Hemp: A Gift of Nature, Cursed by Man By Amanda Lopez

Hemp: A Gift of Nature, Cursed by Man

By Amanda Lopez

Hemp has for centuries been one of the most useful and readily available crops, capable of producing a myriad of products necessary for our daily life. The core of the hemp stalk can be used to produce a multitude of products, including fiberboard, carpet, fiberglass substitute, cement blocks, concrete, stucco, mortar and home insulation. One acre of hemp (grown in a single season) yields as much paper as up to four acres of trees, (grown over many years). The crop can produce a paper that is stronger, acid free and, unlike normal wood-based paper, does not require chlorine. Hemp cloth is four times warmer than cotton, has three times the tensile strength of cotton and is flame retardant; it breathes well and keeps moisture away from the body better than cotton.

 Yet due to its association with marijuana, as well as the push from magnates with interests in non-renewable sources, it has been marginalized from society and in some cases completely banned. While indeed marijuana is a mind-altering drug, this property comes only from the extremely high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) present in the plant. By contrast, the cannabis plants used for hemp are specifically bred to remove the THC entirely. Nonetheless, the linkage of these two plants and their subsequent banning, have given those with a competitive interest the perfect excuse to suppress this miracle crop. In an era when we are desperate for renewable energy and products that can finally stem the environmental damage fraught by man, it is at last time to look more closely at this remarkable product. With proper legislation, funding, and technological progress, hemp could truly be nature’s greatest gift.

Hemp: A Gift of Nature, Cursed by Man

By Amanda Lopez

Hemp is one of the most environmentally friendly, nutritious and useful products available for commercial use. From its earliest beginning to the present-day, it offers us a remarkable and renewable solution to our fossil-fuel dependence. Despite these incredible qualities, this product has been quite successfully misrepresented, abused and accused of wrongdoing by those with vested interests in man-made and man-cultivated products. This paper will examine the origins of the product, from its earliest uses to its current incredible modern functionalities. It will then examine the legal developments concerning this plant, which have ensured its marginalization. In so doing, this paper will demonstrate hemp as a solution which can at last combat the fossil-fueled greed in which we currently reside.

An Introduction to Hemp

Hemp is a commonly used term for varieties of the Cannabis plant and its resulting products. Despite the fact that it indeed shares the same base plant as marijuana, it in fact has little to do with this mind-altering drug. Rather, hemp refers to the THC-free plant, and the multitude of products that are available from its use. Indeed hemp has been used throughout the world for thousands of years, something that comes as no surprise when we consider its remarkable qualities as a crop. We must therefore first examine this plant as a crop, which will demonstrate its incredible environmental benefits.

As a crop hemp matures four months after planting and requires NO PESTICIDES or HERBACIDES. It improves the soil it is grown in and uses the sun more efficiently than just about any other plant on the planet. It is the number one biomass producer on the planet, producing ten tons per acre in 4 months. It prefers a mild climate but is grown from Tasmania to Queensland needing a rainfall of 25 to 30 inches a year. The mulch created from the waste parts of hemp have been shown to make the best quality soil and even keep Tasmanian apples crisper for longer. A hemp field produces a very large bulk of plant material in a short period of time (stalks can reach 3 or 4 metres in three months). They can reach 3 to 7 tons of dry hemp fibre stalk per acre. Hemp makes excellent cattle fodder and would be better utilised for our domestic animals than the higher water consuming corn crop.  Yet even more remarkable than its potential as an environmentally friendly crop are the myriad of uses to which it has been put over the centuries. These include: Paper, Cloth and Nutritional Products.

Paper

One of the earliest and most effective uses of the hemp was for paper. China, one of world’s first paper makers, were using hemp some 1,900 years ago. Both the Gutenberg Bible of the 15th century and the King James Bibles were printed on hemp-based papers. Even as late as 1883, three quarter’s of the world’s paper was produced from Hemp.

However, since the 1900s all newspapers and most books and magazines have been printed on wood pulp papers: cheap throwaway paper, fitting in with a disposable economy. Our forests are being cut down at three times the rate they are replanted. Today 80% of wood pulp in Britain is imported from Sweden and Canada, eliminating their carbon dioxide absorbing trees, reducing their forests and the oxygen they produce as well as destroying the surrounding environments when by-products like chlorine are washed downstream.

By contrast, one acre of Hemp (grown in a single season) yields as much paper as up to four acres of trees, (grown over many years). It is stronger, acid free and does not require chlorine. Hemp paper can be recycled 10 times whereas wood-based paper can only be recycled twice without losing integrity and requiring extra virgin fibre content. As one of the most enduring and reliable sources of paper in the world, it is almost unfathomable why this product is not more readily used.

Cloth

Hemp can also be very effectively used as a natural fiber to make cloth and clothing. Hemp cloth repels 95% of UV light and, now with advanced technology, can be made as soft as cotton. Hemp becomes even more significant when we compare it with cotton, this most widely-used fabric product.

As earlier discussed, hemp can grow easily and naturally without the need for chemical products. By contrast, cotton is a soil-damaging crop and needs a great deal of fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides. Cotton crops in the US occupy 1% of the country’s farmland but use 50% of all pesticides. Moreover, one acre of Hemp will produce as much as two-three acres of cotton. Finally, in terms of the finished product, hemp cloth is four times warmer than cotton, has three times the tensile strength of cotton and is flame retardant; it breathes well and keeps moisture away from the body better than cotton. It can also be easily blended with silk, tencel, bamboo and spandex.

Thus both in terms of its quality as a crop, as well as the materials it can produce, hemp is a far more sustainable and efficient product than any other.

Nutritional Products

Hemp food products for humans come from its seed and oil. Of all the edible plants on earth, few can compare with the nutritional benefits of hemp. It is edible as whole seeds, hulled seed, protein powder or oil extracted from the seeds. The seeds contain 44% oil and 33% protein and 12% carbohydrate as well as vitamin E and trace minerals.

Furthermore, it is more nutritious than most other seeds as its protein contains all essential amino acids in the best ratio recommended by most scientists: 4:1 ratio omega-6 to omega-3. By comparison, most Western diets have a 10:1 ratio or more. This means that the Omega ratio is in a better balance than even fish oils and has the added benefit of not risking mercury ingestion from fish or the environmental harms of fishing or the health risks from farmed fish. These improved Omega ratios greatly help reduce many of the heart-related diseases suffered in our Western World.  It contains less than 10% saturated fatty acids and no trans-fatty acids.  Finally it has been shown to alleviate the symptoms of atopic dermatitis and other skin diseases. In 2005-2008 Hemp food sales have averaged a 47% annual growth, making it one of the fastest growing natural food categories in the world.

Hemp: A Brief Legal Introduction

Given the remarkable qualities of this crop, its environmental benefits as well as its ability to be used across a variety of industries, it is surprising that its use is not more prolific. To understand why this is the case, we must examine the legal history of the plant to see how those whose interests lie in the extreme economic productivity of fossil fuels have continually suppressed it.

For the first 162 years of America’s existence, marijuana was totally legal, as was hemp and its by products. But during the Puritanism of the1930s, the U.S. government and the media began looking at drugs like a marijuana and alcohol as the poisons of society. In 1937, marijuana was banned as an illegal substance. The marijuana scare campaign was internationalised and the first hysterical articles appeared in Australia in 1938. At the end of that year hemp was listed in Australia as a “noxious weed” which had to be destroyed on sight. An utterly successful campaign led to the banning of one of the world’s most useful plants.

The tragedy of this moment was that both hemp and marijuana were lumped together: for while indeed marijuana is a mind-altering drug, this property comes only from the extremely high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). By contrast, the cannabis plants used for hemp are specifically bred to remove the THC entirely. Nonetheless, the linkage of these two plants and their subsequent banning, have given those with a competitive interest the perfect excuse to marginalize this miracle crop.

From the very beginning of this legal process we see examples of legislation used for the benefit of those with vested interest in non-renewable but economically voracious industries. The Dupont Corporation, one of the world’s leading chemical companies, has long had an  interest in the demise of hemp, which may be used as a replacement for several of its products. Dupont’s chief financial backer, Andrew Mellon, was US President J. Herbert Hoover’s secretary of the treasury. He appointed his nephew, Harry Anglingers, to a position in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Drugs. He was the man responsible for the scare campaign and making sure the plant was associated with the drugs use and a resulting erroneous reputation.

The Newspaper giant Randolph Hearts was also heavily invested in timber and petroleum resources and saw hemp as a threat to his empire. He thus mounted a journalistic campaign against hemp: for, though cleaner and more efficient, the far cheaper hemp-powered diesel engine would have been a serious threat to oil, coal, timber industries, as well as the banking magnates that backed them. Thus, despite its clear environmentally sound and cost effective properties, we see that hemp has once again been smeared by those with economic interests in non-renewable sources.

There have, however, been examples of moments when people have tried to reverse the tide. In 1941 an American magazine, Popular Mehanics, ran a story featuring a photograph of Henry Ford standing next to the car he “grew from the soil”. The hemp-ethanol fuelled and hemp-resin vehicle was a dream of his. However, once again many bills proposing a national agricultural based fuel energy program were killed by smear campaign launched by vested petroleum interests. The same fate occurred with his desire to use hemp diesel. The oil industry with its plastics for the chasis and its petrol for the motor assured itself a long life of wealth, greed and environmental degradation. The final nail in Hemp’s coffin came in the 1970s when the US not only banned hemp production itself but insisted all other countries of the Western World do the same. The power of the oil industry was utterly pervasive.

Hemp Today

Recently, some progress has been made towards the legalization of hemp and the encouragement of its production. In 1997 that Canada finally lifted the hemp production ban. Canada has now become a huge grower and refiner of hemp, selling its finished products to the United States in ever increasing quantities. Today even Australia buys Canadian Hemp seed oil and seeds.

In the US up until 2002 it was illegal to grow industrial hemp for food, oil, paper or fabric in the US but legal to import it from anywhere and to process, consume or wear it there. Thanks to a strong Democratic push, 17 states now allow legal production of Hemp.

However, despite remarkable international progress, as well as its proven status as a plant with numerous remarkable properties, hemp has once again been banned on our shores. In December, 2012 legislation was presented to the Australian government to allow the production of hemp for commercial use (a whole ten years after the last failed attempt). Despite having the support of FSANZ (Food Standards of Australia and New Zealand) once again the legislation did not pass.  The chief reason cited was that the AFP would not be able to differentiate between hemp and marijuana when they do road-side swab testing.

In Australia it is legal to grow it anywhere but illegal to sell it for human consumption, neither the oil nor seeds; the only country left in the world to make that claim. Even New Zealand has passed laws to make the ever so nutritious oil legal for human consumption. Hemp could be a wonderful renewable resource and alternative to mining and logging if it received government support and assistance. Tasmania in particular could benefit hugely if this industry were promoted. The best quality Hemp is already produced there in a small scale and could be expanded. The core of the hemp stalk can be used to produce a multitude of products, including fiberboard, carpet, fiberglass substitute, cement blocks, concrete, stucco and mortar. The crop can also be used as an efficient and environmentally friendly form of home insulation, unlike traditional pink bats which are fossil-fuel derived. Yet it is a tragic state of affairs when those refining Hemp oil, seed and protein powder have to import a large portion of their product from Canada and Germany because Australia can not meet the demand.

Conclusion

Thus we have been witness, over the last century, to a remarkable and tragic story. Hemp has for centuries been one of the most useful and readily available crops, capable of producing a myriad of products necessary for our daily life. Yet due to its association with marijuana, as well as the push from magnates with interests in non-renewable sources, it has been marginalized from society and in some cases completely banned. In an era when we are desperate for renewable energy and products that can finally stem the environmental damage fraught by man, it is at last time to look more closely at this remarkable product. With proper legislation, funding, and technological progress, hemp could truly be nature’s greatest gift.