| Wednesday, September 12, 2007 |  |
| How the Food Industry is Deceiving You | 2 comments |
| 12 Sep 2007 @ 19:01 This terrific online five-part video series by Peter Jennings explores how the food industry spends billions of dollars to sabotage your health. Jennings also takes a critical look at our government's agricultural subsidy programs, and their unintended consequences on your nutritional choices and health. For example, sugar and fat receive 20 times more government farming subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Does this oversupply of fats and sugars, compared to fruits and vegetables, affect your food choices? Some statistics, implicating both the food industry and the government as co-creating factors in the obesity epidemic, include: * In 2002, consumers spent $174 billion on processed foods. * 90 percent of foods marketed each year are processed foods. * Last year, 2,800 new candies, desserts, ice-cream, and snacks were introduced to the marketplace, compared to 230 new fruits or vegetable products. * The food industry spends $34 billion per year marketing their products. * $12 billion is spent marketing to children. The food industry is quick to point out that the choice is always yours -- they're not making you buy something you don't want. They also want to blame the obesity problem on people's unwillingness to exercise. More > |
| Friday, August 17, 2007 | |
| BUilding Straw Houses from flax to hemp | 2 comments |
| 17 Aug 2007 @ 22:17 Building straw houses; From flax to hemp, researchers tout merits of bio-construction By Jennifer Pritchett The Whig-Standard - Kingston, ON, Canada August 17, 2007 Local News - Fuelled by a growing demand for environmentally friendly buildings, hemp, wheat, flax and other grains are now being touted as emerging raw materials in the construction industry. The merits of these so-called "biofibres" and their applications in Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world was the basis of an international symposium that wrapped up in Kingston yesterday. Shelagh McDonald, executive director of the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network, which organized the event, said the symposium brought together the researchers and industry leaders who are using biofibres to foster new developments. "I know there are going to be some collaborations that will spark as a result of bringing people together," she told the Whig-Standard. The Eastern Lake Ontario Innovation Network, partially funded by the province, promotes the bioproduct, biomedical and bioenergy industries. The symposium attracted about 100 participants from Canada, the United States, Africa and the United Kingdom. Participants in the symposium toured a hemp experimental farm near Belleville on Wednesday. Over the two-day conference, a handful of guest speakers tackled topics such as using biofibres in the construction industry and combusting the material to turn it into green energy. CONTINUE READING More > |
| Sunday, July 15, 2007 | |
| Ultimate green machine: a car made of hemp | 1 comment |
| 15 Jul 2007 @ 15:07 From The Sunday London Times July 15, 2007 Ultimate green machine: a car made of hemp Jonathan Leake Environment Editor CAR buyers who suspect they have parted with money for old rope may soon be right. Ministers are to spend more than £500,000 in an attempt to develop the world’s first recyclable vehicle made from hemp. A deal between Defra, the environment department, Ford, the car manufacturer, and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis, could see hemp being used as the basis for a wide range of components. The fibrous qualities of their stalks means they can be used to make clothes, paper and ropes. Defra’s funding is being used to create new materials based on fibres from hemp and other plants such as flax and willow, to replace metals and oil-based plastics. The fibres are blended with polypropylene and the resulting mixture can then be moulded into whatever shape is required. The hope is to make car manufacture more sustainable. Such materials would be easy to recycle for use in successive generations of vehicles. “We hope this could become a sustainable way of replacing metals, glass fibre and plastic in making new cars,” said Robert West of Qinetiq, the technology development firm that is overseeing the project. The most likely first use for hemp-based components is as a replacement for internal components such as mouldings and plastics. West’s team has already designed a pedal assembly that could replace the traditional metal accelerator, brake and clutch pedals. As the technology advances it could also be used to replace body panels and larger components. “Natural fibres offer many technical and environmental attractions,” said a Defra spokesman. “They have high strength and stiffness, low raw material and energy costs and the potential for very low environmental impact.” Growing hemp is strictly controlled because of the association with drug use. However, Hemcore now has licences for 3,000 hectares of industrial hemp, a plant with minimal drug content, from which the fibres will be extracted. It processes the plants at its factory in Essex. Early estimates suggest that hemp-based materials could replace up to 100kg of other plastics, metals and resins within the average car. Since hemp produces about two tonnes of fibre per hectare, each hectare could grow enough for 20 cars. CONTINUE READING More > |
| Monday, July 2, 2007 | |
| South Dakota Farmer Struggles To Grow Hemp | 4 comments |
 2 Jul 2007 @ 19:45S.D. Farmer Struggles To Grow Hemp By Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer Press & Dakotan - Yankton, SD July 2, 2007 MANDERSON -- Alex White Plume hoped his extended family could make a good living growing hemp when he first planted seeds on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota, but years of fighting with federal drug officials have left him in financial trouble. The White Plume family planted hemp for three years from 2000 through 2002, but they never harvested a crop. Federal agents conducted raids and cut down the plants each year because U.S. law considers hemp, a cousin of marijuana, to be a drug even though it contains only a trace of the drug in marijuana. "We had all these plans of grandeur and independence, to lead the way with industrial hemp," White Plume said. "None of it worked out." White Plume plans to sell much of his ranching operation this fall. He said he probably can keep his house and at least some of his buffalo that graze among the pine-dotted ridges that give the reservation its name. His horses, a truck with license plates reading "HEMP," and other equipment likely will be sold to pay off some of his debts. The Alex White Plume story & pictorial READ ON and click here to finish this article More > |
| Thursday, March 1, 2007 | |
| Michael Pollan, Whole Foods' John Mackey Dialoghue in Berkeley | 2 comments |
 1 Mar 2007 @ 17:06 Michael Pollan, Whole Foods' John Mackey usher Berkeley foodies into 'ecological era' By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 28 February 2007 topkey Webcast: "The Past, Present and Future of Food" | 2 hours 4 minutes BERKELEY – Why on earth would 2,000 people turn out on a rainy, blustery evening to hear a conversation between a reporter and a grocer? asked the former of the latter at a sold-out Zellerbach Hall Tuesday night (Feb. 27). The answer has two parts. The speakers were not just any reporter or grocer, but Michael Pollan, best-selling science writer and UC Berkeley Knight Professor of Journalism, and John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market, the world's largest natural-foods grocery chain. And they have been carrying on a dialogue of sorts about the future of organic food ever since the publication last April of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Pollan's investigation into the U.S. food chain. More > |
| Friday, November 3, 2006 | |
| Seafood, other ocean life threatened by overfishing, pollution | 2 comments |
| 3 Nov 2006 @ 16:15 Seafood, other ocean life threatened by overfishing, pollution The Associated Press Published: November 2, 2006 WASHINGTON: Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. "Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging. In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems," said the lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. "I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected," Worm said. While the study focused on the oceans, concerns have been expressed by ecologists about threats to fish in the Great Lakes and other lakes, rivers and freshwaters, too. Worm and an international team spent four years analyzing 32 controlled experiments, other studies from 48 marine protected areas and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003. The scientists also looked at a 1,000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data. "At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed — that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," Worm said. "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime — by 2048." "It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer," he said. "But it's not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it." The researchers called for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing and tighter controls on pollution. In the 48 areas worldwide that have been protected to improve marine biodiversity, they found, "diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem's productivity and stability." While seafood forms a crucial concern in their study, the researchers were analyzing overall biodiversity of the oceans. The more species in the oceans, the better each can handle exploitation. "Even bugs and weeds make clear, measurable contributions to ecosystems," said co-author J. Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences. The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, does not share the researchers alarm. "Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population," the institute said in a statement. "By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species. Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts' environment program, pointed out that worldwide fishing provides $80 billion (€62.6 billion)in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion people, many of whom are poor, fish is their main source of protein, he said. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation's National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis. ___ Associated Press Writer John Heilprin contributed to this report. More > |
| Monday, October 30, 2006 | |
| Stoynfield's Response to Business Week Organic Myth Article | 0 comments |
| 30 Oct 2006 @ 19:32 Stonyfield's Response to Business Week Organic Myth Article  |
| The Organic Myth | 2 comments |
| 30 Oct 2006 @ 19:28 The Organic Myth Pastoral ideals are getting trampled as organic food goes mass market Next time you're in the supermarket, stop and take a look at Stonyfield Farm yogurt. With its contented cow and green fields, the yellow container evokes a bucolic existence, telegraphing what we've come to expect from organic food: pure, pesticide-free, locally produced ingredients grown on a small family farm. So it may come as a surprise that Stonyfield's organic farm is long gone. Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S. True, Stonyfield still cleaves to its organic heritage. For Chairman and CEO Gary Hirshberg, though, shipping milk powder 9,000 miles across the planet is the price you pay to conquer the supermarket dairy aisle. "It would be great to get all of our food within a 10-mile radius of our house," he says. "But once you're in organic, you have to source globally." Hirshberg's dilemma is that of the entire organic food business. Just as mainstream consumers are growing hungry for untainted food that also nourishes their social conscience, it is getting harder and harder to find organic ingredients. There simply aren't enough organic cows in the U.S., never mind the organic grain to feed them, to go around. Nor are there sufficient organic strawberries, sugar, or apple pulp -- some of the other ingredients that go into the world's best-selling organic yogurt. Now companies from Wal-Mart (WMT ) to General Mills (GIS ) to Kellogg (K ) are wading into the organic game, attracted by fat margins that old-fashioned food purveyors can only dream of. What was once a cottage industry of family farms has become Big Business, with all that that implies, including pressure from Wall Street to scale up and boost profits. Hirshberg himself is under the gun because he has sold an 85% stake in Stonyfield to the French food giant Groupe Danone. To retain management control, he has to keep Stonyfield growing at double-digit rates. Yet faced with a supply crunch, he has drastically cut the percentage of organic products in his line. He also has scaled back annual sales growth, from almost 40% to 20%. "They're all mad at me," he says. As food companies scramble to find enough organically grown ingredients, they are inevitably forsaking the pastoral ethos that has defined the organic lifestyle. For some companies, it means keeping thousands of organic cows on industrial-scale feedlots. For others, the scarcity of organic ingredients means looking as far afield as China, Sierra Leone, and Brazil -- places where standards may be hard to enforce, workers' wages and living conditions are a worry, and, say critics, increased farmland sometimes comes at a cost to the environment. Everyone agrees on the basic definition of organic: food grown without the assistance of man-made chemicals. Four years ago, under pressure from critics fretting that the term "organic" was being misused, the U.S. Agriculture Dept. issued rules. To be certified as organic, companies must eschew most pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, bioengineering, and radiation. But for purists, the philosophy also requires farmers to treat their people and livestock with respect and, ideally, to sell small batches of what they produce locally so as to avoid burning fossil fuels to transport them. The USDA rules don't fully address these concerns. Hence the organic paradox: The movement's adherents have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but success has imperiled their ideals. It simply isn't clear that organic food production can be replicated on a mass scale. For Hirshberg, who set out to "change the way Kraft (KFT ), Monsanto (MON ), and everybody else does business," the movement is shedding its innocence. "Organic is growing up." Certainly, life has changed since 1983, when Hirshberg teamed up with a back-to-the-land advocate named Samuel Kaymen to sell small batches of full-fat plain organic yogurt. Kaymen had founded Stonyfield Farm to feed his six kids and, as he puts it, "escape the dominant culture." Hirshberg, then 29, had been devoted to the environment for years, stung by memories of technicolor dyes streaming downriver from his father's New Hampshire shoe factories. He wrote a book on how to build water-pumping windmills and, between 1979 and 1983, ran the New Alchemy Institute, an alternative-living research center on Cape Cod. He was a believer. But producing yogurt amid the rudimentary conditions of the original Stonyfield Farm was a recipe for nightmares, not nirvana. Meg, an organic farmer who married Hirshberg in 1986, remembers the farm as cold and crowded, with a road so perilous that suppliers often refused to come up. "I call it the bad old days," she says. Adds her mother, Doris Cadoux, who propped up the business for years: "Every time Gary would come to me for money, Meg would call to say 'Mama, don't do it."' READ MORE More > |
| Wednesday, October 4, 2006 | |
| Positive Proof of Global Warming | 3 comments |
| 4 Oct 2006 @ 20:04 Positive Proof of Global Warming More >  |
| Friday, August 18, 2006 | |
| California Senate Passes Law Allowing Farmers to Grow Hemp | 3 comments |
| 18 Aug 2006 @ 20:42 California Senate Passes Law Allowing Farmers to Grow Hemp--Bill Needs Governor's Signature California Industrial Hemp Farming Act Passes Final Senate Vote Groundbreaking Bill Expected to Go to Governor's Desk U.S. Newswire, August 16, 2006 Contact: Patrick Goggin, 415-312-0084, Tom Murphy, 207-542-4998, or Adam Eidinger, 202-744-2671 or adam@votehemp.com, all for VoteHemp.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- AB 1147, The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act, passed in the Senate today by a vote of 26-13. The bill now heads to the Assembly for a final concurrence vote and will then be sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk for his signature. Since passing out of the Assembly in January of this year, AB 1147 has gained momentum as legislators learned that California businesses spend millions of dollars each year importing hemp from Canada, China and Europe. Demand for hemp products such as clothing, food, body care, paper and even auto parts has been growing rapidly in recent years with the U.S. hemp market now exceeding $270 million in estimated annual retail sales. The new law would give farmers the ability to legally supply U.S. manufacturers with hemp seed, oil and fiber and would not weaken anti-drug laws. "We thank legislators from both parties that listened to the facts about industrial hemp and made a historic decision to bring back the crop," says Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra. "Passage in the California Legislature is a major accomplishment for the authors and sponsors of the bill as well as thousands of ecology conscious people, farmers, and businesses that wrote California legislators," says Steenstra. The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act was introduced in February of 2005 by Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno. This year, the bill was amended, and Republican Assemblyman Chuck Devore joined as a co-author. In the bipartisan spirit of the legislation the bill was managed on the floor of the Senate by Republican Tom McClintock and received support from Senator Able Maldonado, a farmer and Republican member of the Agriculture Committee. Another influential Republican Senator who supported the bill was Sam Aanestad who is Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. AB 1147 has been carefully crafted to comply with federal law and minimize impact to law enforcement. It includes tough regulations without placing an undue burden on farmers. The bill only permits cultivation of ultra-low THC industrial hemp when grown as an agricultural field crop or in a research setting. Backyard or horticultural cultivation is prohibited. Any clandestine grove of Cannabis will be considered a controlled substance regardless of its THC content. California's AB 1147 has already passed a series of committee votes and a floor vote in the Assembly. The final passage in the Assembly is expected by the end of August. Vote Hemp believes the new law would withstand federal scrutiny in the form of legal challenges and ultimately will result in commercial hemp farming in California. No industrial hemp is grown in the United States today even though seven states have passed hemp farming and research bills in recent years. More details on industrial hemp legislation can be found at [link] . Final passage of AB 1147 could revitalize commercial industrial hemp farming, which occurred in California until shortly after World War II. "It appears the hemp seed and oil we currently import soon will be grown and produced right here in California," says David Bronner, chair of the HIA's Food and Oil Committee and president of Alpsnack/Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. "The Hemp Industries Association's member companies are urging Gov. Schwarzenegger to promote sustainable growth for the California economy by signing the industrial hemp bill. Increasing double digit sales growth over the last few years in the hemp food and body care sector indicates strong consumer demand for hemp products that will sustain high prices for farmers for years to come," said Bronner. More information about hemp legislation and the crop's many uses can be found at [link] More > |
| Repreve —100% Recycled Yarn | 0 comments |
 18 Aug 2006 @ 20:35:: Repreve —100% Recycled Yarn August 18, 2006 03:37 AM - Warren McLaren, Sydney Repreve by Unifi is a 100% recycled polyester yarn made from both post-consumer and post-industrial waste. It can be dyed at the spun fibre stage. It’s uses range from home furnishings through to automotive upholstery. Two companies who have elected to run with it are Malden, who we noted earlier are doing a big launch on recycled fleece and bodywear fabrics and Consoltex. The later makes a line of cloth also for the outdoor industry that goes by the name of Earthwhile (cute), that seems like it also gets blended with organic cotton. Expect to see garments made of such materials popping up on retail hangers next year. Unifi also offer Satura, a dyeing process that reportedly saves 18 gallons of water per pound of yarn produced. They reclaim water & energy (which are recycled repeatedly) from condensation and dyebaths, which helps heat the plant and conserve water |
| Thursday, June 22, 2006 | |
| Local Boy Makes Food | 0 comments |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 05:28 From miaminewtimes.com Originally published by Miami New Times 2006-06-22 ©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved. Local Boy Makes Food This Miami Beach hippie is not like the others By Emily Witt Courtesy of Stephen Brooks Miami Beach native Stephen Brooks's TV show debuts this week Late afternoon on May 5 in a windowless, wood-paneled North Miami office, Stephen Brooks feeds his family and friends. His grandparents sit on a low pleather couch, chewing on pieces of dried mango. His father and business partners look up from a topographical map of a hill in Costa Rica to accept an offer of dried Cape gooseberries. They're planning some houses down there, and pause from deliberation just long enough to pucker severely at the berries' tartness. "Yeah, it's sharp," Brooks concedes. "But isn't it amazing? You could put it on a salad." Brooks is a tan, blue-eyed 32-year-old who is wearing corduroy cut-offs, a button-down shirt, and sandals. His frizzy hair is bound in a ponytail. Assorted leather pendants hang around his neck. With evident glee he dips plastic spoons in small pots of banana jelly (from Brazil) and maple sugar spread (from Maine) and delights visibly at the chorus of mmms from his family members. His exuberance would give an aerobics instructor an inferiority complex. Stephen Brooks knows the power of delicious food. Just a few months ago he walked into the executive offices of the Travel Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland, bearing a box of exotic fruits he had grown. He fed everybody, gushing with the same enthusiasm he displayed for his family. Brooks was trying to land himself a television show. And it worked — the pilot for the as-yet-untitled show (Edible Planet? Edible Journeys?) will air Monday, June 26, at 8:00 p.m. "Prime time!" crows a very satisfied Brooks. The show is about where food comes from. But not in a Fast Food Nation or Omnivore's Dilemma kind of way. Brooks will travel around the world to document the cultivation of food in a style called permaculture. "It's about trying to figure out how we can meet our goals and use less energy — our mental energy, our physical energy, and most importantly the planet's," he says. The television show is only the most recent phase of Brooks's role as a green-food prophet. Last year, to promote Kopali Organics, his farmer-friendly food company, Brooks drove a vegetable-oil-fueled coach bus (with coconut wood floors, natural rubber latex seats, and hemp upholstery) to Whole Foods stores around the nation. In the late Nineties, he founded an ecotourism company and organic farm on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. And Brooks is of a rare breed: a second-generation Miami Beach native. "He was always a little crazy, a little adventuresome," says Bonnie Brooks, Stephen's pretty, well-coiffed, decidedly not countercultural mother. She moved to Miami Beach at age eleven. His father, Norman Brooks, a retired dentist, was born here. Both Miami Beach High graduates, his parents have been together since eighth grade. "They're still madly in love," Stephen gushes. "He was the ringleader that everyone followed," recalls his mother. "It was always something unusual. Like getting everybody to start jumping into my pool from the roof." Brooks graduated from North Miami Beach Senior High and then attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At the end of his senior year, he visited a girlfriend who was studying abroad in Costa Rica. Not only did he fall in love with the country, but he also found his calling — in a banana field. "We were going to visit a Bribri village," he says, referring to an indigenous Costa Rican culture. "We came around a turn that opened out into a view of endless banana plantations. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an airplane swooping down. It had a white plume of pesticides trailing behind it. Suddenly it flew right over us and my eyes, my nose, everything was burning." Then Brooks saw the crop duster buzz over a group of children playing. At first he was outraged, but then he had an epiphany. "Who was responsible? I was. Every morning, when I ate my Chiquita banana with my Cinnamon Life growing up," he says. In 1996 his paternal grandfather passed away. With $38,000 — the inheritance left to him — he purchased a 30-acre tract of land on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast. It had no roads, no electricity, and no running water. He moved there. The land had once been part of an Afro-Caribbean community. Brooks quickly befriended its only remaining inhabitant, Blas "Padi" Martínez. Like his elderly neighbor, he learned to live off the land. At first he ate only yuca, plantains, and fish. "I came up with some pretty funky recipes," he insists. Within a year, however, his gardening skills improved. Soon he found himself growing a grove of 50 trees, collecting useful plants, and getting "really into" agriculture. The farm, which he named Punta Mona, grew into a botanical breadbasket, completely self-sustaining. With the help of friends who eventually joined him, he constructed buildings from fallen trees, and roofs from thatched leaves. Solar panels provide the only electricity. Methane gas from the septic system powers the stoves in the kitchen. ("Did you have a brother? Did he light his farts on fire?" asks Brooks.) The biofuel bus tours began in 2003. "I got into a conversation with a friend in Punta Mona, this crazy hobo anarchist named Spider," Brooks says. Spider asked him how he justified flying back and forth to the United States. "He pointed out that each flight was like 600 car trips' worth of fuel." Spider's indignation planted the seed of an idea in Brooks's mind. In November 2003, after raising $25,000 to outfit the ride, Brooks and others piloted two buses filled with 26 people from San Francisco to Costa Rica. Their fuel? Discarded vegetable oil, picked up from restaurants along their route through Central America. They would pull into tiny towns and draw crowds. Univision's news show Primer Impacto followed them on a leg of the trip. Newspapers branded them ecological missionaries. The journey was repeated in 2004. Another bus tour will travel through Mexico this year. Brooks also embarked on epic journeys — to the Amazon, to the jungles of Borneo — collecting seeds and useful plants. He met farmers, both in Costa Rica and other countries, and wanted to help them achieve financial independence. To do so he founded his company, Kopali Organics, in 2004. Whole Foods agreed to distribute its products, which will be in Florida stores this summer. Back in the windowless office in North Miami, Stephen's parents explain they try to eat organically now, and their back yard has a new crop of fruit trees. Stephen and Norman are also planting a garden with vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Stephen admits he feels a little culturally isolated from the place where he grew up, although he's been looking to purchase some land in Homestead. "I'm obsessed with the Fruit and Spice Park," he says. |
| Bill To Permit Farming Of Industrial Hemp Passes Senate Public Safety Committee | 0 comments |
| 22 Jun 2006 @ 05:22 For Immediate Release June 20, 2006 Contact: Shannan Velayas (916) 319-2013 Leno-Devore Bill To Permit Farming Of Industrial Hemp Passes Senate Public Safety Committee U.S. consumers spend $270 million each year on hemp products, increasing by $26 million annually SACRAMENTO - Assembly Bill 1147 authored by Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), permitting California farmers to grow industrial hemp for the sale of seed, oil and fiber to manufacturers passed the Senate Public Safety Committee today on a vote of 4 to 2. "California farmers are missing out on a multimillion dollar market that already exists in California," said Assemblyman Mark Leno. "Hundreds of hemp products are made right here in California, but manufactures are forced to import hemp seed, oil and fiber from other countries. This measure will allow California to lead the way in tapping into a $270 million industry that's growing by $26 million each year." Sponsored by Vote Hemp, AB 1147 would permit California farmers to grow industrial hemp, a variety of cannabis that grows up to 16 feet tall, resembles bamboo, and has no psychoactive properties. Under the bill, industrial hemp is defined as cannabis having 0.3% THC or less and its cultivation is only permitted as an agricultural field crop or in a research setting. Cultivation in groves, yards, or other locations is prohibited. "Our bill is about letting California farmers grow a crop that's legal worldwide. We can import hemp, we can process it into shampoo, plastics, and food, but we won't let our farmers grow it. AB 1147 is a common sense measure that regulates the industrial farming of hemp to conform with federal law while relieving law enforcement of the burden of having to discern legal hemp from illegal marijuana grown in clandestine groves," said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Hemp is one of the strongest natural fibers known and is grown and processed throughout the world for paper, fuel, clothing, building materials, canvas, rope, beauty care products, food and automobile parts, among others. The seed has many nutritional benefits because it contains essential amino acids, including omega-3 commonly found in fish, and is an alternative source of protein. Hemp also has strong environmental benefits. It's a source for paper that could enable us to save our trees for higher end uses such as lumber. Hemp can be used as a raw material for ethanol fuel with no net addition to greenhouse gases. It requires little or no agricultural chemicals, smothers weeds, and improves soil conditions, making it an excellent rotational crop. "Once this bill is enacted, it will create a more efficient market, leading to better prices for the consumer, and provide an opportunity to expand the market for the nutritious hemp seed," said David Bronner, head of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, an Escondido-based company is the number one producer of natural soaps in the world with sales near $20 million annually. Mr. Bronner says his company has spent $800,000 in the last five years importing hemp oil from Canada. For years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has scheduled live cannabis plants as a controlled substance despite the fact that hemp has no psychoactive effects. Hemp has less than three tenths of one percent THC while marijuana contains five to twenty-five percent THC. In 2004, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the DEA did not have the authority to regulate industrial hemp under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. The DEA decided not to appeal that decision and the Court's ruling now stands as U.S. law on the issue. #### Capitol Office: State Capitol - P.O. Box 942849 - Sacramento, CA 94249-0013 - Phone (916) 319-2013 San Francisco District Office: 455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14300 - San Francisco, CA 94102 - Phone (415) 557-3013 |
| Wednesday, June 21, 2006 | |
| Mass medication with Omega 3 would wipe out global fish stocks | 2 comments |
| 21 Jun 2006 @ 03:25 Mass medication with Omega 3 would wipe out global fish stocks Our children need their fatty acids, but after we have fed our stocks to cattle and pigs there simply aren't enough left George Monbiot Tuesday June 20, 2006 The Guardian The more it is tested, the more compelling the hypothesis becomes. Dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia and other neurological problems seem to be associated with a deficiency of Omega 3 fatty acids, especially in the womb. The evidence of a link with depression, chronic fatigue syndrome and dementia is less clear, but still suggestive. None of these conditions is caused exclusively by a lack of these chemicals, or can be entirely remedied by their application, but it's becoming pretty obvious that some of our most persistent modern diseases are, at least in part, diseases of deficiency. Last year, for example, researchers at Oxford published a study of 117 children suffering from dyspraxia. Dyspraxia causes learning difficulties, disruptive behaviour and social problems. It affects about 5% of children. Some of the children were given supplements of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids, others were given placebos. The results were extraordinary: in three months the reading age of the experimental group rose by an average of 9.5 months, while the reading age of those given placebos rose by 3.3. Other studies have shown major improvements in attention, behaviour and IQ. This shouldn't surprise us. During the Palaeolithic era, humans ate roughly the same amount of Omega 3 fatty acids as Omega 6s. Today we eat 17 times as much Omega 6 as Omega 3. Omega 6s are found in vegetable oils, while most of the Omega 3s we eat come from fish. John Stein, a professor of physiology at Oxford who specialises in dyslexia, believes that fish oils permitted humans to make their great cognitive leap forwards. The concentration of Omega 3s in the brain, he says, could provide more evidence that human beings were, for a while, semi-aquatic. Stein believes that when the cells that are partly responsible for visual perception - the magnocellular neurones - are deficient in Omega 3s, they don't form as many connections with other cells, and don't pass on information as efficiently. Their impaired development explains, for example, why many dyslexic children find that letters appear to jump around on the page. So at first sight the government's investigation into the idea of giving fish oil capsules to schoolchildren seems sensible. The food standards agency is conducting a review of the effects of Omega 3s on behaviour and performance in school. Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for education, is taking an interest. Given the accumulating weight of evidence, it would be surprising if he does not decide to go ahead. Already companies such as St Ivel and Marks & Spencer are selling foods laced with Omega 3s. There is only one problem: there are not enough fish. In March an article in the British Medical Journal observed: "We are faced with a paradox. Health recommendations advise increased consumption of oily fish and fish oils within limits, on the grounds that intake is generally low. However ... we probably do not have a sustainable supply of long-chain Omega 3 fats." Our brain food is disappearing. READ MORE More > |
| Thursday, May 18, 2006 | |
| What Does It Mean To Be 'Organic?' | 2 comments |
| 18 May 2006 @ 06:21 What Does It Mean To Be 'Organic?' Shoppers, Confused By Labels, Don't Always Get What They Paid For CHICAGO, May 17, 2006 Fast Fact Organic foods often cost 20 or 30 percent more than conventional versions. (Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Amanda Paulson. Buying organic milk these days — or organic apples, eggs, or beef — no longer has to mean an extra trip to a Whole Foods supermarket or the local co-op. Organic products now line the shelves at Safeway and Costco. And Wal-Mart — already the nation's largest organic-milk seller — says it wants to sell more organic food. Large companies including Kraft, General Mills, and Kellogg own sizable organic- and natural-food brands. Now, they are developing organic versions of their own products, too. Still, while some organic-food fans welcome its broadening appeal and availability, others worry that the entry of corporate behemoths into the organic-food market will weaken standards or squeeze out small farmers. Meanwhile, consumers scanning the aisles face a jumble of labels and claims — cage-free, natural, free-range, organic — with little to indicate how well those claims match reality. "People knew that once the demand was there, that larger companies would be in there," says Sue McGovern, spokeswoman for Organic Valley, a farmer-owned dairy and meat cooperative. "How do we feel about Kraft and other folks coming into the industry? People are split. It's a difficult question." The organic industry is still relatively tiny — 2.5 percent of all retail food sales in 2005 — but it's growing quickly. Last year, sales totaled nearly $14 billion, according to the Organic Trade Association — up 16 percent from the year before. Organic meat was particularly strong, up 55 percent in 2005. Dairy products were up 24 percent. Such products command a premium price — often 20 or 30 percent more than conventional versions — and sorting out which ones are worth the extra cost can be tricky. In February, a Consumer Reports article examined which organic foods offered the most benefit. With certain fruits and vegetables — including apples, peppers, cherries, peaches, and potatoes — the likelihood of pesticide residue is much higher, it concluded, so buying organic makes a big difference. Produce which showed little difference between organic and conventional kinds included asparagus, bananas, broccoli, and onions. The report also recommended buying organic baby food, meat, eggs, and dairy, but questioned the wisdom of paying more for processed organic foods like cereal or bread, which have limited nutrient value and aren't always fully organic. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued standards for organic products in 2000, although some critics question how strictly they're applied. But the market for organic food is anything but simple. Many organic producers never bother to go through the process of becoming certified, while other producers use labels such as "free-range" or "natural" that conjure up bucolic images but may mean very little. "People use certain terms loosely, and consumers are fooled," says Joe DePippo, president of FreeBird, which produces antibiotic-free organic chicken raised on small family farms. "Consumers associate free-range with organic, and rightfully so, but there's some market for free-range that's not organic. And to just think that you can have chickens running free all over the field — it's just not practical." Regina Beidler and her husband, Brent, who run a 145-acre dairy farm in Vermont, take the necessary steps so that their goods receive the organic label. A visit to the Beidler's farm found their 40-cow herd grazing contentedly in the rain on a hill overlooking the White River Valley. At about 4 p.m. every day, as well as at 4 a.m., the cows take turns at the milking stations in the cedar-shingled barn, where they munch on organic grain and hay. "Integrity is something that ... we all realize is important to maintaining consumer confidence," says Ms. Beidler, who says some of their practices go beyond USDA requirements. "I always say there's an implicit partnership between farmers who produce organic and consumers who buy it." But recent controversies have highlighted doubts about whether everyone lives up to that standard. A report released last month by the Cornucopia Institute, which supports family-scale farming, rated organic dairy producers on their practices. While it found that the majority followed good practices, the group was highly critical of two of the nation's largest producers: Horizon Organic, a subsidiary of Dean Foods, and Aurora Organic, which supplies private-label milk to many supermarkets. Both producers, the report said, buy much of their milk from large-scale feedlots where the cows have little or no access to pasture. "The USDA listens to big players more closely than to consumers or small farmers," says Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association in Finland, Minn. "With Wal-Mart and other folks jumping in, what will happen down the road is the small- and medium-size operators will be forced out of business." In addition to his concern about divergent practices in organic poultry and milk production (the supply of organic milk can't keep up with demand at this point), Cummins worries about companies buying products like soybeans overseas. Consumers buying soy milk or tofu, "have no clue that in the case of soy milk and tofu, it's actually coming from China, where organic standards are dubious and labor standards are abysmal," he says. A widening array of options reflects the many concerns on shoppers' minds: pesticides, animal welfare, environmental issues, other health concerns. Egg Innovations, which contracts with Amish farmers for its eggs and bills itself as the "Cage Free Company," offers four varieties of eggs: certified organic, Omega-3, vegetarian, and cage free. The organic eggs are the most expensive and have the strictest standards: Chickens have access to the outdoors, and the company meets all USDA organic requirements. But none of the chickens are fed hormones or antibiotics, and they all have a vegetarian diet. The different labels are designed largely to appeal to different types of consumers. "Shoppers are evolving with what's important to them, and we try to evolve with them," says John Brunnquell, the company's founder and a third-generation family farmer. Another effect of high demand and big players getting into the market is likely to be lower prices. Wal-Mart plans to sell organic products for about 10 percent more than its conventional counterparts. And at last week's All Things Organic trade show in Chicago, Dakota Beef touted its frozen, organic ground-beef patties. Costco has just begun selling them as a pilot project in the Midwest. In the past five weeks, sales have increased more than 60 percent, says Matt Grove, a business development executive for Dakota Beef. The price: $16.98 for four pounds. "That's a price point everyone can afford," Mr. Grove says. Melanie Stetson Freeman contributed to this report from Vermont The label says 'organic,' but what does that really mean? The US Department of Agriculture issued standards for anyone using its "organic" label in 2000. These standards prohibit the use of most synthetic (and petroleum derived) pesticides and fertilizers, and all antibiotics, genetic engineering, irradiation, and sewage sludge in the production of fruits, vegetables, meat, and poultry. In order to be labeled organic, livestock must eat 100 percent organic feed that is free of animal byproducts or growth hormones. These animals also must have access to the outdoors (although the definition of "outdoor access" for chickens is ambiguous). Even with these guidelines, labels for organic foods vary. They include: 100% organic: Contains only organically produced ingredients. Organic: 95 percent of the ingredients must be organically grown and the remaining 5 percent must come from non-organic ingredients that have been approved by the National Organics Standards Board. Made with organic ingredients: A product is made with no less than 70 percent organic ingredients. Free-range or cage-free: No regulation or standard definition exists for most animals. The USDA regulates the use of the term "free-range" with poultry (not eggs), but chickens can have extremely limited access to the outdoors and still meet the criteria. Natural: This label doesn't mean anything except on meat and poultry, where the USDA says the meat must not contain artificial flavoring, color, ingredients, chemical preservatives, or artificial ingredients. It can only be "minimally processed." No certification or verification process exists to hold companies accountable for using the term. More > |
| Sunday, May 14, 2006 | |
| Beyond Fair Trade: Fairtrade and Global Justice | 1 comment |
| 14 May 2006 @ 19:50 Beyond Fair Trade: Fairtrade and Global Justice By James O’Nions; Red Pepper; ZNet, April 22, 2006 [link] Gone are the days when fair trade goods were available only at charity shops and church bazaars. Fair trade - or Fairtrade, as it has branded itself - is now big business.You can choose Fairtrade coffee in high-street outlets like Starbucks and Prêt a Manger, and local authorities are starting to declare themselves Fairtrade councils. More than 1,000 products are now certified as Fairtrade in the UK and, on an international level, the industry estimates it benefits five million producers worldwide. Yet with multinationals moving to cash in, and supermarkets approaching fair trade (with or without the Fairtrade Foundation certification mark) as just another niche market, can it avoid being co-opted by the market system it was set up to challenge? The idea of fair trade has been around since at least the 1950s. Originally called ‘alternative trade’, and dealing not in foodstuffs but in crafts, it was pioneered by Mennonites in North America and Oxfam in Britain.The first certification label, Max Havelaar, was launched in the Netherlands in 1988; and, since 1997, the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International has sought to establish common guarantees of ‘fairness’. For instance, in the case of products from small farmers, importers must agree to trade directly with producers’ co-operatives, cutting out middlemen.They must also demonstrate a long-term commitment to the producers and guarantee a minimum price no matter the fluctuations of the market.This price must allow the producers to cover their costs and meet their daily needs.The producers’ co-operatives themselves must also demonstrate that they are democratically managed and their agriculture is sustainable. Only if all these conditions are satisfied is a product permitted to carry the Fairtrade mark. The aftermath of the December 1999 Seattle protests against the WTO saw Fairtrade coffee consumption skyrocket in the US.Yet this was not the ‘hidden hand of the market’ at work as demand for Fairtrade products increased supply. In fact, it was mainly down to the direct intervention of activists, specifically San Francisco-based Global Exchange, which launched a campaign to persuade Starbucks to offer Fairtrade coffee at all of its 2,300 US outlets. With peaceful protests for Fairtrade outside its stores to add to the public relations catastrophe it had suffered as the bogeyman of the anti-capitalist movement, Starbucks soon capitulated. Since then, big food corporations have started to see limited forays into Fairtrade as a useful PR move, similar to what environmentalists call ‘greenwash’. McDonalds recently announced it would serve Fairtrade coffee in 650 of its US east coast stores; and Nestlé, which for years has derided Fairtrade for violating ‘free-trade principles’, launched its own ‘Partners Blend’ last October. The Nestlé decision caused an understandable furore, with critics arguing that Nestlé’s application should have been turned down to prevent the false impression that the widely-boycotted company was now an ethical choice. As one of the world’s largest coffee retailers, Nestlé has been directly responsible for paying the kind of low prices that make Fairtrade such a necessity. The World Development Movement, which helped set up the Fairtrade Foundation, was more than a little concerned, saying: “If Nestlé really believes in Fairtrade coffee, it will alter its business practices and lobbying strategies and radically overhaul its business to ensure that all coffee farmers get a fair return for their efforts. Until then Nestlé will remain part of the problem, not the solution.” Yet for Harriet Lamb, of the Fairtrade Foundation, the decision is a ‘turning point’. “Here is a major multinational listening to people and giving them what they want - a Fairtrade product,” she says. Justifying the Nestlé decision, the Foundation refers to the recent slump in prices on the world coffee market, which has led to undoubted hardship, but speaks almost as though ‘the market’ is a natural phenomenon over which major multinationals such as Nestlé have no power. For many of the originators of Fairtrade, the aim was not just to create a successful niche market but to lay the basis for an alternative system of trade altogether. While some of these ‘alternative trading organisations are little different from conventional companies, others, such as Equal Exchange in the US, reflect this more radical aspiration in their own structures by being workers’ co-operatives. Yet all of them at least apply fair trade principles to everything they do, unlike the multinationals who are now entering the market. That’s why the International Fair Trade Association has launched a ‘Fair Trade Organisation’ label that certifies the company rather than the product, and is therefore a much more reliable indicator. These organisations face difficult decisions when it comes to distributing their products, as supermarkets become increasingly hard to avoid. Tesco now takes one pound in every eight spent by UK consumers and other chains are doing everything they can to catch up; pushing down prices by squeezing producers and buying up local competition in the grocery market. Even the most political of fair trade organisations have turned to supermarkets to maximise the good that selling their product is doing. Yet by courting the supermarkets, they are strengthening the very companies that are undermining the bargaining power of producers. This is not the only dilemma that the Fairtrade label throws up.While products such as coffee require democratic producers’ co-operatives to qualify for certification, traditional plantations can also qualify if they meet minimum standards of pay and conditions. And while trade unions must be allowed under Fairtrade rules, they are not required for certification. Some do have strong unions, and the Fairtrade Foundation highlights the instance of two Kenyan rose farms, where certification was followed by recognition of the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers’ Union. On the other hand, the central American banana workers’ federation COLSIBA has levelled accusations of the ‘systematic violation of workers’ and union rights’ by plantation owners who benefit from Fairtrade.While the TUC and British trade unions have been generally supportive of Fairtrade, they have also pointed out that trade union organisation can be a better guarantee of workers’ rights. Meanwhile, Marks and Spencer has just launched lines of Fairtrade cotton socks and t-shirts.When they see the Fairtrade label, most consumers would assume they were buying a wholly ethical product.Yet it is only the cotton itself that has been certified, with no guarantees about conditions where the clothes were manufactured.These kinds of problems only serve to highlight the extent to which Fairtrade is merely fiddling at the edges of an international system that perpetuates huge inequalities of power and wealth. More radical alternatives do exist. Coffee grown in the Zapatistas’autonomous zones’ in Chiapas, Mexico, can now be bought from activists involved in the social centre movement in Britain, while the Working World Market is offering the products of Argentina’s worker-run factories to north American consumers. These initiatives stand in a tradition that saw activists in the 1980s sell Nicaraguan coffee in solidarity with the Sandinista revolution. What marks these projects out is that they aim to support people who have to some degree broken with the logic of the capitalist market. Zaytoun, which imports Palestinian olive oil to Britain to help break the economic stranglehold of the Israeli occupation, could also be seen as ‘solidarity fair trade’, even if its objectives are more about the occupation than about trade itself. Trade as solidarity is an attractive concept, but its usefulness may be limited to quite specific political situations.The Movimento Sem Terra (MST) is Latin America’s largest social movement, organising landless rural workers and urban slum dwellers to occupy and cultivate unused land. Its innovative and highly effective tactics (it has settled 580,000 families) have won admirers across the world and it would surely have a ready-made market for a very political form of Fairtrade-endorsed products. Yet its concern has always been with feeding Brazil’s population, and the MST specifically rejects the export-led agribusiness model, encouraging mixedcropping rather than the monoculture required by international markets (see box). For them and other organisations in the global peasants’ coalition,Via Campesina, this concept of ‘food sovereignty’ is much more relevant than Fairtrade. MST activist Marcelo João Alvares was a guest at War on Want’s annual conference in the UK in February, and gave us his personal take on Fairtrade. ‘For Brazilians, Fairtrade is a distant concept. There are so many people living in shanty towns, so many street children; people don’t even have their basic rights to food and shelter. For the MST, feeding Brazilians is our priority, so certification has not even been discussed, not least because we see quality food not as a niche market, but as something we should provide as part of a wider strategy of food sovereignty. This requires policies that work to guarantee people freedom to produce their own quality food with respect to their own culture. We aren’t opposed to exports, but we don’t agree with the agribusiness model of valuing exports over the needs of domestic consumption. Primarily, food sovereignty is about feeding the people.’ The current popularity of Fairtrade is a sign of a growing understanding of the fundamental unfairness of global trade, but it risks being reduced to a branding exercise for multinationals - or, at best, a set of niche products that helps a small minority of producers but fails to affect the structure of the market as a whole.Yet if Fairtrade is embedded in a wider critique of the market, and is part of a movement of real solidarity with the global South, it still holds the potential to help us move towards a fundamentally different global economy.While we might continue to buy Fairtrade products where we can, it is not as consumers that we can determine the future direction of Fairtrade, but as activists building opposition to neoliberalism and corporate control. More > |
| Deconstructing Starbucks' 'Fair Trade' | 0 comments |
| 14 May 2006 @ 19:44 Deconstructing Starbucks' 'Fair Trade' Starbucks-Show Me the Money! [link] Starbucks-Show Me the Money! This is a little coffee tale about fudging the truth with statistics. Or maybe it's that the largest specialty coffee company in the world simply made a little inadvertent mistake. You be the judge. As people learn more about the long-term crisis in coffee pricing, they are wanting to know what their favorite coffee company is paying its farmers. As a 100% Fair Trade company, our answer is easy - we pay $1.41/lb at a minimum to the farmer cooperatives for all of our coffees. To this we add a Social Equity Premium of five cents and a Cooperative Development Premium of one cent. (For all you liberal arts majors, that means we pay $1.47/lb). At a recent international coffee conference I was listening to Starbucks talking about their pricing policies. They said they pay an average of $1.20/lb for their coffees, which "compares favorably to the Fair Trade minimum of $1.26". Sounds good, doesn't it? But it's apples and oranges (regular and decaf?). Here's why: First of all, Starbucks is not an importer. They buy their coffee through importers, exporters, processors or other middlemen. The $1.20 is the average price they pay to the middleman, not the farmer. When you subtract out all the middleman fees, the figure is more likely about .80 cents, although when I asked the speaker for that figure, he said he didn't actually know it. But it's that $.80 that should be compared to the Fair Trade minimum of $1.26. The $1.20 is also an average of all Starbuck's purchases - conventional and organic; whereas Fair Trade minimums are $1.26 for conventional and $1.41 for organics. Further, if you really wanted an apples to apples comparison of landed costs at this end (which is the Starbucks $1.20), by adding importing and transportation costs, our landed cost would be $1.86. To their credit, the Starbucks representative admitted that their $1.20 figure didn't actually represent what it looked like it represented - how much they actually pay to the farmers. Having said that, I have seen Starbucks advertisements since the conference that still crow that $1.20. Let's keep an eye on those guys and see if they'll ever come clean. If telling the world that they pay the farmers more than they actually pay for coffee was a mistake or a misunderstanding, they should be big enough to just admit it and move on. If it was a marketing move calculated to blunt criticism of its possibly rapacious buying practices and to mislead the public...well, that's another story, isn't it? O.K., Howard and Orin, show me the money! |
| California and North Dakota Race to Restart Industrial Hemp Farming | 0 comments |
| 14 May 2006 @ 19:38 California and North Dakota Race to Restart Industrial Hemp Farming Adam Eidinger, May 12, 2006 [link] Is 50 years of prohibition on “industrial” hemp farming about to end? That’s what U.S. farmers are asking as they have new reasons to believe 2007 could mark the first hemp crop since the last U.S. harvest in 1957. Since the demand for hemp seed and oil has exploded in recent years, legislative and legal challenges to bring back versatile low-THC hemp have new momentum. Healthy hemp foods such breads, salad dressing, cereal and snack bars as well as body care products such soaps and lotions are more popular than ever. With hemp imports including fiber products such as clothing and rope estimated at $250 to $300 million annually, U.S. farmers feel left out and are speaking up. In response, North Dakota’s Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson formally proposed rules May 3 to license farmers in his state to grow industrial hemp under existing state law. Meanwhile the California Senate is expected to pass hemp farming legislation in early summer and hemp industry experts are optimistic Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will sign the bill which has bipartisan support in the California legislature. The progress in two of the nation’s biggest agriculture states plays to the backdrop of farmers across Canada planting over 30,000 acres of industrial hemp this year. Organic farmers have reported net profits averaging $250 per acre over the past three years. Although this amount might seem low, farmers say they are earning three to ten times what they would make growing traditional crops such as wheat, soy or corn. In February, Commissioner Johnson, along with agriculture commissioners from three other states, met with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials in Washington, DC to explore acceptable rules on industrial hemp farming. The official meeting marked a turning point in the federal government’s relations with hemp-friendly policymakers who have been routinely ignored by DEA officials. “This is seemingly an about face for an agency that has threatened to prosecute anyone who tries to grow non-psychoactive hemp in America,” says Vote Hemp President Eric Steenstra, whose organization is working to promote industrial hemp farming and was instrumental in getting the first federal hemp bill (H.R. 3037) introduced last year. While North Dakota’s rules would require farmers to secure a permit from DEA before their licenses would become effective, there is precedent for this as the DEA permitted a test plot of industrial hemp in Hawaii from 1999 to 2003. North Dakota’s proposed rules cover commercial hemp farming and include a number of restrictions to alleviate law enforcement concerns. Some highlights of the proposed hemp farming rules include: ? Farmers must consent to a criminal background check including fingerprints ? Who the farmer sells to and how much is sold must be documented within 30 days of sale ? The location of the hemp field must be provided using geopositioning (GPS) coordinates ? Planted hemp must contain less than three-tenths of one percent tetrahydrocannabinol Many of hemp's uses such as in foods, animal bedding, biofuel and composites will become more viable if hemp is treated like other crops. “How can a raw material that's legal to import, to sell, to eat and to use in all kinds of everyday products not be legal for farmers in America to grow? No other agricultural commodity is restricted to just importation," says Steenstra. While North Dakota’s progress could get hung up by DEA disapproval, lawyers with the hemp industry are preparing a court challenge if the DEA fails to cooperate with North Dakota or California when hemp legislation becomes law. The legal theory supporting the right of these states to regulate hemp farming stems from language in the Controlled Substances Act which exempts hemp from federal control. Using this legal theory the Hemp Industries Association created a legal precedent when the group which represents 300 hemp businesses won their lawsuit in 2004 against DEA, protecting sales of hemp foods and body care the agency tried to ban. Building upon HIA v. DEA makes sense since its legal to grow poppy plants in the US even though it’s a controlled substance. Since the DEA ignores poppy cultivation so long as the farmer isn’t making heroin, one would think the DEA would also ignore hemp farming that is regulated by local authorities who ensure it is not the marijuana variety of cannabis. Currently seven states (Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia) have passed pro-hemp farming laws. Sales of hemp foods in 2004/2005 grew by 50% over the previous 12-month period. There are more than 2.5 million cars on U.S. roads that contain hemp composites. Hemp cultivation in Canada is expected to exceed 30,000 acres in 2006, while European farmers now grow more than 40,000 acres. More information about hemp legislation and the crop’s many uses can be found at [link] |
| Thursday, May 4, 2006 | |
| State's first hemp farming rules aimed at clearing federal hurdle | 0 comments |
| 4 May 2006 @ 00:40 State's first hemp farming rules aimed at clearing federal hurdle By James MacPherson, Associated Press Grand Forks Herald - Grand Forks, ND May 3, 2006 BISMARCK, N.D. - State Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson is proposing rules that he hopes will make North Dakota the first state to allow commercial hemp cultivation and quell law enforcement fears about the biological cousin of marijuana. Johnson acknowledges it's an uphill battle. The rules would require a criminal background check on farmers who want to grow hemp. The sale of hemp and location of the hemp fields must be documented. And the farmer must get a permit from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Hemp contains trace amounts of tetrahydrocannobinol, or THC, a banned substance, and it falls under federal anti-drug rules, said Steve Robertson, a DEA special agent in Washington. The DEA does not have the authority to change existing federal law, Robertson said. "It's very simple for us: The law is there and we enforce the law," he said Wednesday. "We are law enforcement, not lawmakers." The state rules would be "contingent on the federal government changing its mind," Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem said. The likelihood of that is "very small," he said. Johnson and other proponents say hemp is safe because it contains only trace amounts of the mind-altering chemical. Industrial hemp would be an alternative cash crop for North Dakota farmers because it's used to make food, clothing, cosmetics, paper, rope and other products, they say. Johnson said his department crafted the state's industrial hemp rules after he and agriculture commissioners from three other states met in February with DEA officials in Washington. They discussed what would be required to allow industrial hemp production, Johnson said, and he believes North Dakota's proposed rules address those requirements. READ More > |
| T R A N S I T I O N S: Industrial Hemp | 1 comment |
| 4 May 2006 @ 00:39 T R A N S I T I O N S by Steve Sprinkel appearing in ACRES,USA June 2006 2006 should have been the year when industrial hemp was finally produced commercially again in the United States. Though hemp is produced in forty countries, in the United States unfortunately that is still for the future. However, recent developments in various state governments have opened the way so that a new crop can be added to an organic farmer’s rotation in as few as three and probably no more than five years. Lobbying government, rational publicity and dialogues in state legislatures help, but the coming explosion in hemp products worldwide and consequential economic forces will make cultivation irresistible. In a few short years there will be so many organic hemp products on the market that further delay in the US will just be bad business. And its business that steers the Washington, DC leviathan more than any appeal to reason. We may merely wear a bit of cannabis now and nibble on a spoonful of seed, but the inevitable advent of a multitude of viable products, from fuels to packaging and construction materials to a replacement for plastics is upon us. This was the consensus at an impromptu meeting in southern California of five international hemp production experts hosted by John Roulac of Nutiva. Mr. Roulac, the author of Hemp Horizons ( 1997, Chelsea Green Publishing Co.) manufactures a number of hemp food products made from Canadian-grown hempseeds. This season he is offering Hemp Shakes at retail. He has positioned himself as a realist in the campaign to make industrial hemp cultivation in the US possible. Mr. Roulac is careful to choose moderate allies, while at the same time serving as an activist litigant to repel ongoing legal challenges launched by the Department of Justice. Mr. Roulac, who lives a few miles from us in a small community surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest, was a key defendant in the landmark 2004 victory against the US Drug Enforcement Agency that renewed importation of processed hemp foods. US Hemp food sales are growing at a 50% annual clip according to the US industry research group SPINS. Hempseed-based foods are becoming more common in a variety of applications, including bread, cereal, specialty nutritional oils, food bars, nut butters, and protein powders and shakes. The market is always hunting up the new, and hemp delivers good values like omega three in the nutraceutical category filled by flax and fish oils. John Roulac is certain that hemp oil is primed for significance: “ …the product tastes as good ( many say better), provides a wider array of beneficial nutriments ( omega three, plus steridonic and gamma linoleic acids) and is competitively priced. The high-end market for the specialty oils has been built by flax and fish, so we are optimistic.” READ More > |
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