Perhaps a model for what can be done in the United States

http://www.hemptrade.ca/index.php

Hemp vs. Big Oil: The solution to our addiction

Try to imagine a world without oil. (and without hemp for a matter of fact as well) Look around the room and count how many things need oil in order for it to be created. The computer you're reading this on, the paint on your walls, and even possibly the clothes you're wearing are made out of oil. Oil is the staple product in today's society and there is no denying that. We use it for travel, plastics, lubricants, and even in the pesticides we spray on our crops use oil. Oil is such a useful product that we use it in our day to day activities without even realizing it. However, even with all the things oil can create there is one problem with it, there is only a limited supply of it. Currently, if all the oil in the world disappeared everything would collapse. We wouldn't be able to transport crops across the country, drive ourselves to work, or even transport products such as coal to produce electricity. There is a whole list of things that could go wrong. We're pretty much back to where we were without oil.

Here's where hemp comes to save the day. Almost every single product that you can make out of oil, you can make out of hemp. From plastics, paints, to even gasoline hemp can be used to help sustain our economy. Ironically, one of the main reasons that hemp is illegal is because big oil lobbied congress to make hemp illegal along with marijuana. The oil companies were so afraid of the capabilities of this plant that they needed to have it illegal in order to control the market. Instead of having landfills filled with non-biodegradable plastics, we could of possibly had hemp plastics instead, which to degrade and are also great for recycling. Just to think that the entire course of history could of been possibly changed because of this plant. Sadly, history is the way it is and we cannot change the past. However, we can learn from the past and try to fix our mistakes. Fixing the past isn't going to be easy, actually it's going to be extremely hard.

The first obstacle that we have to overcome is the law. Technically, it's not illegal to grow hemp, however, you need to have a special permit from the DEA which is nearly impossible to get. The DEA doesn't want to see hemp grown because of the slippery slope theory. If you start growing hemp people will start to think it's okay to grow marijuana. Since they don't want to lose their funding from the Federal Government the DEA is going to oppose any easy access to the production of hemp. In the past two decades the DEA has spent $175 million to eradicate ditch weeds. Basically, Hemp that went feral after the "Hemp for Victory" campaign during World War II. If people try to change the laws and make hemp easy to grow, the DEA is only going to come up with some excuses to why we shouldn't grow hemp. An example would be people could hide marijuana plants in the field. Ironically, this would ruin the hemp crop and wouldn't even be that good as marijuana. Theoretically, you might be able to charge someone with destruction of property if they tried to grow marijuana in a hemp field.

Another obstacle is the oil companies. I'd be willing to bet that the oil companies would lobby congress if we tried to use congress to change the hemp laws. The good news is the people can change the law themselves on the state level. They don't have to go through legislative bodies and worry about lobbyists corrupting the system. Even after succeeding in changing the law there will still be plenty of obstacles. The oil companies might do one of two things, invest heavily into the hemp industry or try to kill it by out competing it. In order to change the supply we must change the demand. Try to boycott oil based products and replace it with hemp based products. Boycotts have always been a great way to grab the attention of companies. Even with the massive power the oil companies have, other companies have to listen to our basic economic principles of supply and demand. An example would be Wal-mart and the whole organic food movement. Wal-mart has started to sell organic foods at their stores because they listened to the basic principle of demand and the supplier should listen to the demand. While I'm not a huge fan of Wal-mart personally, it's still a good example of how people can change things by just changing the products they consume.

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I'm sure many people want to other alternatives. Liberal, conservative, or independent there is disdain for oil companies. Even if we can't agree on other issues many of us can agree that hemp is a useful product. We can all agree that oil will eventually run out and we'll need to find something to replace it. Economically, we can't just cut off our supply of oil and immediately go to hemp. We'll have to transition into it in a sustainable manner that won't cause chaos. As most of history has shown, immediate transition usually ends in disaster. Hemp and other sustainable options can help ensure that we don't reach chaos by doing nothing about the problem as well.

Hemp and Sustainable Agriculture

If you anything about the farming system in the U.S. most of it is corporate owned, mostly corn and soybeans, and uses tons of fertilizers and pesticides to keep it going. Now some of you might not think this is a problem but in reality it is a problem. Since we keep growing corn over and over again in the same fields the quality of the soil diminishes every year. To counteract that they inject nitrogen and phosphate into the soil. Ironically, this contributes to global warming because of the nitrous oxide that escapes into the atmosphere. Now I'll admit, they are trying to reduce the amount of nitrogen they use for fertilizing but the fact of the matter is, we shouldn't have to continually use fertilizers to replenish the soil if there are more sustainable ways to do the same thing. Along with corn, cotton has a significant impact on the environment. Because of the boll weevil, cotton needs massive amounts of pesticides to counteract the disastrous effects of this pest. Globally, cotton production uses about 25% of all the pesticides.

Now how does hemp fit into the picture? Well the first thing is that hemp is a great crop for crop rotations. It replenishes the soil and uses very little nutrients. Historically, the Gauls (aka the French today) used hemp during their crop rotation because of how it replenished the soil. Also, hemp thrives in soils that corn thrives in as well, but it doesn't take out the same nutrients as corn but replenishes those nutrients. Kentucky farmers would grow hemp every year in the same field and would get the same crop yields every year. Instead of trying to replenish the soil every year with fertilizers why don't we use a technique that had been used for thousands of years instead, crop rotation with hemp. While it replenishes the soil it can still be used for industrial purposes. Another good thing about hemp is that it needs little to virtually no pesticides. This is something we can cheer about because of issues that are with pesticide use. (mostly cancer) Some of you may be wondering what kind of yields hemp has so let's talk about that next.

Hemp can produce 4 times as much paper per acre as trees and twice as much as cotton. So is there really a need to cut down trees if we can use hemp to produce paper? What about cotton? The only reason cotton was king is because it was easier to refine and produce cotton thanks to the cotton gin. The process of retting hemp was so time consuming and back breaking that it was starting to fade until someone engineered a retting machine to make it more cost effective. Ironically, around the same time hemp became illegal. (which I'll discuss in a later blog) Now I don't have data on how much hemp we could possibly produce in the U.S. through the use of crop rotations. The concept is something that we should really think about and in the opinion of this blogger, it's something we should start researching. The first step in doing so is to make access to growing hemp easy. AKA Legalize Hemp!

If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to post! I like any criticism that's constructive.

A brief look at hemp

This is the first post for the page so to begin this blog we'll take a brief overview of hemp and its great potential.

Now hemp is a product many people automatically associate with marijuana. The first thing that anyone needs to know about hemp that it is not marijuana. Marijuana is a cannabis plant that contains a Tetrahydrocannabino (THC) content of 3% or higher. Hemp is a cannabis plant that contains a THC content of 3% or lower. Many of you may be asking why the THC content matters when differentiating between hemp and marijuana. The answer is simple, with marijuana the psychoactive effects of THC have an effect on the mind, with hemp it's quite the opposite. When you smoke hemp you'll just get a headache. No high, no feeling of euphoria, and no munchies. It is important to make a distinction between the two because hemp is illegal to grow because of the paranoia over marijuana back in the 1930's.

The value of hemp has been realized for thousands of years. From the early Chinese to the early United States of America, hemp was grown because of how valuable of a resource it is. Hemp can be used to make clothing, rope, soap, lubricants, biodiesel, food, paper, and plastics. These are only a few of the products that hemp can make. Popular Mechanics published an article back in 1938 called "Hemp: The New Billion Dollar Industry" and it said that hemp could be used to make over 25,000 different products.(Just to remind you , a billion dollars was much more money than it is today. Even with inflation taken into account you'd need to look at many other factors. All we can say for now that hemp would of had huge economic potential.)

One of the most appeasing things about hemp is that it's easy to grow. It needs little to no pesticides, is good for crop rotations, and will choke out the weeds. If you know anything about how the current farm industry is now it's unsustainable, pesticide and fertilizer driven, and is harmful for the environment. Hemp is a crop we could use for crop rotations to put nutrients back into the ground. At the same time we're producing a valuable crop that has great potential for industrial use.

Remember, this is the first post for the blog. I plan on going into more detail with each subject that was listed I plan on going into more detail. I also plan on writing about other sustainable options for the future. The world we live in today isn't sustainable. Media pundits and politicians might say otherwise but if you truly look at it you'll realize that if we don't take care of our environment we have no future. Hemp is part of the solution, not the entire solution.