Green Acres Is The Place To Be.....

The iconic 1960s sitcom Green Acres is about a waspy Manhattan lawyer named Oliver Douglas, who quits his successful firm and moves to the country to become a farmer, dragging his reluctant wife Lisa with him. The urban dreamers threat to chuck it all for a the simple life becomes more attractive during volatile social and economic times. Just like back in the 60s,today's social upheavals, economic uncertainty, and a country at war , have people looking for ways to tune into the environment and drop out of city. The sitcom got a lot of laughs playing up the differences between city and country folk, and how the grass isn't always greener on the farm. In the 21st century, your biggest obstacle in farm living could be finding a farm. However, if the farming community in California has its way and Hemp is decriminalized, America could potentially become the global farming powerhouse we once were. I thought it would be interesting to update the sitcoms premise using today's technology and social issues , and compare the parallels and differences from fifty years ago. The visual contrast between city slickers and country folk was a staple on Green Acres. City slickers drove Lincolns, wore designer frocks, and lounged on leopard print furniture while watching color tv. Country folk drove tractors, wore overalls, and sat in rockers on the front porch while watching the sunset. Most episodes had the glamorous Eva Gabor rummaging around a chicken coup, dripping in jewels and wearing a couture gown looking for eggs to cook for breakfast, purring out a conversation with the neighbors pig. Other mainstay's of the sitcom showed Lisa climbing up a pole in a Chanel suit to make telephone calls, and constantly blowing fuses trying to plug in her array of modern pink appliances. The show clearly took the view ubanites had superior stuff, and people in the country were technologically impaired. This clearly is not the case today. Wireless, Satellite technology has shrunk the world into a hand held device that connects people with everything. This allows us to run a corporation and shop at Macy's from an igloo in Iceland if we want to. In fact, people who live in rural communities have less restrictions and the land needed to incorporate modern sustainable energy systems.

Wind turbines, Organic building materials, and Compost Toilets are old school technologies that are making a comeback. These systems have worked with mother nature on farms sustainably for millennial. Thermal heating coils and Solar panels also work in tandem with mother nature, and become a more feasible option in rural settings. Eco Yuppies drool over the sustainable options rural folks have, and are green with envy over the equipment farmers of today use( ever been on a John Deer with GPS?). Outlet malls and international food chains make country folk just as fashionable and fat as us in the city . Climate change has made simple ECO friendly practices used by farmers in the past popular among the city dwellers. Composting is down right chic these days. Green Acres made a lot of the social aspects of rural life and little of the actual farming, showing Oliver trotting around on a tractor in his Brooks Brother vest, amongst a field of something; corn, carrots, hay? what he was growing didn't get many laughs. If he decided to grow hemp back in the groovy 60's, it would have been fodder for hippie jokes and the establishment would frown upon the notion. Farmers in California are not laughing at the idea of growing hemp, and are leading the way for Federal decriminalization of the crop. Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has sponsored a bill to make marijuana legal to be sold to people over the age of 21, and each ounce taxed up to $50. Marijuana is the biggest cash crop in California, with an estimated 14 billion dollars a year in sales, dwarfing milk and cream, which are the states other big cash crops that bring in 7 billion a year combined. Some say making cannabis legal would end a huge hipocracy, and bring in much needed tax revenue to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars a year. Legalizing cannabis will also allow farmers to grow industrial hemp. Hemp is currently imported from Canada, China, and Europe for use in the U.S., and the growing use of hemp in consumer products has spiked the demand for the crop. Many businesses are starting to scoff at having to import hemp from nations that compete with America industrially. There are also many environmental reasons why hemp is an appealing crop. Industrial hemp is a excellent rotation crop because its dense growth smothers weeds without herbicides, and breaks the disease cycle. Hemp requires less water and fertilizers, and has a tap root that leaves the land good for the next crop. These factors save farmers time, money, and cuts the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides that leach the land and pollute our waters. An Acre of hemp will produce two to three times as much fiber as cotton or flax. Hemp seed oil has the highest concentration of essential fatty acids of any oil( 80%), and Hemp pulp produces clean-burning alcohol, ethanol, and methane. These bio-fuels do not contain sulfur and are a viable alternative to petroleum. Hemp also produces exactly as much oxygen as CO2 it absorbs( female plants absorb 5 times as much CO2 than any other plant) and the crop can be grown on a variety of soils under many conditions.

So does farm livin sound like the life for you? Ready to say goodbye to city life for the country side? The big city dream of packin up the wife for land spreadin out far and wide is more appealing than ever to weary urbanites these days, and many are investigating the reality of living on a working farm. Cannabis legalization may be a key to reviving the American farm industry, and creating a industry that energizes the U.S. economy. GREEN ACRES WE ARE THERE!!!