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Andy Kerr's Industrial Hemp Index Page
Industrial hemp is the next soybean. Jeff Gain, former head of the
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Industrial hemp is a very distant cousin to marijuana. (Proceed further, after you get those lame jokes out of your system.) I came to my interest in industrial hemp as a substitute for wood fiber in paper and construction products. It can do that and much more. Efforts are underway to reclassify industrial hemp as not being "marijuana" as it currently is under US law. Hemp, when blended with very abundant agricultural waste fibers, can make stronger, lighter and cheaper construction products than those made of wood. Similarly blended, it also makes a superior paper. Hemp blends can replace wood for most things. Testimony on Oregon Senate Bill 348 to re-legalize industrial hemp in Oregon. This is my best attempt to explain how industrial hemp is not marijuana, how marijuana growers won't want industrial hemp growing anywhere near their drug crop, and how most of the rest of the world distinguishes industrial hemp from marijuana. The Argument in Favor of Industrial Hemp is my best 750 words on the subject. The facts of industrial hemp are fascinating. Hemp to Save the Forests For a longer view of how I got interested in industrial hemp, click for an article that appeared in Wild Earth. Environmental Benefits of Hemp are quite significant. Ehrensing, Daryl T. 1998. Feasibility of Industrial Hemp Production in the United States Pacific Northwest. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 681. This report was commissioned by Oregon Natural Resources Council (now Oregon Wild). pdf verion. The same study by Daryl T. Ehrensing in html: Pacific Northwest Industrial Hemp study by Oregon State University, commissioned by Oregon Natural Resources Council while Andy Kerr was executive director. North American Industrial Hemp Council is the best beginning source on industrial hemp. (I am a founding board member and currently serve as treasurer.) Cotton Vital Statistics
Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forests and mineral products in the annual growth of the fields? I know from experience that many of the raw materials of industry which are today stripped from the forest and the mines can be obtained from annual crops grown on the farm.
All--plants, animals, and men. The phosphorous and calcium of the earth build our skeletons and nervous systems. Everything else our bodies need except air and sun comes from the earth. Nature treats the earth kindly. Man treats her harshly. He overplows the cropland, over grazes the pasture land, and over cuts the timber land. He destroys millions of acres completely. He pours fertilizer year after year into the cities, which in turn pour what they do not use down the sewers into the rivers and the ocean. The flood problem, in so far as it is man-made, is chiefly the result of overplowing, over grazing and over cutting of timber. This terrible destructive process is inexcusable in a young civilization. It is not excusable in the United States in the year 1938. The social lesson of soil waste is that no man has the right to destroy soil, even if he does it in fee simple.
(T)he best possible working plan for any man in our civilization is to have one foot on the soil and the other in industry.
Anything that can be grown to provide industry with manufacturing materials will bring new revenue to agriculture.
I believe that the great Creator has put ores and oil on this earth to give us a breathing spell. As we exhaust them, we must be prepared to fall back on our farms, which is God's true storehouse and can never be exhausted. We can learn to synthesize material for every human need from things that grow.
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