4 May 2006 @ 00:39, by Raymond Powers
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
Both flax and hemp are much more sustainable compared to fish, which is derived from a depleted and failing resource which will take years to recover, if political will is sufficient to allow a recovery. Sustainability arguments favoring hemp abound: imagine community hemp factories from Manitoba to Texas making clothing, cardboard, food and insulation out of a non-polluting crop ( compared to cotton, shall we say?) providing employment and investment without a sheik in sight.
Last year, Jean Rawson, an agricultural specialist with the Congressional Research Service wrote that it “ could be argued that the government has already recognized that industrial hemp is capable of contributing to national defense needs and to the readiness of U.S. defenses during times of peace as well as national emergency.” In 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12919, titled National Defense Industrial Resources Preparedness. The order included hemp under the category of “food resources’, as part of an initiative to
“ ….strengthen the U.S. industrial and technology base for meeting national
defense requirements.”
Six states already have laws either permitting production of industrial hemp or expanded research. North Dakota is the best positioned: they have a good law, good public acceptance
( Daktotans watch Manitoba shipping hemp over their border all year) and Roger Johnson is running there this year for state agricultural secretary with hemp production as one of his themes.
At the federal level, Representative Ron Paul a Texas independent, introduced the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2005 (H.R. 3037). This is the first legislative proposal at the federal
level intended to facilitate the possible commercial cultivation of industrial hemp in
the United States. The bill would amend the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C.
802(16)) to add language stating that the term “marijuana” does not include industrial
hemp. The measure was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
and to the House Committee on the Judiciary. If enacted, the bill would permit industrial hemp production based on state law, without preemption by the federal government under the Controlled Substances Act. ( Rawson)
Earlier this year the California State Assembly moved an authorization bill to the State Senate granting farmers permission to cultivate. The deal puts the Republican governor in an exquisite political puzzle: the crop has got nice economic upside, has proven to be no boon to the cultivation of its narcotic cousin, and could not have a better reception amid the liberal populace. So he wins a few friends on the left, which can come in handy.
But the governor’s party is already disappointed in his policy failures and doubly cranky with him for hiring Democrats to bail out his administration. And, like any Republican, Mr. Shwarzenegger has got to be mindful of fundamentalist fury-no matter that pot growers can not easily co-exist with hemp producers. As a matter of fact, not much ganja will be grown in the flatlands if hemp is soon sown alongside corn, soybeans and flax.
Canada’s production figures have risen steadily over the past six years. In 2005 the government provided permits for twenty-one thousand acres of production. Fifteen percent were prevented from planting owing to weather, another ten to fifteen percent of planted acreage was not harvestable or plowed under. Half the harvested total was certified organic. Ninety percent of the Canadian hemp acreage is traditionally sown with varieties selected for seed production.
By comparison, China leads world production with over 100,000 acres planted, followed by Europe ( taken entirely) at approximately fifty thousands acres, followed by Australia at one thousand acres. A greater percentage of worldwide acreage goes to other uses than seed. Much of the hemp fiber for cloth is from Eastern Europe and China, for example. Increasingly this product is blended with cotton and ramie for better wearing quality.
Yields for Canadian seed production, vary from locale to locale and production system, but so does corn. Organic yields are a bit below conventional, but not by much. What does matter is water consumption. Organic yields are five hundred pounds dry-land versus 1600 per acre when irrigated. Conventional hemp seed farm income is fifty-five cents ( Canadian) per pound versus eighty-five cents per pound organic. A Canadian dollar was worth .88 of the US Dollar on 25 April ( up 23 cents from three years ago by the way).
Seventy-two percent of the raw weight of seed is lost in manufacture, which illustrates in part why shelled hemp nuggets retail for US$10-11.00 per pound. The planting stock is heavily regulated and patented ( there are twenty or so varieties). Seed costs average seventy dollars per acre.The yield variation from organic to conventional is around 20 per cent. The price variation is more like forty per cent. The organic market is the health market is the nutritional market is the hemp market.
Both conventional and organic farmers in Canada and Europe appreciate how hemp treats their ground. Rotational weed suppression has long been proven to be one of the principal benefits provided through hemp cultivation. Even conventional producers grow it without herbicides because of its ability to quickly shade out the slower growing competition, but it must have a good start, and aided by timely cultivation.
Contrary to the widely held fable that hemp grows without fertilizer, it is as hungry for nitrogen as corn. Hemp makes specific demands on the rotation scheme; some experts advise that hemp not be followed by a number of important crops, like soybeans, but it can be preceded by most common crops excepting corn, which is also a heavy feeder, oats, and seed spices like caraway. Hemp does best if preceded by wheat, sorghum or, naturally, alfalfa, which sets the table with nitrogen. The successive crop concern is in sharper focus especially in states where crops are already limited, like North Dakota and northern Minnesota. Hemp is not very buggy, which ranks it way above cotton. It also has proven to be fairly disease resistant even when grown thickly.
No one has explained the rotational benefit better than Lyster Dewey in the 1913 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture: “ Hemp cultivated for the production of fiber, cut before the seeds are formed and retted ( broken down) on the land where it has been grown, tends to improve rather than injure the soil. It improves its physical condition, destroys weeds and does not exhaust its fertility.” ( from Hemp Horizons, page 131).
Historically proven as one of the first plants utilized by humans, hemp’s inspiring history and its apparently unlimited future ( if you believe even half the hype) motivates the faithful like no other plant. If we had a brand new variety of chick peas coming out that could prevent diabetes those garbanzos would barely rate a mention on page 23.
But cannabis? People flock to defend this weed like David is going to fight Goliath at 1 PM downtown and all the beer is free. Legions believe that hemp is a mistakenly downtrodden former key player in world culture and its heritage deserves to be retrieved. The facts support the case, and they are encyclopedic. For the hardcore agronomist chaffing to compete against imports and the resource management folks who see nothing but madness in our abuse of wild forest environments, hemp is the solution to a lot of problems.
Part of the singular affection arises from two generations’ serious use of marijuana, hemp’s narcotic relative. Millions of North Americans puff the stuff regularly. Marijuana is indelibly linked with the nostalgia of revolution, such as Timothy Leary’s suggestion to “turn on, tune in and drop out”
A generation of growers harbor the curious notion that when they first got high smoking pot that the plant taught them to dabble in horticulture. This is probably a logical consequence of consuming a wild, consciousness-altering product that comes with its own seeds attached. Thereafter, even though their pot use may have declined or gone dormant, the aging army of former stoners still harbor an affinity for the thing, whether or not they grow it or want to grow it.
Therefore, ganja enjoys a popularity that no garbanzo can ever approximate. We also should point out that, at least in Canada, cannabis is the only crop that has greater organic acreage than its conventional counterpart. Organic corn, soybeans, and cotton acreages are really not worth comparing. But we need to dilute this data with the fact that hemp food crops, not fiber, presently dominate Canadian production, and that eventually, if the income potential is there, conventional growers will produce hemp for fiber, fuel and industrial applications, particularly in the building trades, and food too. Any form of hemp will definitely be a more appealing product than GMO corn.
Pot, we will note well, enjoys sales that place it in the top five of all agricultural products produced in the US. Its not millions, its billions. Commerce in marijuana is the chief economic engine in many counties, particularly Northern California ( Humboldt and Mendocino) and many other states. A lot of farmers have grown a few plants to supplement their income. I knew a young man in Texas years ago who saved the family dairy with a few hundred linear feet of dope growing straight down the corn silage rows. But widespread pot cultivation is not nearly as likely as hemp production. Still, folks in Humboldt and Mendo are licensed to grow small plots of grass for the alternative medical trade, and the sheriff will merely nod from his truck cab as he drives past the plantation. In the hills of NorCal, matters have evolved towards official tolerance-especially since the Ford dealer, the Safeway and the real estate market all float on the trade in skunky green. It also frees up the constabulary to focus on methamphetamine labs and wife-beaters instead.
The world wide trade in grass is well over one trillion dollars, according to research compiled by Purdue University ( Those people do a top notch job on their ag research). So with that kind of cash keeping the drug trade going, isn’t it a bit useless to try and round up so huge a herd of horses now that they are out of the barn? We have put thousands behind bars and spent a fortune trying to stop it while empowering old and new mobs.
The illicit traffic in grass is by far the greatest impediment to authorizing the cultivation of hemp, even though, as already noted, hemp production is the ruin of pot growers because the pollen from the non-narcotic variety adversely affects the quality of the ganja. You would think the cops might welcome hemp as an ironic way to ruin the pot growers. My wife, ever perceptive, wonders if the reverse may be true as well, and that ganja could skew the narcotic levels in the hemp. Analysis of levels of the psycho-active constituent THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) must prove to be minute for hemp importation. These theories aside, even though federal authorities have finally bought into the reasonableness of the argument that hemp and pot are antithetical, they still claim that if we relax production on field hemp it will "send the wrong message to youth".
If the messages youth are receiving are anything like the ones I get from authorities, youth may have already determined that a pack of lying amoral hypocrites is in charge, so all their messages arrive as nonsense.
Beyond these minor considerations, even trillion dollar ones, industrial hemp is poised to claw into bigger markets than recreational dope smoking. The markets that at one time made hemp production acreage second to none still exist, yet serviced by largely non-renewable resources like petroleum, mining and forestry. It is this powerful transnational empire of extraction industries that will serve as the most aggressive antagonist to regenerative biomass. Surging petroleum prices have already made agricultural biomass alternatives like hemp ( for ethanol, plastics and chemicals) attractive to venture capital in many major international markets.
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