership?”

To view hemp at this point in history as a drug or narcotic is to be ignorant of the facts and realities of the plant and its place in history and a more prosperous, greener future.

The cultivation of industrial hemp goes hand in hand with transitioning away from fossil fuels (hemp also provides excellent clean fuels) to solar and other renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and petrochemical dependence: hemp-derived plastics are biodegradable.

As one of the largest industrial hemp producers, the DR could be a pivotal force in the creation of a greener, more environmentally-friendly world.

Comments are closed.