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SPRING IS SPRUNG - APRIL's HERE
WELCOME TO THE HEMP SHOP'S APRIL NEWSLETTER
The Sun has got his hat on, summer seems like it's just round the corner and Mike in the office saw his first Swallow yesterday - indeed. It's time to bring on the warmth. We are in the process of updating a whole range of products, with new colours, styles and sizes & below is just a small selection of what's to come. We will also be launching a new website in the next few months and would love to hear from you, our customers & friends who use the site; if you have any top ideas for the new deployment.
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THE HEMP SHOP BRINGS YOU UP TO THE MINUTE (& A GREAT ARCHIVE OF) NEWS,FROM AROUND THE
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Showing posts with label Bobby Pugh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bobby Pugh. Show all posts
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Spring Sale at The Hemp Shop
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Hemp article in the Guardian
This article appeared on 26 September, 2006 in the Guardian:
Hemp is at hand
For decades, UK farmers were banned from growing a plant wrongly associated with potheads. But this versatile member of the cannabis family is moving back into the agricultural mainstream.
By Annie KellyAnnie Kelly
Fifteen years ago, any farmer trying to grow hemp could have been arrested. But this year, more than 3,500 acres of it will be harvested as an industrial crop, processed, and made into a plethora of natural products, including insulation, horse bedding, fabric, biodiesel and paper.
Hemp is back and is throwing off its "hippy" shackles to emerge as one of the UK's fastest growing sustainable industries. "Not before time," says Bobby Pugh, environmental campaigner and hemp aficionado, who runs several successful hemp businesses. "Hemp can provide the answer to many of our environmental woes, yet it's been stigmatised, sidelined and denied for decades."
The hemp community has been shouting about the environmental benefits of the plant for years. An oft-quoted statistic is that hemp has more than 25,000 natural uses - ranging from food and oil supplements, made from its seeds, to strong industrial materials processed from its woody outer core. It is fast-growing and can thrive in British soil with little water and with no pesticides or other soil-polluting chemicals.
The ban on hemp cultivation, imposed in 1971 under the Misuse of Drugs Act, was finally overturned in 1993. Campaigners successfully argued that although industrial hemp was a variety of the cannabis plant, it could be grown as a legitimate crop as it contained practically no tetrahydrocannabinol, the property that gives marijuana - a different strain of cannabis - its potent effect.
Pugh says: "It's tragic when you think of the waste of natural resources - the thousands of trees that have been cut down to make paper when hemp could have been used, the tonnes of carbon dioxide that have been released into the air, the economies crippled by the cotton industry. All of this could have been avoided by using hemp."
Since 1993, the growth of the hemp industry has mostly been a matter of research and development. New farming and processing technology, and a lot of investment, are now needed to help industrial hemp to compete with other commercial crops.
BioRegional, a sustainable development company, has been researching and developing techniques that it hopes will help realise the potential of hemp as an alternative to cotton.
On an environmental level, this makes sense. Research by the Stockholm Institute has concluded that the "ecological footprint" of hemp is lower than polyester and half that of cotton. Unlike hemp, cotton needs huge amounts of water, herbicides and pesticides to help keep it disease-free. "The world has reached its limit on cotton production," says Sue Riddlestone, a director at BioRegional. "We need to find an alternative to cotton that we can produce in volume and, with the right technology, hemp could provide the answer, as well as being far kinder to the environment."
Comparable quality
Riddlestone says the major obstacle is that they have yet to find ways to produce a hemp material that is of comparable quality to the cotton we have all become accustomed to wearing. "There are lots of small businesses selling imported hemp clothing and textiles, but we just haven't got the capacity in the UK yet," she says. "Manufacturers need to be shown a good product, with an established supply chain, before they'll invest. I think we're two to three years off making this happen, but it will come."
In other areas, hemp is booming. Hemcore, the UK's first large-scale hemp company, has seen rapid growth over the last five years. It now owns the only hemp processing plant in the UK and currently contracts 40 farmers to grow 3,500 acres of hemp a year, which it converts into industrial materials. It currently provides all BMW 5 Series cars with hemp door panels, as well as making high-quality horse bedding.
"It's cost us a hell of a lot of money to get where we are today, but now I think we've got a commercially viable business on our hands," says Hemcore director, John Hobson. "It's helpful that companies are wising up to the need to act in a more environmentally sustainable way, but we've also managed to show them that we're more than a couple of well-meaning hippies and that we've got a serious product to offer."
According to Hemcore, the next big growth area for hemp will be the construction industry, especially as an environmentally-friendly alternative to glass- and fibre-based insulation. Adnams, brewers of traditional English beer, is using bricks made of a combination of lime and hemp in a new "eco-brewery" it is building in Southwold, Suffolk.
It is also easier for farmers to grow hemp than ever before. In the years after the ban, farmers wanting to grow the crop were still viewed with suspicion. They were required to apply for individual licences from the Home Office and were subjected to spot checks and testing by the local drugs squad to make sure nobody was using hemp as a cover for growing fields of marijuana. Most hemp farmers now work under contract to companies such as Hemcore and are required only to notify the local police station about where they will grow their crop.
Ian Squire, a farmer contracted to grow hemp for Hemcore on his farm near Rochford, Essex, says: "It's definitely moved on. It was too much hassle before, but now we're treating it like any other non-food crop. It's quick to grow, and finally we can make a profit growing it."
He admits that his hemp fields are still subject to the odd midnight raid conducted by misguided locals who see the distinctive pronged leaf and draw the wrong conclusion. "You try to tell people they could smoke my whole 350 acres before they feel a thing," says Squire. "It's ludicrous that people actually think that large-scale professional farmers are openly growing fields of marijuana, but it's amazing how uneducated people are."
The hemp community insists that it is moving hemp away from its associations with drugs and the people who smoke them, but tensions still remain.
"I loathe the fact that there are still people who think the hemp industry is run by a bunch of potheads trying to legitimise their own drug habits," says Kenyon Gibson, hemp researcher and co-author of Hemp for Victory, a new book on the history and uses of hemp. "It could not be further from the truth, but there are people out there who benefit from keeping the link between hemp and marijuana alive and kicking."
He believes the misrepresentation of hemp as a dangerous narcotic has been pushed for decades by international conglomerates, who are well aware of the threat that the plant poses to their trade.
"It was the large multinationals who helped ban hemp decades ago, and it's the large multinationals who are still ensuring that natural alternatives to their products are being sidelined even in this time of environmental chaos," Gibson says. "Look at how many trees we could save by investing in a global hemp paper industry. Look at its potential to contribute to natural ethanol, yet we're lagging behind countries such as Brazil which are making great strides in creating fuel from domestic products."
Token investments
"We can't let token investments from the government into niche hemp industries divert us from keeping on pushing for the true environmental potential of hemp to finally be exploited," Gibson continues. "The true power of hemp will be unlocked only when we're able to use it to challenge large-scale, environmentally-damaging industries, and this isn't happening yet."
It is a line that companies such as Hemcore are eager to distance themselves from. Hobson says that his company prefers to treat hemp as a sustainable but commercial product, rather than getting into arguments about corporate politics.
But for Gibson, Pugh and others like them, the two issues are inextricably linked. "As hemp once posed a threat to some investors, so it does again today - for which reason some would rather leave the issue of hemp alone," Gibson says. "With such a commodity, many positive changes can be put in place from which we can all benefit. The battle to get this recognised still needs to be fought."
· A history of usefulness
· Britain's naval strength in the 16th century was reliant on hemp rope, to the extent that Queen Elizabeth I decreed that farmers had to grow hemp on part of their land.
· The oldest piece of material known to man is a piece of hemp fabric, dating back to 8000BC.
· Hemp-seed milk was used as a cure for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s.
· Hemp seeds are acknowledged as being one of the best sources of essential fatty acids. Health guru Gillian McKeith (right) is promoting the benefits of hemp seeds in her latest Channel 4 TV series.
· In 1941, Ford produced a car that was 70% made from hemp plastic and designed to run on hemp fuel. The US bans on hemp and alcohol (Mississippi, in 1966, was the last state to repeal prohibition) meant that the car was never mass produced.
· Rembrandt and Van Gogh both painted on hemp canvas, using oil paints made from hemp seeds.
· America's Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper in 1776. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson farmed hemp, and the statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin owned a hemp-paper mill.
Kenyon Gibson is co-author, with Nick and Cindy MacKintosh, of Hemp for Victory: History and Qualities of the World's Most Useful Plants, published this month by Whitaker Publishing (price £17.95). He also writes a blog at www.Hempforvictory.blogspot.com
Hemp is back and is throwing off its "hippy" shackles to emerge as one of the UK's fastest growing sustainable industries. "Not before time," says Bobby Pugh, environmental campaigner and hemp aficionado, who runs several successful hemp businesses. "Hemp can provide the answer to many of our environmental woes, yet it's been stigmatised, sidelined and denied for decades."
The hemp community has been shouting about the environmental benefits of the plant for years. An oft-quoted statistic is that hemp has more than 25,000 natural uses - ranging from food and oil supplements, made from its seeds, to strong industrial materials processed from its woody outer core. It is fast-growing and can thrive in British soil with little water and with no pesticides or other soil-polluting chemicals.
The ban on hemp cultivation, imposed in 1971 under the Misuse of Drugs Act, was finally overturned in 1993. Campaigners successfully argued that although industrial hemp was a variety of the cannabis plant, it could be grown as a legitimate crop as it contained practically no tetrahydrocannabinol, the property that gives marijuana - a different strain of cannabis - its potent effect.
Pugh says: "It's tragic when you think of the waste of natural resources - the thousands of trees that have been cut down to make paper when hemp could have been used, the tonnes of carbon dioxide that have been released into the air, the economies crippled by the cotton industry. All of this could have been avoided by using hemp."
Since 1993, the growth of the hemp industry has mostly been a matter of research and development. New farming and processing technology, and a lot of investment, are now needed to help industrial hemp to compete with other commercial crops.
BioRegional, a sustainable development company, has been researching and developing techniques that it hopes will help realise the potential of hemp as an alternative to cotton.
On an environmental level, this makes sense. Research by the Stockholm Institute has concluded that the "ecological footprint" of hemp is lower than polyester and half that of cotton. Unlike hemp, cotton needs huge amounts of water, herbicides and pesticides to help keep it disease-free. "The world has reached its limit on cotton production," says Sue Riddlestone, a director at BioRegional. "We need to find an alternative to cotton that we can produce in volume and, with the right technology, hemp could provide the answer, as well as being far kinder to the environment."
Comparable quality
Riddlestone says the major obstacle is that they have yet to find ways to produce a hemp material that is of comparable quality to the cotton we have all become accustomed to wearing. "There are lots of small businesses selling imported hemp clothing and textiles, but we just haven't got the capacity in the UK yet," she says. "Manufacturers need to be shown a good product, with an established supply chain, before they'll invest. I think we're two to three years off making this happen, but it will come."
In other areas, hemp is booming. Hemcore, the UK's first large-scale hemp company, has seen rapid growth over the last five years. It now owns the only hemp processing plant in the UK and currently contracts 40 farmers to grow 3,500 acres of hemp a year, which it converts into industrial materials. It currently provides all BMW 5 Series cars with hemp door panels, as well as making high-quality horse bedding.
"It's cost us a hell of a lot of money to get where we are today, but now I think we've got a commercially viable business on our hands," says Hemcore director, John Hobson. "It's helpful that companies are wising up to the need to act in a more environmentally sustainable way, but we've also managed to show them that we're more than a couple of well-meaning hippies and that we've got a serious product to offer."
According to Hemcore, the next big growth area for hemp will be the construction industry, especially as an environmentally-friendly alternative to glass- and fibre-based insulation. Adnams, brewers of traditional English beer, is using bricks made of a combination of lime and hemp in a new "eco-brewery" it is building in Southwold, Suffolk.
It is also easier for farmers to grow hemp than ever before. In the years after the ban, farmers wanting to grow the crop were still viewed with suspicion. They were required to apply for individual licences from the Home Office and were subjected to spot checks and testing by the local drugs squad to make sure nobody was using hemp as a cover for growing fields of marijuana. Most hemp farmers now work under contract to companies such as Hemcore and are required only to notify the local police station about where they will grow their crop.
Ian Squire, a farmer contracted to grow hemp for Hemcore on his farm near Rochford, Essex, says: "It's definitely moved on. It was too much hassle before, but now we're treating it like any other non-food crop. It's quick to grow, and finally we can make a profit growing it."
He admits that his hemp fields are still subject to the odd midnight raid conducted by misguided locals who see the distinctive pronged leaf and draw the wrong conclusion. "You try to tell people they could smoke my whole 350 acres before they feel a thing," says Squire. "It's ludicrous that people actually think that large-scale professional farmers are openly growing fields of marijuana, but it's amazing how uneducated people are."
The hemp community insists that it is moving hemp away from its associations with drugs and the people who smoke them, but tensions still remain.
"I loathe the fact that there are still people who think the hemp industry is run by a bunch of potheads trying to legitimise their own drug habits," says Kenyon Gibson, hemp researcher and co-author of Hemp for Victory, a new book on the history and uses of hemp. "It could not be further from the truth, but there are people out there who benefit from keeping the link between hemp and marijuana alive and kicking."
He believes the misrepresentation of hemp as a dangerous narcotic has been pushed for decades by international conglomerates, who are well aware of the threat that the plant poses to their trade.
"It was the large multinationals who helped ban hemp decades ago, and it's the large multinationals who are still ensuring that natural alternatives to their products are being sidelined even in this time of environmental chaos," Gibson says. "Look at how many trees we could save by investing in a global hemp paper industry. Look at its potential to contribute to natural ethanol, yet we're lagging behind countries such as Brazil which are making great strides in creating fuel from domestic products."
Token investments
"We can't let token investments from the government into niche hemp industries divert us from keeping on pushing for the true environmental potential of hemp to finally be exploited," Gibson continues. "The true power of hemp will be unlocked only when we're able to use it to challenge large-scale, environmentally-damaging industries, and this isn't happening yet."
It is a line that companies such as Hemcore are eager to distance themselves from. Hobson says that his company prefers to treat hemp as a sustainable but commercial product, rather than getting into arguments about corporate politics.
But for Gibson, Pugh and others like them, the two issues are inextricably linked. "As hemp once posed a threat to some investors, so it does again today - for which reason some would rather leave the issue of hemp alone," Gibson says. "With such a commodity, many positive changes can be put in place from which we can all benefit. The battle to get this recognised still needs to be fought."
· A history of usefulness
· Britain's naval strength in the 16th century was reliant on hemp rope, to the extent that Queen Elizabeth I decreed that farmers had to grow hemp on part of their land.
· The oldest piece of material known to man is a piece of hemp fabric, dating back to 8000BC.
· Hemp-seed milk was used as a cure for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s.
· Hemp seeds are acknowledged as being one of the best sources of essential fatty acids. Health guru Gillian McKeith (right) is promoting the benefits of hemp seeds in her latest Channel 4 TV series.
· In 1941, Ford produced a car that was 70% made from hemp plastic and designed to run on hemp fuel. The US bans on hemp and alcohol (Mississippi, in 1966, was the last state to repeal prohibition) meant that the car was never mass produced.
· Rembrandt and Van Gogh both painted on hemp canvas, using oil paints made from hemp seeds.
· America's Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper in 1776. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson farmed hemp, and the statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin owned a hemp-paper mill.
Kenyon Gibson is co-author, with Nick and Cindy MacKintosh, of Hemp for Victory: History and Qualities of the World's Most Useful Plants, published this month by Whitaker Publishing (price £17.95). He also writes a blog at www.Hempforvictory.blogspot.com
Friday, December 10, 2010
Just in from the Hemp Shop:
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Monday, February 01, 2010
FARMING TODAY
The BBC has a show called Farming Today, and about once a year they discuss hemp. Recently Peter Tat of the BBC contacted me and picked my brain about the state of the industry in the UK, and I gave him a rough history and told him rather candidly what I thought, which is along these lines:
Hemcore, a company started in the '90s, had the monopoly over seed sales, and the gov regluated which varieties, so only about 19, out of 1,000, could be sold. Basically Hemcore farmers produced low grade fibre for insulation and/or seed for oil. Paper and textiles did not catch on. I know a few people who would like to start these up, notably Jane Pasquill in Cornwall, but this takes more commitment than just chopping up bast for car door insulation. Paper would be easier, but even when I made 3 tons, or rather commissioned 3 tons under the aegis of the well known and colourful character John Hanson of Lyme Regis, we bought French (they are the largest EU hemp growers) hemp and had it pulped in Spain. It got made in Scotland, that was a decade ago. I still have a bit left.
So why are there not more? Most hemp businesses can buy processed goods from China, and most companies in the UK are low budget affairs, I believe Sativa is the most well funded and well run. Two brothers in West London, which became the hub of the hemp industry, with them and THTC, myself and my co-authors, and Bobby Pugh who lives and now warehouses his stock in West London. So Hemcore sold seed, dealt with farmers, did some of the middleman bit, and then went bust I understand, though I cannot in all fairness speak for them. We are sort of on other sides of the fence, as the Guardian article pointed out. We talked and got along, but they did their thing and I did mine. Obviously the issue of farmers not getting paid recently has caused a dent in the overall confidence in the hemp industry, and caused others to state that there ought to be more companies that sell seed. I understand there was a company that did, but it was not well funded.
The future holds a bright possibility - as hemp, without human bickering, politics, etc., is a simple crop - 80-100 days, easy to harvest, etc. My suggestion has always been grow it for seed, as there is a proven market (over 12 seed/oil bottlers in the UK, they seem to do well) and then use the stems for paper, then rough textiles.
Why? Because then a proven product can make the money while other products which require experimentation, milling, etc. can be worked out. Years ago BioRegional made field trials and only went for textile hemp, which as I told them, would not work out. The UK is not a milling country. They could, however, have made coarse matting, rugs, etc., and/or paper.
Peter asked about the future of the hemp industry in the UK, and I told him the future is what we make of it. With greater understanding, and a more realistic and gradual approach, we can make of it an industry that will provide much needed jobs in the UK. I recall also mentioning that there was little support from the Labour government! I got more from the Lib Dems, people like Baroness Jenny Tonge for instance, and the Tories - Boris Johnson took my book and even sent a copy to his illustrious dad, Stanley. Are the Tories going to get in and grow more hemp? I hope so, but we will see. Some of the BBC's questions remain to be answered.
Friday, December 19, 2008
ANARCHY IN THE UK
This weekend a friend is staying with me in London before he heads out to Stansted aeroport to catch a flight to Estonia. However, he is taking a chance of having his holidays ruined by spoilt brat rich kids and hooligans who like to get attention by protesting, even when their protest is just ruining people's travels plans. Earlier this month the aptly named Plane Stupid brought 57 people to break the law at Stansted, and brought in turn 52 flights to a standstill. The BBC joked that this was unproductive, as it only takes one person with a bottle of water or other mundane item to bring on a security alert; if Plane Stupid wanted to really wreak havoc, they ought to get jobs as baggage handlers, the presenters joked.
Some questions that arise are: where are the undercover moles to tip off the authorities when Tamsin Omond decides to pull these attention getting stunts and mess up people's travel? Does MI5 or Special Branch not have an eye on these idiots? How were they so easily able to breach aeroport security in this age of uber security?
Tamsin Omond, the scion of one of the richest land owning families in England, seems able to disrupt other people's lives at her whim. And to make it worse, she has the support of the perverts at St. Mary's Church in Primrose Hill, where she has been made church administrator - despite concerns that she is into young girls. But this is the Church of England, where the likes of George Glover, a vicar friend of Tony Blair, rape 11-year-olds, so concerns about this rich brat grooming young girls for her bondage games go unheard. The local curate himself told me that the Bible is not what they go by in that church, so what is their law? Anarchy? Plutocracy?
So no surprise that basic science and the law of the land are not listened to by the Tamsin Omond crowd - do not expect them to wear hemp or use hemp based diesel or ethanol - these are not just attention getting stunts, they are real moves that are based on scientific facts. Hemp activists do not get the attention Plane Stupid does - we do not disrupt aeroports or disrespect the house of worship of any faith.
Real environmental activism does not need to be drama; it is best to have millions of people calmly and methodically working on real objectives. Stay clear of these clowns. Support your local hemp shops, or use a hemp bag next time you shop. By the way, I love doing this, I still have the one I got from Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop almost two years ago, the one that says: "Real Eco Bags are made from Hemp." This turns heads everywhere, from Bond Street to Primrose Hill, and people get the message without being stranded at an aeroport by selfish brats.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
TAMIL WEAVER NEEDS OUR SUPPORT
Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop emailed me a story about an award winning Indian weaver who is in trouble. Despite his being in the Guinness Book of Records for using the most number of natural fibres in a single woven yarn, the crippling economic times have gotten to him too, and he is under threat of eviction. His creations have included hemp, jute, viscose, banana, bamboo, pineapple, mesta, waterweeds, hessian, sisal and linen. Glad to see cotton is not on that list!
C Sekhar is his name. He is President of the Anakaputhur Jute Weavers' Association. Times are hard in his profession, recently six suicides have created a mood of despair. We can help him out! But as usual, lots of talk and no action - as he notes: "I have met big names, but could never benefit from their promises, which remain unfulfilled."
Next year is the Year of Natural Fibres. In anticipation of it, let's extend our hand to this man and get him back in the chips. It is people like him with experience we need to support, not idle dopers and trendy eco-wanna-bes who make lots of money exploiting cotton.
Friday, September 05, 2008
NOTES FROM THE
SEPTEMBER o8 ISSUE
OF THE ECOLOGIST
This month the Ecologist hails hemp, and much as I would like to start, and end with that, there are quite a number of other worthy articles that were more than just a good read. The first to catch my eye was a short piece on how the government has actively tried to play down the launch of ground-breaking legislation that could give local communities a direct say in how they are governed. The Sustainable Communities Act of 2007 was not even given a press release on the day it received royal assent. Sometimes the only way to get the government to work is to take it to court, and this is the subject of another short piece on Georgina Downs, who is doing just that. She is famous in the UK for acting against pesticide spraying. It seems that the French, however, are a bit ahead in terms of getting the government to act, as Sarkozy has launched the Mediterranean Solar Power Plan, which will set up mirrors to reflect sunlight into tanks that will heat water to drive turbines. This is a very efficient device, it loses only three percent of its energy in transport every 1,000 km. Even though this might not work for more northern nations, it would help these nations as the demand for other forms of energy would decrease, and we could have cheaper petrol.
Hardly any magazine is without some coverage of the US presidential race, the Ecologist's contribution to this is a piece by Joss Garman who debunks the green claims of McCain. Not that anyone thought he was that green to begin with. Last time this year Mark Anslow interviewed the US Green presidential candidate, Cynthia Mckinney, who needs no fig leaf to be green - she was in fact cooking up hemp porridge when he arrived. Obama seems to be Garman's choice, and I can only roll my eyes thinking about the damage this political neophyte would do in every way to the nation and the world. I do not look forward to an Obamanation or a McCainnation.
Another issue with US overtones is peak oil, which Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything, weighs in on. "Reducing oil dependency is seen as a matter of economic survival", he asserts. Tell that to the Obama and McCain.
Pat Thomas, the editor, spills the beans on soya. This plant is a monster, but like cotton, it has a devout following and criticising it is frowned upon. The people who promote it all wear green fig leaves and hang out at vegan fairs and left wing rallies, so they must be really good people, right? No way. They are exploiting a certain image and the good intentions of their fellow vegans to sell them a crop that is for the most part GM modified and full of phytates which block the uptake of essential minerals in the intestines. In addition, it inhibits enzymes, messes with our red blood cells, contains isoflavones which can disrupt homone function and often contains aluminium as the acid wash/alkaline wash processes used takes place in aluminium pots which leech this metal into the soya. Yummie! But try to tell that to the vegan high priests who are turning the temple into a market place. Oh, and one more thing, the soya cultivation is destroying the rain forest. But stopping zealots with facts is just about impossible. I will try on Sunday, 7 September when I talk at the Vegan Fest in Kensington, but I may just get thrown out. The money changers like to keep the show going and inconvenient fact finders are brushed aside.
A few pages down there is another article on the US, this one about the nation at war, with moths. It seems just like a deja vu; California is spraying tons of harmful pesticides made by a pesticide company that gave lots of money to the powers that be. Schwarzenegger and his team are making money this time. Where is his green fig leaf? Surely not to be found in a hemp field, as he vetoed the state hemp initiatives twice. Since hemp is a crop that does not use a lot of pesticides, maybe it was in the financial interests of these companies. This article, by Clare Robinson, is a must read for anyone in that state. It will go much further than any by the LA Times etc.
Bringing this back to the UK, an excellent piece on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) which are proving themselves to be cost efficient. Ed Hamer, the author, is himself a farmer in Devon. There is also mention of the certification process, which has been a somewhat of a hoax, or another way to raise money by self appointed green gurus who take lots of cash to fly around the world and stay in luxury hotels. In reality this excludes a lot of very deserving small businesses and favours those who pay thousands for their kosher certificate. Another UKcentric piece takes us to Sussex, where Louise Amos revives the art of 'close shepherding', which has the advantage of reviving eroded heathland.
And then on to hemp...with an essay by Laura Sevier. She begins by telling us how she has the "Real Eco Bags are Made from Hemp" 100% organic hemp bag with her everywhere she goes, so this woman is no mercenary freelancer just trying to fill up pages. She then goes on to give the basic information, on which there is no need to enter at large upon here, and then onto a number f UK based companies. Although the article tends to focus a bit too much on BioRegional, which is not in the hemp business and did not produce much, if at all, from their fields, much due to a lack of having researched the subject, it deserves much credit for having mention of a number of the more productive enterprises in the field of hemp, such as House of Hemp, which produces some really colourful and tactile womens apparel. Too many reporters go for the hemp as sackcloth story and get it all wrong. And another fault of reporters is to shy away from the 'activist' brigade in hemp. Were it not for the 'activists' hemp would not even be legal in the UK, and there would be no story. At present Henry Braham, a wealthy Londoner who drives a large 4x4, is trying to cash in on hemp and has made it known that he only wants a certain mainstream type of blogger and reporter - he has specifically discriminated against those who are 'too political'; or, perhaps, those who know a thing or two about hemp and would ask him inconvenient question like what kind of defoliant he uses on his plants and if the seeds are hot or cold pressed. He is NOT mentioned in the Ecologist article, despite his wealth, or the fact that he has his oil in Tesco (not a fact to be proud of). But one might argue he is green indeed; or at least his 4x4 is, a fact pointed out with comic effect in the 2004 Telegraph.
It's good to see a journalist avoid these flashy wide boys and give credit where credit is due. The people Sevier features have all made real contributions to the industry, including Bobby Pugh of the Hemp Shop, who designed the aforementioned hemp bag (see related posts on this site by clicking on tags for Anya Hindmarch, hemp bag). A number of hemp businesses are featured in a photo essay which includes: The Hemp Trading Co., Green Stationery, The Hemp Store, The Hemp Shop, Braintree, Sativa Bags, Pukka Herbs, Hemp Garden, Innocent Oils, The Natural Store, Howies, Enamore, Inbi-Hemp, Green Fibres, Whitaker Publising, and Green Kickers.
If I might make some small criticism of the article, it would be to note that the assertion "hemp...needs to be laid on the ground to allow the natural fungi and bacteria to loosen and separate the bast fibres from the woody core..." is misleading. Sevier is quoting BioRegional a few lines down, and I assume this comes from them? Hemp is much more suited to other forms of retting, and again, such discussion can be found on this blog. Nice people that they are, hemp is not their field, though they raised some fields of hemp once (which they have not done much with). It all seems to have gone to Katherine Hamnett who made a rather, may I say, uninspired jacket out of it all and has done nothing with it since. Flashy, but not what we need. I say the activists, anoraks and real scientists who spend their time perfecting the hemp movement are what we need, not 4x4 driving media types and cotton loving fashionistas.
We do need real media coverage, and may I say the Ecologist and Laura Sevier get my vote here. Not for nothing are they known as the leading environmental magazine. The Goldsmiths and their crew have worked hard over the years to bring us cutting edge and very accurate articles. They cover ground which others fear to tread. This is real journalism, and we'd all like to see more of it. Thank you Ecologist for all your support over the years, we hope to see more articles on hemp, many of us who have read this present one are hoping that the next one will be on hemp food.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
WHAT THE YANKS CAN'T DO,
THE CANADIANS CAN
Still illegal in the US is the crop that was once the most traded commodity in the world. Farmers are forced to grow more water intensive crops such as cotton and use lots of chemicals on it and other pesticide loving plants.
Cross the border and you will find lots of hemp, and plates like the one in the photo. Business is booming! For instance, Roger Snow of Rocky Mountain Grain Products is doing so much he sent me a whole box, with 7 bins of hemp hearts and 14 hemp chocolate bars. He has some 10,000 acres under cultivation. He and others, such as Nick Smirnow of Still Eagle, are also selling copies of Hemp for Victory, part of which is printed on hemp paper (with a nice hemp leaf watermark to boot, and a foreword by Woody Harrelson).
Cannabis sativa is legal all over the EU, and in Australia and New Zealand. In fact, just about all of the English speaking world! China has just about a monopoly on hemp textiles though, as it is where the infrastructure exists for retting and milling, but Canadians have been quietly researching a way to develop this for themselves in the future. If they do, they will join China, Romania, Italy, Korea and Nepal as hemp textile producers. Romanian and Nepalese hemp is usually rough in comparison to Chinese, but recently some Korean hemp was brought to the UK that was, as Bobby Pugh notes, as fine as silk. However, it is only exported in large quantities, and not made into clothing in Korea. Italian hemp may be the finest available, used by both Girgio Armani and Jilly Cholmondeley; the latter sells 100% hemp bedsheets, currently in stock at Eco in Chiswick. But even the Armani could be finer; hemp was once spun as fine lace.
The improvement in quality is a challenge to the hemp world, and it may well be the Canadians who crack it. Something for Bush to think about.
Friday, February 15, 2008
KOSHER PAPER
Just got the invite from Eco, and though it was not on hemp paper, it was certainly unique: elephant dung. The pachyderm scat is my pass to a great night of meeting fellow environmentalists and the press.
Speaking of paper, Zac Goldsmith replied to the petition several of us signed asking for the involvement of the Ecologist. Zac recognised the Treefree paper we used, made by John Hanson, who knows his uncle well.
My own collection of hemp paper was added to recently by a few sheets of handmade paper from South Dakota, made by the Lakota Indians, the folks who want their land back from the settlers who grabbed it a century or so ago. Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop emailed me to tell me Wookey Hole, a specialy paper company in the UK, is set to close, so I am running out to order any of their remaining stock of hemp paper.
When I get time I will then collate them as swatches in a book on hemp paper. And if I get a large enough living room, I will put in an elephant and feed it hemp. Their stomachs are natural paper pulpers. The dried dung is then pulped and made into sheets, the cellulose having been treated already in the digestion process. Of course, I'll have to get permission from my landlord to have pets.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
REVIEW OF ECO CHICThe last review was not that positive, scathing might have been the word, and I am afraid this one is not going to be laudatory. However, Matilda Lee does go a lot further than the hapless Tamsin Blanchard - she has an index and cites her sources, which gives this some credibility.
Ms. Lee works at the Ecologist, which is a much more serious publication than the Independent, where Blanchard toiled away watching catwalks and size zero models. The former publication is very well researched, and went to the trouble to seek me out last year to give me a half page colour advert for the hemp eco bag - free! They were not just a bunch of mercenaries, but genuinely committed eco-journalists. At one time, they even printed part of an issue on John Hanson's Treefree hemp paper.
Their ethos does not seem to have rubbed off on Ms. Lee however. Nor, I take it, has she taken on board any of what I had to say when I had a conversation with her about hemp - she basically snubbed her nose at it and seemed offended - many Americans working in the eco movement do not really want any competition for US based businesses, so they serve as gatekeepers; Lee is from the Homeland, which does not even allow its citizens to grow hemp at all.
Mention of hemp in her book is limited, not surprising when Katherine Hamnett writes the foreword. Hamnett was exposed to hemp but decided to promote environmentally destructive cotton instead, now raising organic cotton which depletes the water in third world countries, even more so than non-organic cotton. Discussion of hemp is limited to pp. 122, 125-7, 186 & 210. All of this does start with a positive note, as Lee states that a UK hemp industry would decrease the transport of fabric to the UK. This statement, however, demands more information supplied, as the move to initiate a UK hemp textile industry is not an easy one. Further discussion of the UK hemp industry on pp. 125-127 fails to mention the use of hemp seed in the statistics, and then we are led to believe that BioRegional is in a project with Hemcore to cultivate hemp for fabric on 1,214 hectares - which would be, by Lee's previous data, 60+% of the total UK harvest. There is also the statement that there is no mill in the UK with experience with spinning, knitting or weaving hemp - again - Lee needs to do more checking. Huddersfield is mentioned as a place for a future BioRegional project, but could well have been given space for the very beautiful hemp fabrics being created there by Katie Knill, who for some reason was not at all consulted in this book. Get your facts right! Going back to BioRegional, they did indeed run field trials, twice in the last 10 years, but each trial involved 10 acres or so, and neither has produced much fibre. Let me here shed some light on this - I came along to view the second field trial, and saw that they really were not getting this together - so I asked if they had read any books about retting and production of fibre. They then just shrugged their shoulders, and I suspect that the reading list I gave them has been thrown away. They are far from cultivating 1,214 acres of anything, and far from producing fibre, though their efforts did not go completely in vain, they produced research reports, one of which was written up in the Journal of Industrial Hemp. Lee does not appear to have read any of this. Sadly, what happens is that misinformation gets repeated and repeated, and I will no doubt be hearing more and more of this airy fairy tale, repeated with great authority as people take Lee and some clap happy fashion editors as gospel.
I do like Lee's choice of words on occasion, she does succeed in making me laugh, as when she asserts: "...there is an issue of contaminating the spinning mills with hemp fibres."
The last mention of hemp is on p. 210, where she starts off by mentioning the Anya Hindmarch bag, along with the Onya bag - which she perhaps fails to realise is plastic. No mention of the eco hemp bag that her magazine so graciously promoted for me - she did not have far to go to find out about this one!
Another aspect of her book that is poorly researched is the resouce guide, she omits such vendors as The Hemp Shop, Sativa, Minawear, GeoMio. Omission of The Hemp Shop in particular shows a callous lack of regard for the history of the eco movement - it has been around the longest of any existing hemp shops in the UK and the proprietor, Bobby Pugh, not only was a founder of the hemp movement here but was also a hemp farmer; it was he who manufactured the hemp eco bags that the Ecologist promoted gratis as a real gesture of their stance on the environment. But I guess Lee was out of the office that month.
On the way are two more books in this genre, including one with the same main title as Lee's, and the way things are going, I do not expect to be writing ecstatic praise. The trouble with the eco movement is that there is no end of celebrities and self promoting fools, but those who do the research are often ignored, and this may have something to do with the budget of the cotton industry. The eco movement is much like an army where none of the recruits want to do basic training, but are eager to shoot off weapons in all directions. I recommend that Lee go back to boot camp and take agriculture 101 and science 101 before she writes a book on textiles.
Monday, July 23, 2007
HEMP IN NEW YORK
This month hemp has been making news in New York City. After Anya Hindmarch sold her bags to lots of people lined up outside of Whole Foods, a hemp bag was seen on the shoulders of some women in New York, and it casually stated: "REAL ECO BAGS ARE MADE FROM HEMP". Having the real thing, none of these ladies wasted any time on the line for the Anya bag. Ironically, people buying the Anya bag, supposedly to to something green, were asking the shop for plastic bags to put them in. Then they went and sold them on Ebay. A limited edition of how many million? The REAL ECO BAG was made in an edition of less than 200, and sold exclusively to Ecologist and Positive News readers. John Vidal, environment editor of the Guardian, suggested (jokingly) we send one to Posh, but sorry ma'am, we ran out. Next time we do a run we'll keep you in mind...
On Saturday, 21 July, the New York Times put a story on the front page about the struggle for hemp in North Dakota. NORML posted it on their site in its entirety, save for the photo, click here to view. It is a well written piece, the author, Monica Davey, obviously took the time to get the facts. Technical details and irony give her piece the character of a good front page piece, and I would hope that more pieces like this appear in the press.
The bag on the shoulder of this young woman was made from Romanian hemp, 100% organic, and manufactured in the UK by Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop. It and similar bags will be carried by Minawear in the US. Hopefully, however, the hemp can be made in the USA and grown in the USA. American farmers are getting sick of the DEA and its red tape, and some of them, like Dave Monson, are taking the government to court.
Later next month, on 21-23 August, there will be a public event in support of hemp called Lakota Hemp Days, click here to be taken to site. While that event promises to much of a young, music driven, 'leftie' event, Dave Monson and other hemp activists are very much 'right-wingers'. What we are seeing is that hemp rises above politics, and has broad support. Americans really want a profitable crop that does not require pesticides, and as hemp can be used for food, paper, textiles, medicine and energy, there is great demand for it.
Friday, April 20, 2007
DRESSED TO KILL
[Image right of author with Bobby Pugh of The Hemp Shop, hanging out at The Body Shop in Knightsbridge, just before picketing the Anya Hindmarch shop. Photo by Chris Sanders, whose posts on the subject can be found at www.schmoontherun.blogspot.com on March 23]
In Little Shop of Horrors, the main character is a plant who grows and grows and insists on being fed. "Feed me Seymour", it bleats to the young shop assistant. Nerdy young Seymour obeys.
Many in the world today are obeying the orders from an overgrown pest, the cotton industry. It uses 50% of the world's pesticides, and by growing Glossypium ubiquitously, creates a dangerous monocrop situation where pests thrive. But what may be worse, and what cannot be cured by ill-informed do-gooders trying to revamp cotton's image by offering us organic cotton (along with Kosher pork chops...), is the fact that cotton is thirsty and consumes vast amounts of water; the Aral Sea is now half the size it was in the 1960s, the Indus is in danger, and cotton crops in Australia simply fail, after selfishly using up all the water around.
On 25 April cotton bags, and not even organic cotton bags, will go on sale at Sainsburys all over the UK. The production of these bags has helped to kill many people, according to Katherine Hamnett, some 142,000 Indians die or fall prey to diseases brought on by cotton culture every year. But who cares when you have the press on your side? These people are as idealistic as the National Socialist Party, and they do not want facts. Make them look cool and they'll not care that they are fools, or that their cotton goods are brough in blood. At the Natural Products Show at London's Olympia this Monday, there were the preachers of cotton all over the place, all beaming with joy at the fact that they are feeding and watering this monster plant. They were as naked as the Emperor, and even the rather large cotton leaf could not hide their ignorance, or their greed.
Why are they not campaigning for hemp, jute, bamboo or ramie? Bags, for instance, do not need to be soft and tactile, they need to have the strong fibres of hemp or jute. But to answer the question, let's look at the money involved. The cotton industry can pump millions into the press whores who then go out and swoon for the crop that is turning the Aral Sea and the Indus into dry beds. They will write their articles about cotton and never go live anywhere near these waterways. High and dry they will be, but somewhere in New York or London.
Join us on April 25 at Camden Sainsburys to protest against the use of cotton for the Anya Hindmarch bags they are selling, for more info contact me at cotingas@hotmail.com
Friday, March 23, 2007
BAGWARS IN LONDON
You can tell a person that they are going down the wrong side of the road, but if they think they are doing a good thing, they may never listen. Not until they see the bus full of people coming right at them do they admit they were wrong, but before that point they huff and puff and call you a mean spirited SOB if you are not along for the ride.
This serves well to illustrate the present state of do-gooders who do not have any idea about botany, agriculture or economics and go out and support in their zeal whatever comes along. This week the latest victim to this syndrome was Anya Hinchard, a posh shop in London where they sold 1,000 cotton bags, and not even organic ones at that. Thanks, Anya, the more cotton we harvest the faster we deplete the rivers and seas that support life, much of which is in the Third World and has never heard of your shop and its do-gooder zeal. They will never read the Change the World for a Fiver book that you sell, for which their trees were chopped down (it does not even claim to be published on recycled paper; it could start by suggesting we use recycled paper and/or hemp paper rather than admonish us to buy more copies of this book, chopping down more trees in turn).
When these people get told by scientists and professionals that they are actually quite wrong, they then scream bloody murder and how could anyone be so mean to them? We're not being mean Anya, we are trying to point out that that cotton kills. If you want to really change the world, you need to change your consultants and get some in-depth understanding about the environment. Stunts in the land of the posh are just that; many may self-righteously scream bloody murder when they are reproved, but that ought not to prevent the facts from being put forward, and the sooner the better, before more people think that wearing cotton which has been farmed with tons of pesticides and quite likely in conditions on a par with the slavery with which it is so associated, is a very cool idea. "Look at us, we are so cool!" is the subconscious mantra, being echoed through the idiot media with their wasteful magazines full of glossy pictures of some celeb wearing apparel and accessories. They make a good living, and the farmers in India, China and dozens of other countries do the dying while you look good and your bank account grows.
In the meantime, working away behind the scenes are those who have really spent the time in the field, literally in the case of the man wearing the hemp bag in the picture, which is incidentally 100% hemp, and organic hemp to boot. Bobby Pugh, who started the hemp movement in the UK. He now runs The Hemp Shop in Brighton, from which he has been selling 100% organic hemp bags for a decade or so. Or Mina Hegaard of Minawear Hemp Clothing, which makes a range of clothing, along with her partner Edie Marrs of GeoMio, both in California.
Another facet of hemp vs. cotton as far as the UK is concerned is that cotton has never been, and basically cannot be grown in the UK, whilst hemp has a long history here and solid organisations such as BioRegional Development Group have been working steadily on research trials with hemp in the UK with a view to reviving a textile industry here. Real jobs with real wages, not stunts done on the back of the oppressed in the Third World.
Feel free to contact me (cotingas@hotmail.com) and get some sound advice before you stray further into the fast lane and I'd be glad to help, but travelling as you are down the wrong side, the only choice I have is to try to get your attention before it's too late.
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