U.S. Department of Agriculture

A wartime propaganda short produced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to convince American farmers to plant hemp. With Japan's 1942 occupation of the Philippines cutting off the rope fiber imports the Navy depended on, the government needed domestic production fast — this film walks farmers through planting, harvesting, and processing the crop, with hemp promised to buy war bonds at harvest. Long suppressed after the war when hemp was lumped back in with marijuana prohibition, it resurfaced as a staple of cannabis-reform lore; the USDA denied the film existed until a copy turned up in a government archive in 1989. As a work of the U.S. federal government, it is in the public domain.

War · Documentary · Short