Read the complete manuscript of John McCabe’s book, “Hemp: What The World Needs Now”

 

Hemp is perhaps the most useful single plant on the planet. It can be used for food, fuel (both ethanol made from the cellulose for gasoline engines and oil pressed from the seeds for diesel engines), fabric, flooring, insulation, plastic, nylon, fiberglass, plywood, resin, bricks, filters, ink, paint, soap, paper, medicine, furniture, and hundreds of other products.

 

Even though you can’t get high from hemp, and it is a plant that absorbs pollution; improves air and water quality; protects wildlife habitat; localizes economies; and provides a more sustainable culture, it is currently illegal to grow hemp in the U.S., and all hemp material must be imported.

 

While many so-called “alternative” forms of energy are being explored, promoted, and invested in, hemp is oddly absent in the spectrum.

 

Solar and wind energy are part of the solution to breaking away from fossil fuels. But hemp can also play a very important role in reducing and eliminating fossil fuel use. While solar power and wind turbines create electricity to charge electric cars and trucks that need to be built, hemp can be used to create ethanol for gas engines and oil for diesel engine that already exist. 

 

Unlike solar power and wind turbines, hemp absorbs greenhouse gasses while producing oxygen.

 

Because hemp absorbs greenhouse gasses as it grows, and because only part of the plant is burned, returning only part of those absorbed gasses to the atmosphere, hemp is a carbon negative fuel.

 

Unlike the creation of solar energy farms where thousands of solar panels are placed on large plots of land in regions where the cloudless days are common, such as in the Nevada desert, hemp requires a small investment for farmers, can be grown in every region of the continent, and improves soil conditions. And it does so while also providing raw material that can be sold for many uses. 

 

Unlike petroleum, coal, natural gas, and tar sands that need to be drilled and pumped or mined from the ground, hemp can be grown without destroying and digging deep into the land.

 

Hemp can be used to make plastic that is safer for the environment than the plastics made from petroleum.

 

Unlike corn ethanol, making ethanol from hemp would not bite into what is commonly considered to be a food crop. But, because of arcane laws, hemp can’t be grown, while corn can. And corn can be grown by farmers and corporations that benefit from government subsidies. But hemp can’t be grown by farmers in the U.S. because the federal government keeps farmers from growing hemp by keeping hemp illegal to grow. Right now, if any farmer planted hemp in the U.S., they could be charged with a felony, be imprisoned, and have their land and belongings confiscated by the federal government.

 

Currently, the corn industry is experiencing an upswing in profits based on the demand for ethanol. The corn industry is also being subsidized by the federal government to help provide ethanol. The large portion of those subsidies aren’t going to family farmers, but they are going to corporate farming enterprises. This is done while hemp holds the promise that it can provide more fuel-making material per acre than corn, and it can do it in a more environmentally safe manner.

 

The corn industry is also aided by the government water system largely built with tax dollars. These water systems have largely been built for the huge monocropping farms run by the multinational corporations, which also own the fertilizer, pesticide, fungicide, miticide, and other farming chemical companies, which are tied in with the petroleum and natural gas industries. Consider Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and Dupont. Consider ADM. And consider who sits on the boards of these companies, and who is profiting from them. It isn’t the family farmers. It isn’t the common citizen. It is the financial elite.

 

Growing hemp for both ethanol and diesel fuel would mean that we become more energy independent. We would stop sending so much money to other countries to import petroleum. We would stop drilling and digging into Earth to obtain billions of gallons of petroleum. Our air would be cleaner. The number of ships traveling around the planet to transport the petroleum would be greatly reduced. The oceans would be cleaner. Millions of acres of hemp would be absorbing more pollution than the same number of acre of trees.

 

When you consider that the pollution put out by the world’s shipping barges amounts to the pollution put out by most countries, you can get an idea of how much petroleum is being burned by the ships, and how much they contribute to global warming, the acidification of the oceans, the melting of the ice caps, and the death of wildlife.

 

When hemp is used to make ethanol, the fiber is left over. That can be used as insulation in homes, helping us to save money on heating costs while also reducing the amount of fuel we use to heat our homes and buildings. The fiber can also be used to make fiberboard to build those structures.

 

All of the leftover hemp materials from making hemp products can be composted back into the soil, building the soil base. You can’t do that with petroleum, coal, oil shale, or tar sands.

 

Meanwhile, as the U.S. continues its hemp farming prohibition, other countries are allowing and encouraging their farmers to grow hemp. They are also being innovative in creating products from hemp. But, if U.S. companies need raw hemp material, they have to import it.

 

Hemp can also be used to make paint, varnish, resin, and furniture oils that are all safer for the environment than the same products made with chemicals from petroleum.

 

Hemp candles are safer to burn in the home than candles made from petroleum. Hemp oil can also be used in lamps, and it burns cleaner than petroleum oil.

 

While other countries are allowing their family farmers to grow hemp, family farmers in the U.S. are losing out on growing hemp as a crop while more and more hemp is being imported by U.S. companies. And the money that would be going to U.S. farmers is going to farmers in other countries. Meanwhile, U.S. family farmers are struggling to survive.

 

With a legalized industrial hemp farming we could also stop cutting down our forests for paper and plywood. Hemp paper is stronger and is more recyclable than wood pulp paper. Hemp has longer and stronger fibers than wood. Fiberboard made with hemp is four times stronger than fiberboard made using tree wood.

 

By the eighth-century the hemp papermaking techniques from China had spread to Arabia and Persia. In about 1150 the Moors started manufacturing hemp paper in Spain.

 

Hemp paper was used in the first printing presses, bringing humanity out of ignorance and into mass education. In the 1400s Johan Gutenberg took the idea of the Chinese woodblock printing process and created his famed printing press. He used the printing press to print the first printed Bible on paper made from hemp rags and other plant material. Over the next several hundred years hemp paper was also used to publish political statements, fueling the revolutions.

 

In North America, hemp was used to create paper. In the past two hundred years, trees pulp has been used to make paper. Hemp farms were often run using slaves. As slavery ended, and the demand for paper grew, it became cheaper to use the plentiful trees from forests to create paper.

 

Now there are machines that can be used to break down the hemp fiber into the pulp used for paper. Processing hemp for paper is also safer for the environment than using trees, and this is so because of the chemicals needed to process the tree pulp.

 

Now that the machinery exists to more easily process hemp into paper, cardboard, fiber board, and plywood, it no longer makes economic or environmental sense to keep destroying our forests to create those products when we can be using hemp.

 

Hemp is believed to have been the first crop that was used to create fabric. Evidence of this has been found in China where hemp fabric and rope has been unearthed in settlements believed to be over 10,000 years old. The use of hemp fabric brought about the end of using animal skins as clothing. It was the beginning of vegan clothing.

 

Hemp was used in the first fabric sails that allowed humans to travel the seas. And the ropes that were used on the ships were also made of hemp fiber. The lamps on board were fueled with hemp seed oil. Hemp oil, resin, and fiber were used to waterproof the hulls and decks.

 

Before the Northern Africans spurred the Renaissance, the Genoans and Venetians were cultivating large fields of hemp to make fabric, cordage, and sails. With their uses of hemp they dominated the trade routes. When the sails had served their purpose and been worn by the wind, rain, and sun, they were turned into clothing, tablecloths, painters’ canvases, and paper.

 

Cotton had become more popular after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, eventually leaving hemp fabric behind as more tedious to produce. Before the cotton gin was invented, cotton fabric was less than 10% of the fabric being produced in North America. The rest of the fabric was largely made of hemp grown in all regions of the settlements in both the north and the south. The sails and cordage used on the ships that arrived from Europe were made of hemp. The first American flags were made using hemp. The tarps that covered the wagons were made of hemp.

 

After the cotton gin, cotton became king of the south on the backs of slave labor. At the same time, the hemp farms of the north began to close down, or to transition into other crop farms, or animal farms.

 

At least until the hemp decorticator was invented in 1917, there was no real way to process hemp on a large, industrial scale without using hard labor. When the hemp decorticator machine was invented, various industries that recognized hemp as something that could damage their profits. Leaders of industry worked with government employees to outlaw hemp in the U.S., quickly eliminating hemp as a competitive product.

 

When you consider that cotton uses enormous amounts of water, and that cotton farming uses more pesticides than any other crop, and that an acre of hemp provides more fabric-making material than an acre of cotton, you can get the idea of what hemp can do to benefit farmers, local economies, and the environment.

 

Hemp is a crop that grows easily without the pesticides and fertilizers used on cotton. Unlike cotton, hemp can be grown in every region of the U.S. Hemp uses much less water than cotton. Hemp can be made into a variety of fabrics that easily can be stronger, softer, and warmer than cotton. Hemp can also be made into more varieties of fabric than cotton can provide, and not just the rough, potato-sack material that people visualize when they think of hemp.

 

Hemp farming has been legalized in a lot of states, including Vermont and North Dakota. You can contact VoteHemp.com to find out more about the laws states have passed to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp. Even though hemp farming is legalized in various states, the federal government continues to prevent U.S. farmers from allowing the farmers to grow hemp.

 

Growing industrial hemp in the U.S. would mean that farmers would have another rotation crop they could grow, and one they could immediately begin to sell.

 

The hemp market already exists. You can walk into any natural foods store, and an increasing number of mainstream grocery stores, and find products made from hemp. These include hemp milk, hemp nutrition powders, hemp shampoos and conditioners, hemp lip balm, hemp sports bars, hemp chips, hemp brownies that contain hemp seed flour and hemp oil, and salad dressings that contain hemp oil.

 

There are also dual products made from hemp. When the seeds are pressed for oil, which is then used in many products, the leftover material is seed cake. That can be used in foods for animals and humans. Hemp seed cake is an excellent source of amino acids that our bodies use to make protein.

 

Cold pressed hemp oil is a excellent nutritional oil. It contains a better balance of essential fatty acids than flax seed oil. Hemp seed oil also has a better taste than flax oil, and it can be used in a variety of foods, including in dips, sauces, dressings, hummus, and pesto.

 

There are a number of industries that already use hemp fiber in the U.S. These include companies that make rugs, clothing, curtains, and the sound insulation boards of trucks and automobiles. Many vehicles also contain carpeting and seating fabric that is made partially with hemp.

 

Today’s farmers are struggling. And the high price of fuel is creating more of a strain on farmers. Why not allow them to grow hemp for seed so they can bring the seeds to a farmer’s fuel co-op that would press the seeds into oil, which could then be used to run the diesel engines in the farm machinery that largely run on diesel fuel? The hemp plants could also be used to make ethanol, which could be sold to regional gas stations. That alone would reduce pollution and be greatly beneficial to the environment and local economies. We shouldn’t be importing billions of gallons of petroleum from other countries to then refine and use as fuel for farm equipment when we could be allowing farmers to grow their own fuel, and for lower cost.

 

Industrial hemp is a quickly growing business in Canada. And Canada is exporting large amounts of that hemp into the U.S. Most of it is entering the U.S. in the form of nutritional hemp seed products (chips, oil, hemp seed nutritional powders, nutritional bars, etc.), and also for skin and hair care products (lip balm, skin lotion, shampoo, and conditioner).

 

If we allowed U.S. farmers to grow industrial hemp, we would greatly reduce the cost of hemp products in America while also localizing economies by making it easier for companies to exist that make hemp products from raw, U.S. grown hemp material.

 

Right now there is a lot of vague talk about how people want “change.” Let’s be specific about what needs to be changed. One thing that needs to be changed is that the law against industrial hemp farming in the U.S. needs to be abolished, and it needs to be abolished immediately. And it needs to be abolished without allowing any change in the genetic makeup of the hemp plant, which is what some genetic engineering companies want – so that they can own the patent rights to the hemp seeds just as they own the patent rights to the genetically engineered corn seeds.

 

Throughout history, hemp has been used to transform human culture. It is time for a hemp renaissance. Not only does it need to happen in the U.S., but it needs to happen around the world. It will localize our economies, improve our condition, and make us less dependant on imported goods and services. It will help us break our ties to the corporate giants that rely on our money for their tremendous profits.

 

To read the complete manuscript of John McCabe’s book, Hemp: What The World Needs Now, access: http://www.HempNowBook.com

 

Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance: http://www.HempTrade.ca

Hemp Industries Association: http://www.TheHIA.org

Hemp Oil Canada: http://www.HempOilCan.com

North American Industrial Hemp Council: http://www.NAIHC.org

Seattle Hempfest: http://www.HempFest.org

Vote Hemp: http://www.VoteHemp.com