Hemp Bound
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6. Hemp as an industrial-scale tree-free paper option today is promising enough that International Paper Corporation has looked into it. The good folks at my publisher, Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction, Vermont, perhaps in response to my nonstop ranting on the subject, pulled out all the stops—including pursuing sources in Canada and China until the eleventh hour—in trying to print the first edition of Hemp Bound on hemp paper. It was, my editor reported to me with deeply furrowed brow, simply not cost feasible (YET!) on a mass scale. Stay tuned.
7. President Obama already wore a Colorado-made hemp scarf on a campaign stop in 2012. He knows the deal.
8. The cannabis plant actually has three main varieties: Cannabis sativa, C. indica, and C. ruderalis. In Canada, the government says you can cultivate any of these industrially, provided that “the leaves and flowering heads . . . do not contain more than 0.3% THC” (Industrial Hemp Regulations, SOR/98-156, Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Government of Canada, last modified October 1, 2013, accessed October 18, 2013, http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-98-156/FullText .html). THC: That’s the substance that allowed Woodstock, and that not more than 0.3% of it will be our definition of hemp and industrial cannabis in this book.
9. Some varieties of hemp might also possess many of the medicinal and health maintenance properties that psychoactive cannabis has, only without the psychoactive elements. This might very well prove a lucrative market for industrial cannabis, but one into which, having discussed it at length in Too High to Fail, my previous book, I won’t delve in these pages.
10. Ernest Small and David Marcus, “Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America,” in Trends in New Crops and New Uses, eds. Jules Janick and Anna Whipkey (Alexandria, VA: ASHS Press, 2002).
11. Beverly Fortune, “Advocates of Industrial Hemp Point to Kentucky’s Past as Top Producer,” Lexington Herald-Leader, January 1, 2013.
12. Governor Brown finally signed hemp legalization into California law on September 25, 2013.
13. Renée Johnson, “Hemp as an Agricultural Commodity” (working paper, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, July 24, 2013).
14. Agua Das and Thomas B. Reed, “United States: Biomass Fuels from Hemp—Seven Ways Around the Gas Pump,” restore’s blog (blog), Hemp News, October 14, 2011, www.hemp.org/news/content/biomass-fuels-hemp.
15. This is actually the easiest time in history to cover U.S./Canadian business issues, because in 2013 as I write these words the two nations’ dollars are worth about the same.
16. Erin M. Goldberg, Naveen Gakhar, Donna Ryland, Michel Aliani, Robert A. Gibson, and James D. House, “Fatty Acid Profile and Sensory Characteristics of Table Eggs from Laying Hens Fed Hempseed and Hempseed Oil,” Journal of Food Science 77 (2012): S153–60. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2012.02626.x.
17. Of which sixteen million dollars went to farmers in 2012.
18. “List of Approved Cultivars for the 2012 Growing Season,” Health Canada, last modified October 15, 2012, accessed October 21, 2013, www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/pubs /precurs/list_cultivars-liste2012/index-eng.php.
19. www.hemptechnology.co.uk/agronomy.htm.
20. Agua Das and Thomas B. Reed, “United States: Biomass Fuels from Hemp—Seven Ways Around the Gas Pump,” restore’s blog (blog), Hemp News, October 14, 2011, www.hemp.org/news/content/biomass-fuels-hemp.
21. Though this is projected to change in coming seasons, today Canadian hemp farmers overwhelmingly grow for seed oil only. Some bale their hemp straw and sell it locally for animal bedding.
22. “Hemp’s Future in Chinese Fabrics,” International Year of Natural Fibres, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed October 18, 2013, www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/stories/hemp.html.
23. This is a yield the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance trade group says is rising as farmers like Dyck get out those kinks.
24. Technically, industrial cannabis isn’t illegal: The DEA can issue hemp cultivation permits. Exemptions from the Controlled Substances Act, essentially. Good luck. It’s happened a handful of times during the drug war, including for West’s research plot in Hawaii. Most efforts have been stifled. Alex White Plume, believing he lived on sovereign territory not subject to U.S. federal law, tried to grow a hemp crop on the Oglala Lakota Nation (Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota). After being raided by armed DEA agents who destroyed the crop in 2000 and 2001, in 2002 Plume got a harvest to market, though on the morning of harvest he was charged with eight federal civil violations, according to the documentary Standing Silent Nation. The North Dakota saga Goehring referred to involved the effort by state Republican lawmakers, farmers, and the state’s then agricultural commissioner to acquire DEA hemp cultivation permits in 2007. They were ignored by our federal public servants for three years, even after they sued for an answer. A federal court finally ruled that they’d have to be raided before they could challenge the DEA. They decided to hold off planting.
25. Lime Technology has a proprietary mixture spelled “Hemcrete.” We’ll be using the generic “hempcrete.” You can, after all, mix hemp hurds and lime yourself if you want, or even form a company that produces it commercially.
26. It lives under the “documents” link at eiha.org.
27. Lynn Osburn and Judy Osburn, “Hemp Plywood Becomes a Reality,” North Coast Xpress, February–March 1999, 9.
28. “World Crude Oil Consumption by Year,” Index Mundi (website), accessed October 22, 2013, www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx.
29. I can attest to this, having driven my own truck on the local Chinese food joint’s waste oil for seven years.
30. Russ Bellville, “Could Hemp Help Nuclear Clean-up in Japan?” Examiner (blog), March 13, 2011, www.examiner.com/article/could-hemp-help-nuclear-clean -up-japan.
31. Beverly Fortune, “Advocates of Industrial Hemp Point to Kentucky’s Past as Top Producer,” Lexington Herald-Leader, January 1, 2013.
32. Associated Press, “Feldheim, German Village, Powered by Renewable Energy,” Huffington Post, December 29, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/feldheim -germany-renewable_n_1173992.html.
33. The plant wall’s polymer, different from edible lignan.
34. The first Levis dungarees were made of hemp.
35. A 2013 University of Kentucky study somewhat concurred, further pointing out that even high seed oil prices could evaporate when more producers come online. The study still predicted revenue for Kentucky hemp farmers of more than $300 per acre under certain sets of economic conditions, while maintaining those earnings from conventional corn/soy farming would likely stay higher, at least initially. (Lynn Robbins, Will Snell, Greg Halich, Leigh Maynard, Carl Dillon, and David Spalding, “Economic Considerations for Growing Industrial Hemp: Implications for Kentucky’s Farmers and Agricultural Economy” [working paper, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky, July, 2013], https://www .google.be/search?q=Economic+considerations+for+growing+industrial +hemp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a &gws_rd=cr&ei=1vGIUp7-BoTQtQbQ9YCgCw.)
36. “Hemp & Lime Construction,” Hemp Technology, accessed October 18, 2013, www.hemptechnology.co.uk/hemcrete.htm.
37. Hossein Shapouri and Michael Salassi, “The Economic Feasibility of Ethanol Production from Sugar in the United States” (working paper, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, July 2006).
38. History of the Ohio Falls Cities and Their Counties (Cleveland, 1882).
39. Vote Hemp’s Eric Steenstra actually has an answer to that question: “Change at the state level has been crucial,” he said. “If your state has passed hemp cultivation legislation, push your state officials toward implementing it. If you live in the forty states that don’t yet have legal hemp farming, push your state officials toward passing it.” He also suggested calling your federal representatives to support two congressional bills (S359 and HR525) that will fully allow hemp cultivation, which as we’ve discussed is stronger than the “u
niversity research” wording passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013. “And buying hemp products is very important,” Steenstra told me. “Economic development is going to move this issue politically.”
40. Zachary Barr, “Hemp Gets the Green Light in New Colorado Pot Measure,” Around the Nation (blog), National Public Radio website, January 28, 2013, www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170300215/hemp-gets-the-green-light-in-new-colorado -pot-measure.
41. At one point during my Canadian research, a local RCMP officer called Hermann to tell her a letter of approval she was seeking for another farmer’s hemp crop was ready. “Law enforcement is here to help us,” she said.
42. Tashajara Stenvall, Julian Stickley, Bryant Nagelson, Piauwasdy, Izy Mcclure, and Sarah Meanwell, “Cannabis: The Ethnobotany and Political Ecology of Hemp,” Environmental and Food Justice (blog), December 28, 2012, http://ejfood.blogspot .com/2012/12/ethnoecology-blogs-autumn-2012-cannabis.html.
43. As described in my Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution.
44. Ernest Small and David Marcus, “Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America,” in Trends in New Crops and New Uses, eds. Jules Janick and Anna Whipkey (Alexandria, VA: ASHS Press, 2002).
45. Steve Raabe, “Hemp Industry Poised to Grow in Colorado with New Legal Status,” Denver Post, January 14, 2013.
46. May told me he was willing and in fact planning to plant three acres in 2013, but the seed, which would have come from Bowman, didn’t arrive when Bowman delayed his own farm’s planting a year.
47. On a visit to a Belgian hemp farm, Ingrid Maris, a high school teacher, told me she had begun cultivating on her family’s land in economically struggling Limburg province for the same reason as Loflin: “I want to demonstrate to my neighbors, who are traditionally minded farmers, that hemp is viable, has so many applications, and, of course, is better for the soil than monoculture,” she said as we toured the idyllic Flanders countryside. “It grows very fast on its own with no pesticides and chemical additives.”
48. He’s dismantled and resold a hundred barns.
49. Alan Haney and Benjamin B. Kutscheid, “An Ecological Study of Naturalized Hemp (Cannabis savita L.) in East-Central Illinois,” American Midland Naturalist 93(1) (University of Notre Dame, January 1975).
50. Among the roughly two dozen Colorado farmers who planted industrial cannabis in 2013, none was as open as Loflin and Bowman. The reasons for this go beyond the inclination to wait for the implementation of state cultivation regulations for the 2014 season. Chris Boucher, a founder of the Hemp Industry Association and a hempster since the 1990s, said the paced start results from a market that needs a few years to develop. At a company called U.S. Hemp Oil, where he’s vice president of product development, the plans are to “ramp up production in Colorado in baby steps, to see what works at seven thousand feet on the thirty-ninth parallel.” As many as two hundred farmers will be planting in 2014, and the number could easily surpass one thousand by 2016 if enough seed is available, according to Bowman.
Resources
The list of players in all of these categories is going to be growing exponentially in coming months and years. These resources are intended just to get the interested hemp farmer or entrepreneur started. It’s written at the tail end of the era when the professional hemp world was a small family.
Hemp Political Advocacy and Industry Groups
The following organizations can provide resources useful in working toward hemp cultivation and processing in your region:
Vote Hemp: www.votehemp.com/write_congress.html
Hemp Industries Association (HIA): www.thehia.org
Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance: www.hemptrade.ca
European Industrial Hemp Association: www.eiha.org
Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association: www.kentuckyhempgca.org
Rocky Mountain Hemp Association: http://rockymountainhempassociation.org
BioFibre Conference, Manitoba: http://biofibe.com
Hemp History Week: www.hemphistoryweek.com
Hemp Seed
Ryan Loflin’s Rocky Mountain Hemp: http://rockymountainhempinc.com
Ben Holms’s Centennial Seed Distributors: www.centennialseeds.com
The Canadian government’s official hemp cultivar list: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps /pubs/precurs/list_cultivars-liste2012/index-eng.php
University Course
Oregon State University Hemp Course, Corvallis, Oregon: http://bit.ly/XsChVe
Hemp Seed Oil
Manitoba Harvest: manitobaharvest.com
Hemp Oil Canada (processing for wholesalers): www.hempoilcan.com
Nutiva: nutiva.com
Hemp Building
American Lime Technology: www.americanlimetechnology.com
A hemp building conference: http://internationalhempbuilding.org /events/4th-international-hemp-building-symposium
Greg Flavall and Hemp Technologies’ North Carolina house: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZbYsMsMW4Q
The house Tim Callahan designed: http://alembicstudio.com/portfolio /the-nauhaus-prototype
Hemp Textiles
Fabrics, webbing, rope, et cetera:
www.envirotextile.com
www.hemptraders.com
www.pickhemp.com
Retail fabrics, webbing, trim, et cetera:
www.nearseanaturals.com
Retail finished goods:
http://rawganique.com
www.etsy.com/shop/gaiaconceptions
http://uprising.be/
Hemp for Energy Independence
In the end, energy independence is going to come via energized localities.
A bona fide small-farm-sized biomass gasification engine at work in Austria: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P7zFw_xff0
A California biomass plant in action (with wood chips for now): http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=7885
Other Hemp Industries
Hemp Plastic Bottle Kickstarter Project: http://hempwaterbottles.tripod.com
Hemp Shield eco-friendly wood sealer: www.hempshield.net
Hemp Decorticator: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8LFErsq6wl
Hemp cereal at the International Space Station: http://holycrap.ca/whats-new /holy-crap-cereal-rockets-to-the-international-space-station
U.S. train running on vegetable oil today—hemp tomorrow? http://illianaroad .com/railroading/railway-powered-by-waste-vegetable-oil
Lignol, a cellulosic industrial process for which hemp might prove ideal: www.lignol.ca
A Dutch company providing hemp for everything from home construction to animal-care products to BMW door panels (company motto: Nature Wins!): www.hempflax.com/en
The Canadian Composites Innovation Centre’s FibreCITY franchising system: http://fibrecity.ca/about.html
Tour Boston’s Hemp History: http://hempology.org
A website with links to manifold hemp industry sectors: www.hemp-technologies.com
A Czech company growing hemp and making it into hemp snacks (company motto: Love stemming from respect for the traditions of our ancestors, while also taking care of our children): www.hempoint.cz
A Beverly Hills company selling hemp rugs: www.caravanrug.com /hemp-rugs-cat-299
Hemp Consultants
The putative hemp entrepreneur on both the production end and the finished-product side will have met several consultants in these pages. There are others. As every hemp farmer I spoke with urges, do your research before leaping into any business. When it comes to outside help for your endeavor, the same applies.
Anndrea Hermann, The Ridge International Cannabis Consulting: www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ridge-International-Cannabis-Consulting -Anndrea-Hermann-204-377-4417/219657108125220
Agua Das, longtime hemp researcher: das.ellis@gmail.com; www.hemphasis.net/Notable/notable_files/das.htm
Jason Lauve for Professional Industrial Hemp Consultation: www.lauve.com
Michael Carus, European Industrial Hemp Association: michael.carus@eiha.org;
www.eiha.org
John Hobson, Hemp Technology (UK): john@hemptechnology.co.uk; www.limetechnology.co.uk
Erik Hunter, Rocky Mountain Hemp Association: erik@rockymountainhempassociation.org; http://rockymountainhempassociation.org
Recent Hemp Documentaries
Government Grown: http://governmentgrownhemp.weebly.com
Bringing It Home: www.bringingithomemovie.com
Hemp researcher David West on feral hemp in Nebraska: www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5IQ2PrSWG4
Historical Hemp Documentary
Hemp for Victory, the 1942 U.S. government pro-hemp film: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1oFcgLfgV0
Hemp Book
Must read for the history of industrial cannabis: Cannabis, Mathias Broeckers, The Hash Marihuana Hemp Museum Press, Amsterdam, 2002
About the Author
AMANDA GORSKI
Doug Fine is a comedic investigative journalist, bestselling author, and solar-powered goat herder. Since emigrating from suburbs to wilderness in the 1990s, he has reported from five continents for the Washington Post, Wired, Salon, the New York Times, Outside, National Public Radio, and U.S. News & World Report. His work from Burma was read into the Congressional Record (by none other than pro-hemp senator Mitch McConnell), and he won more than a dozen Alaskan press club awards for his radio reporting from the Last Frontier. Fine is the author of three previous books: Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution; Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living; and Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man. A website of his print work, radio work, and short films is at www.dougfine.com. Twitter: organiccowboy.
Chelsea Green Publishing sees books as tools for effecting cultural change and seeks to empower citizens to participate in reclaiming our global commons and become its impassioned stewards. If you enjoyed reading Hemp Bound, please consider these other great books related to agriculture, food, health, and environmental policy.
MARIJUANA IS SAFER, UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION