This website is an extension of the book "Hemp for Victory: History and Qualities of the World's Most Useful Plant." [ISBN 0-9549939-0-X, London, Whitaker Publishing, 2006. Ordering information: info@whitakerpublishing.co.uk/www.whitakerpublishing.co.uk] On this site will be found excerpts from the book along with updates, posted in the aim of giving the hemp world the latest information on the growth of the hemp movement.
It's been almost a year since I posted. Sorry for the long hiatus.
Presently I'm in the US, where hemp was first banned for so long, but is now legal
according to federal law, giving states the right to grow it. And many states have opted
to make it legal along with medical and recreational cannabis.
Which two are grown in abundance; while industrial hemp is not much talked about.
The left, which appropriates environmental issues, has been missing in action. The right, which
is accused of being a bunch of nasty, polluting haters, has backed hemp.
The left has also been proven to be full of child molesters, spies, sexual harassers, you name it.
Not that the GOP does not have its share. But the mile long list of lefty Hollywood celebs and their allies, including members of the Clinton and Obama family, makes one wonder why they can make any claim to environmental issues. And none are wearing hemp; save Woody Harrelson, whose name has not appeared on any of the sexual harassment claims. OK, a few others as well; but what did they know and when did they know it? Should we belive Katie Couric and her claims that she knew nothing of Matt Lauer's lewd acts? That his office-cum-dungeon was a complete secret?
I'd believe her more if she was wearing hemp; not cotton. Which is a crop the left loves, reference if you will a previous post about the cottonistas and their show in London. Cotton kills. The left wears it. The left started the Vietnam War, supported slavery, sent back the St. Louis to Hitler, etc etc.
But I did not want to start the year just bashing the left. I spent years trying to work with them, and indeed marched against the Vietnam War in my youth, etc etc. But the left in the US and elsehwhere has proven to be not much more than the party of a certain vegetarian, which promised peace and love while calling itself the socialist workers... of Germany.
So who pick up the plow and sow hemp? Could Mr Trump and his adorable deplorables get the job done? We'll see. For now they are at least producing a pro hemp shirt, on hemp cloth of course, so the GOP is the only party I see working with the issue. And where are the Greens? Again, reference previous posts on this site. Mrs Stein is counting her millions somewhere, which were supposed to be spent getting Trump out of office but which I suspect she spent on petroleum stocks.
More on the hemp shirt shortly, so stay tuned, and feel free to post any comments.
A large part of the hemp story is the press war angle: Hemp was vilified by William Randolp Hearst, a tycoon who had a relationship with Hitler. Today we see that the press likes stories on pot but not so much hemp, which is a much harder story. Easier to cut and paste Kim Kardashian into a doper story and there you go.
The press can be a very dangerous tool; idle hands working for satan, cutting and pasting idiotic stories while ignoring useful ones. Or it could be very good, with the more diligent journalists making a real effort.
As an example of both, we have the David Burke 9 December story in the Daily Mail, which has the most widely read news website in the world. On it, Burke shows us graphic images of babies being tortured. And he tells us that the criminals are from the Myanmar Army.
Not so.
Get your facts straight, or a better journalist, such as Genevieve Roberts of the UK, will out you - as she did on Twitter - showing the false information along with the correction and the response from Mynamar.
The child molesters were in fact Cambodian. But somehow facts do not bother Burke, and the Daily Mail did not issue any apology. If they continue to act with such disrespect, they may have a protest outside their New York offices at 51 Astor Place.
Allowing the press to lie and smear people and entire nations is wrong. As individuals, we need to not just walk on by when someone is getting mugged, ignore the cries of a Kitty Genovese, or act in any other such deplorable way. Real man do not work for CNN (which assaulted me when I tried to present facts to them here in New York; real men don't like facts and try to ignore them or get beligerent).
So let's see if the Daily Mail has any real men on its staff, man enough to issue an apology and follow this up with the real story on the real story in Cambodia.
Jill Stein came to New York today and made more money for her recount project. Which is very good news for companies like Exxon Mobile, Lockheed Martin, etc. She has already $8,500,000 in such firms, so she is a loyal investor. Many in the GOP no doubt approve.
And since she raised over $6,000,000 for the recount of the votes this November in the US, she is going to have a lot more. Which some people think was going to be spent on the recount. In fact that was the premise of her solicitation.
But that is not where the money went. She could have had a recount in Pennsylvania, but she did not want to pay the state fee of $1,000,000 to pay for their workers. Maybe she expected them to do it for free. And keep the money she raised.
Arriving in New York at 10am, she headed for the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, across from which she made her speech. The press was there in great force, but only to listen to her. When I showed them the information about her, they rudely ignored it. They know she has lots of money and makes an easy story just showing up to ask for more money.
Most of the passersby knew that too. While the press was rude, the crowd reached out to me, and when I told them the facts about Stein were easy to check - and FREE - they wanted to know why the journalists were acting like petulant brats. Lots of disgust from both Democrats and Republicans on this. I ridiculed them for hours - and told one fool who wanted only an easy scoop that I could face every single American in the face after having done my bit They acted bored and stupid. They did squirm as I pointed them out, and had to endure my honest criticism for their dishonest and sloppy work.
CNN was especially rude, and this after assaulting me on 9 November when I asked them why they were only reporting one side to the story. I had to threaten them with arrest. CNN treats American with contempt by not telling the whole story, ignoring issues like hemp, Clinton's sexual abuse of Cathy O'Brien, etc.
Other outlets are also full of stupid lazy hacks. Just look at the lack of articles on hemp - compared to the multitude of articles on Kim Kardashian. Or dope. Written by dopes.
So while I am not against a recount, Jill Stein is NOT the person to be trusted with it and lots of money. Who knows what she is really doing with it. And how many fools there are in the Green Party to allow someone with the kind of investment she has to be their candidate.
That said, in case someone wants to accuse me of being some kind of right wing activist, go on this very blog and see how many times I supported Cynthia McKinney when she was the Green Party presidential candidate. A black woman FYI. The press ignored her since she went after Bush, and did not just allow hypocrisy in the Democrat party.
So there. Let's see what Trump will do with the hemp issue, bear in mind that two top Republicans were mor in support than either Greens or Democrats, I am referring to Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both Senators from Kentucky - and let's not forget Ron Paul, retired Congressman from Victoria, Texas, the town in which my sister runs Minawear ( www.minawear.com ).
And of course, I was wearing Minawear hemp clothing - Jill Stein was not. Very few in the Greens really support hemp now with her as their candidate, maybe they smoke dope. Must be to be giving her money.
Yesterday marked the 10 year anniversary of this blog, with a first post about hemp events in London.
725 posts later, it has covered hemp oil analysis, politics, hemp businesses, hemp events, hemp news, hemp books, etc etc and some off-the-topic posts as well.
In that time period hemp awareness has grown, the book "Hemp for Victory" was published, and hemp is now legal in many US states.
We hope that the next two years will bring about hemp manufacturing in the UK and the US on a large scale basis. China presently leads the world in hemp cultivation and production, as it did in 2006. Canada is catching up but is still mainly cultivating hemp for seeds - but a New York businessman named Gardner McBride is set to change that with large amounts of acreage of hemp in Ontario. He sells both seeds and fibre, and is looking to increase the quality of his product with a view to researching more applications with the possibility of growing hemp for textile fibres in the future.
So we'll see...I would expect that in the next two years hemp will advance as much as it did in the last ten. To help that process and get a petition to the White House, you can assist us in that goal by clicking on the 'About Us' page at www.minawear.com
Thank you all for a decade of work. All you comments and emails are appreciated.
One thing we are working on is a 2nd ed. of "Hemp for Victory", and so any new information to add to that book is most welcome. Progess is slow, but steady. Lots more work to be done.
During
Hemp History Week June 6th through the 12th of 2016, hemp activists
will come together to co-create events around the country to
promote education, awareness and activism.
From Hawaii to North Dakota, Vermont, and Kentucky things are heating up for the legalization of hemp farming. So far at least 26 states have successfully introduced hemp legislation and at least 6 are growing test plots.
June 9th at 7 PM in Victoria, TX where Minawear Luxury Hemp Loungewear is based, the Guerrilla Gourmet restaurant will be hosting a Hemp History Week event. See the movie Bringing It Home
about the modern hemp industry while sampling Chef James Canter's hemp
menu items. At 7:15 join the Skype conversation with the creator of the
Cannabis Car, Bruce Dietzen.
Along with free product samples from Manitoba Harvest, and Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, attendees will also be eligible for a chance to win a copy of Hemp for Victory,
browse the hemp library, check out other hemp uses and products, and
shop one of a kind tie dyes from Minawear Luxury Hemp Loungewear.
The best way to support the legalization of hemp farming in the United States is to purchase and use hemp products as often as you can, and tell every one you know about this plant and all of it's 25,000 applications.
We will discuss the current legislature while making available several petitions to sign.
Participate in Hemp History Week by creating your own event, educating yourselves, and using hemp in one of it's 25,000 applications in your every day lives!
Guerrilla Gourmet
311 E. Constitution St. Victoria, TX
June 9th, 2016
7 PM to 10 PM
The swashbuckling Tasmanian thespian Errol Flynn became a subject of intense study lately, through some very complex, let's way weird, circumstances. While dealing in collectibles in New York, I came across a trove of letters written to Steven Lovett Jones, a designer who lived with the Austrian author and TV correspondent Rudolf Stoiber. The letters included details of Stoiber's correspondence with Charles Higham, whose book "Trading with the Enemy" I quoted in Hemp for Victory.
Higham wrote that book after writing a book on Errol Flynn, in which he alleged that Flynn was a nazi or nazi sympathiser, much of his thesis based on the fact that Flynn spent much time with a Dr Hermann Erben, actually an Austiran Jew who was also a nazi party member..and alleged Abwehr spy.
While Higham is a highly respected researcher, his book on Flynn was debunked extensively, and it appears that not only was Flynn not any kind of nazi sympathiser, but that Erben was quite possibly a double agent infiltrating the Abwehr for the OSS, and that he later worked for the CIA and possibly Mossad; in Saudi Arabia he was denounced by a former nazi, against whom he had tesitfied in China, and arrested as a spy for Israel. Ironically, his wife did not know he was Jewish and told the interrogators she had no Jewish firiends or relatives!
The plot is thick and murky and I dare not even attempt to go further with all the details...maybe I will write about it later in an article or even a book...just one more juicy detail will I drop here, Erben was given a job by GOP heavy Sterling Cole in 1974, he went to work for Gerald Bull in Barbados, Bull was later supplying weapons to Saddam Hussein, and in 1990 someone put a bullet to his head in Brussels. Cole, BTW, is claimed in a note by Higham to have hired Ilse Bohrmann at US taxpayer expence - she is the daughter of Martin Bohrmann, killed at the expence of the Russian taxpayer when Russian tanks opened fire on him as he tried to escape Berlin in 1945.
So quite possibly I will be posting more here. An unpuslished manuscript by Erben's wife with notes in Higham's hand is most interesting and incriminates the CIA.
So I had cause to go back and look in my book what quotes from Higham were used. They all appear on p. 65, endnotes 43,44,45, and 46. Here is wrote that required his research:
"Du Pont, financed by the Mellon Bank, had acquired GM, which was then placed under Irenee du Pont. As chairman, he led GM to new strengths, not only in his charismatic speeches about a 'race of supermen', but in reaching new sales, many to the Nazi war machine. The workers, however, were not included in many of Irenee's ideas. Rather, they came under atack, were spied upon, beaten, tortured, and killed. Obsessed by Hitler's principles, he turned them on Americans, and such organisations as the American Liberty League (ALL), the Black Legion (BL) and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) were to play a hand in suppressing labour; terrorist organisations sponsored by 'patriots'. For ALL. veteran's bonuses were an extravagance, whilst taxes for pensions and the unemployed were attacked. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to clash with the du Ponts over this organisation, stating that it : "ganged up against people's liberties." Irenee had founded the league with Lammot and Pierre, and other anti-African-American and anti-Semitic organisations were to follow. Irenee also paid $1,000,000 for gas equipped storm troops to sweep through plants and beat up those who were not in line; moreover, the board kept personal links to Hitler, some signing an agreement of total commitment to the Nazi cause, vowing to stamp out Jewish influence in America. When the Nazis invaded France, James D. Mooney, GM's chief ofd European operations, went to New York to have champagne and celebrate, renting a suite in the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue specially for the occasion."
So there is good Higham and bad Higham. Stoiber in his letters at the time (ca. 1980) wrote that Higham had fabricated some of the accounts, and some suggest that Higham had been spurned in his sexual advances as a young man by Flynn so sought revenge in his book. Who knows.
I will also be posting some information on an Errol Flynn site run by David DeWitt who knows his family and friends, and hope to help set the records straight. There are over 100 letters in my possession plus other documents in this story, so stay tuned...
As a hemp blog, this is certainly bound to be confused with, and share some attention with, drug sites. Hemp is, after all, Cannabis sativa, perhaps the world's most used drug, with a wide range of applications medicinally and many varieties of hash and marijuana.
However, I happen to be a drug free person; and I am also a victim of drug related violence, when here in Manhattan I was held down and stabbed on East 23rd Street at the notorious Kenmore Hotel, which was later taken over, with some assistance on my part, by local, state and federal law enforcement.
Enigma thus casts its shadow over my work, with my hand forced to deal with a wide range of issues and characters, including marijuana. And much as I endorse making both industrial hemp and marijuana legal, I am not about to support in any way drug addiction or the sick, violent world of drug dealing.
As a victim of violent drug dealers, I am disgusted by the recent article in Rolling Stone in which not only a drug dealer, but a terrorist who has killed American citizens while living in the lap of luxury from his ill gotten gains, is interviewed by Sean Penn. This self serving thespian sees no duty to turn in a criminal; he gains attention and money from his chat with the lowlife, and does not take into account the deaths of his fellow American, many of them babies and children, who die each year due to the greed of drug dealers.
In some countries what he has done is illegal. It is immoral anywhere. The only interaction with El Chapo should be to make an arrest, such as I performed on drug dealers here in Manhattan, after they came to my attention by slashing the face of a former Marine. Navy man that I am, I did not see fit to let this go. And it did not have to be a fellow serviceman who was their victim; I feel the same obligation to anyone, including babies and children, and that is the reality that Penn and Rolling Stone seem to lack awareness of. In the world of Hollywood and hip mags, drugs are just par for the course or even way cool.
They are not. Drugs kill, drugs destroy lives, and drugs are a MAJOR part of the economic woes in America today. But noting such issues and caring for them is NOT cool in some circles; in fact, it can get you sneered at. Rolling Stone has to learn to draw the line. It does not need to give the perception of glamorizing drug dealers, terrorists and fools to remain hip. I count myself among its readers, partly for the music angle, and partly for works by veteran journalists such as Matt Taibbi. But I am in the mood to boycott this publication and call upon everyone in America to do the same.
A tough line against drugs and any parties promoting drugs or making them seem cool is what is needed. But before I call a boycott - standing outside their 6th Avenue midtown offices with posters and sign up sheets, I would like to talk to them and work on remedy.
If they are man enough to meet with me, we can work this out. If not, and I end up 'talking to the hand' with unanswered emails and labyrinth like phone systems to waste my time, then I am left no choice but to get in their face, like I did when drug dealers got out of line.
I am a man. A man stands up for real issues and meets the needs in his society. Talking to El Chapo may be 'way cool' and help to sell magazines, but it is not how to meets no need. Arresting him and having information on his whereabouts is; and that part took real men, not hipster actors.
Real men, in fact, died performing that, while actors went to the bank and partied, seeking the attention they did not deserve; and Rolling Stone was a vehicle for them to grab this attention.
Enough already. Rolling Stone will be hearing from me, with an amicable remedy in hand.
Part of which will be not about what they published; which, as one politician succinctly said is grotesque, but about the conspicuous absence of any major article on C. sativa as hemp. That is not just a cool issue, but one which affects the US economy. Hemp gives farmers an easy to cultivate crop, producing a raw material that was used, incidentally, in the making of the first American flag. Let's hope that Rolling Stone did not run short on resources giving Penn and his pal the limelight, but that they are able to allocate time and funds to a seminal piece about something that has place in America's past, present and future.
Or would that just not be their kind of cool?
The image above is of Kirstin Bohnert, Katie Moyer and Alyssa Faith Erickson of the KY Hempsters, checking out the hemp in a Kentucky hemp field; Minawear is the site that hosted the petition to make hemp legal a few years ago. We still need signatures so if anyone cares, go to www.minawear.com and check out the About Us page and there you go!
STUYVESANT, N.Y. — It started with Hurricane Katrina: the flooded houses in New Orleans festering with mold, many uninhabitable to this day. Then came the earthquake in Haiti: thousands dead, crushed by homes that should have been their sanctuaries.
James Savage, then a Wall Street analyst living on Central Park West, grew disturbed about the conditions he saw on television and in the newspapers.
“There has to be something better we can do than this,” he recalled thinking last week as he sat at the kitchen table inside his new home here on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River 120 miles north of New York City.
The solution he has come up with is not some space-age polymer or recycled composite but a material that has been in use for millenniums, though it is more often demonized than venerated on these shores.
“Who knew hemp would be the answer to what we were looking for?” said Mr. Savage, who started a company to create building materials derived from cannabis.
Now that the forbidden plant is enjoying mainstream acceptance, Mr. Savage is hoping to put hemp to use not in joints but between joists. His first project has been his own 1850s farmhouse, though he says he believes hemp-based building materials can transform both agriculture and construction throughout New York.
Photo
Hemp chips, from the balsalike interior of the cannabis plant.CreditPreston Schlebusch for The New York Times
While cannabis has had a long history as a fiber used in ropes, sails and paper products — Presidents Washington and Jefferson both grew it — Mr. Savage is among a small number of entrepreneurs who have instead turned to a novel application known as hempcrete.
Hempcrete is made using the woody, balsalike interior of the Cannabis sativa plant (the fiber for textiles comes from the outer portion of the stalk) combined with lime and water. Though it lacks the structural stability its name might suggest, hempcrete does provide natural insulation that is airtight yet breathable and flexible. It is free from toxins, impervious to mold and pests, and virtually fireproof.
“I know, I know, everyone talks about our buildings going up in smoke, but the joke is on them,” Mr. Savage said. In England, some insurers actually provide a discount for hempcrete because of its durability.
And because the material is grown rather than mined, like traditional cement, or manufactured, like fiberglass, it gives new meaning to green building. Mr. Savage envisions a “hemp basket” stretching across New York’s rugged farmlands supplying locally sourced insulation throughout the Northeast.
What hemp is not, as advocates constantly remind people, is a drug.
“You could smoke a telephone pole’s worth of our stuff and still not get high,” said Ken Anderson, whose company, Original Green Distribution, based in Minneapolis, makes a hempcrete marketed as Hempstone.
The strain of plant grown for hempcrete contains no more than 0.3 percent of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. That is compared with 5 to 10 percent found in the hallucinogenic and medicinal varieties.
Photo
Bagged hemp chips in Mr. Savage's basement.CreditPreston Schlebusch for The New York Times
“It’s like the difference between a wolf and a poodle,” Mr. Savage said. “Same species, totally different animal.” Even so, both strains were outlawed starting in the 1930s.
Mr. Savage hardly looks the part of a hemp evangelist. He favors polos to tie-dye T-shirts and drives an Audi sedan.
“Did I smoke grass when I was young?” he said, standing beside a poster for the original Woodstock concert. “Sure, I did, but it wasn’t like I was looking for a way to make money off hemp. It just happened to be the thing with all the attributes we were looking for in a building material.”
He came upon hempcrete through a simple Internet search.
The material was developed in the 1980s in France, though it has roots going back centuries not only to homes as far away as Japan but also to Merovingian bridges in ancient Gaul.
Hempcrete has since caught on across Europe, where hemp cultivation was never criminalized. Hundreds of buildings now use hempcrete, including a seven-story office tower in France, a Marks and Spencer department store in the United Kingdom, and even a home built by Prince Charles.
Though the illicit aspects of hemp may have held it back in this country, marijuana’s growing popularity could finally be helping hemp’s spread. “Some people thought hemp might help get marijuana accepted, but it’s going the other way around,” said Eric Steenstra, executive director of the Hemp Industries Association. “I don’t think you’d see quite the same excitement if we were building with flax or jute.”
Photo
The chips are mixed with lime and turned into a paste that is dried to make hempcrete insulation.CreditPreston Schlebusch for The New York Times
Yet federal regulators remain dubious, with virtually no domestic hemp production. It is legal to use it, but generally not to grow it. The farm bill passed last year began to allow for hemp-farming pilot projects, and while New York and Connecticut have both begun programs, no crops have been planted. At the moment, all raw material must be imported, and last year Canada alone shipped $600 million of hemp to American businesses.
A bigger hurdle may be getting hemp-lined homes past building inspectors.
“If you show them two-by-fours filled with fiberglass, they know what they’re dealing with,” said Tim Callahan, an architect in Asheville, N.C., “but you mention hemp, and they scratch their heads.” He has worked on about a dozen hempcrete structures, including what is thought to be the first home in this country to use hempcrete, built in 2010.
Yet hempcrete presents its own issues, particularly the need for thicker insulation than traditional materials.
Even in Brooklyn, where it would seem a natural fit, hempcrete has been a tough sell for Gennaro Brooks-Church, a contractor who specializes in green building. “When a client is spending $2 million on a brownstone and sinking in another $1.5 million on renovations, you’ll be hard pressed to get them to sacrifice even an inch of space,” he said.
For his part, Mr. Savage was never able to bring his product to Haiti — he blames Haitian fears of United States law enforcement — and an effort in Mali failed because of a 2012 coup. Around that time, the first marijuana decriminalization laws began to pass in the United States, so he turned his focus closer to home.
To foster wider acceptability, Mr. Savage and his three-year-old business, Green Built, which he runs out of his hemp-lined home office, is working toward developing a panelized system. Akin to drywall, it would be easier to market and install than poured hempcrete, he said. And, combining housing trends, he is developing a 400-square-foot “tiny house” made up of two or three circular, shippable hempcrete modules.
His only project so far has been turning his red brick farmhouse into a hempcrete laboratory, where many of the walls have been insulated with it, eliminating his need for air-conditioning.
Mr. Savage said his hemp rooms even smell different, though not the way most people might expect. “It has a freshness to it,” he said.
An article by Gregory Hale in the Courier Journal (Kentucky) tells the sad tale of the destruction of hemp seed as it entered the United States:
A year after Kentucky's agriculture department went to court to get hemp seed released for its research programs, a German exporter's failure to obtain the proper paperwork apparently will lead to the destruction of more than three tons of seed sitting in Chicago.
"That's not what we want, but, unfortunately, that's the situation where we're at," said Adam Watson, the coordinator of industrial hemp programs for the Kentucky ag department. "Snafus happen. ... It's not that we think there was any bad actor involved, but there apparently were mistakes involved."
The paperwork problem will reduce or eliminate the seed for almost a fourth of this year's research projects allowed under the 2014 Farm Bill that sets out federal agriculture policy. Since most of these projects are smaller in nature, the impact on Kentucky's hemp acreage is closer to 5 percent of the crop, Watson said.
The department doesn't directly obtain seed, which is a business transaction between growers and suppliers, but Watson said the department is considering taking a more active role in the future after the problem this year.
Seed for last year's first crop initially was held up over drug law issues, which resulted in a brief court battle, but this year's issue is the result of a German exporter's failure to get a routine agricultural paper called a Phytosanitary Certificate. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's website, the certificate is used to track "the inspection of agricultural products and certifies compliance with plant health standards of importing countries."
"It's not anything special to industrial hemp or even seeds, period," Watson said. The certificate "is very common within the agriculture industry whether you're importing or exporting. It ensures that you don't have plant diseases, animal diseases, noxious weeds, insects, things like that, entering or exiting countries."
The Kentucky department became aware of the problem in late May, Watson said. The USDA already granted an extension to produce the paperwork but, apparently, Germany wouldn't issue the certificate after the fact when the seed already had been shipped to the United States, Watson said.
Watson said the Kentucky agriculture department believes that the USDA and customs officials have done their best to help, "but they're bound by regulations." He said the Drug Enforcement Administration permits that were the issue last year weren't a problem this year.
The amount of seed stuck in Chicago is about 6,600 pounds, which would result in about 100 field acres, Watson said. In all, the Kentucky hemp crop this year is planned to be about 1,700 acres in 38 projects. The seed shipment would serve nine projects.
While some growers won't have this variety of hemp desired for fiber "by and large the impact on the entire program as a whole is very minimal," Watson said. He said the department is looking at finding other sources of seeds for growers who might have none now because of the issue.
Another USDA extension is being sought, Watson said, but it's questionable whether the problem can be fixed even if the extension is granted. The options for federal regulators are destroying the shipment or sending it back — an alternative where the costs likely would outweigh the benefits, Watson said, particularly because the growing season for hemp already is well underway and because of the additional shipping costs.
A USDA spokeswoman was not prepared Thursday to comment on the status of the shipment.
Going forward, Watson said the department is considering being more involved in acquiring seeds and moving up the deadline for proposing hemp projects to the department to give more time for seed, the supply of which is limited according to some reports, to be obtained more easily. The department received 326 applications this year.
"This is the one shipment that didn't make it here this season," Watson said, noting that plants already are out of the ground from other shipments. "We regret that this happened, but the program as a whole is still moving forward."
Just after posting the other day about a hemp planting in Kentucky, this news came in re Oregon, which, sadly, has the ironic fact that it is now the medical marijuana farmers who are an impediment to industrial hemp. How many of the medical marijuana users are for real? And how many are selfish drug addicts? Who might be the real reason hemp is still illegal in most states, rather than the government.
Industrial hemp is off to a slow start, and the Oregon Legislature may throw up more hurdles, but growers are optimistic.
Cliff Thomason’s goal is to be growing 10,000 acres of industrial hemp in five years. But right now he’s dealing with opposition from medical marijuana growers and Oregon legislators.
Thomason is among the first growers licensed by the state to raise hemp, which lacks the THC levels that gets pot smokers high but is valued because it can be used to make a wide variety of food, health and fiber products.
Thomason’s Oregon Hemp Co. has grow operations in Murphy and near Grants Pass, in Southwest Oregon, and he is negotiating to sharecrop space on an organic farm near Scio, in the Willamette Valley.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture has issued 13 hemp licenses, but it’s unclear how many growers have a crop in the ground this summer.
Thomason said growers are hampered by infrastructure and political problems. First, it’s difficult to obtain seed, although Thomason said he has seed from China, Lithuania, Slovakia and Germany. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he said.
The Oregon Legislature is another matter. Medical marijuana growers in Southern Oregon believe pollen from industrial hemp will contaminate their potent pot and reduce THC levels. A bill in the Legislature would force a 5-mile separation between hemp and pot growers.
Hemp growers say that would essentially prohibit them from growing, because so many pot plots fill the area.
Thomason said he’s trying to be a good neighbor by keeping pollen-bearing male hemp plants in greenhouses and transplanting only females outdoors.
“I keep saying that with responsible farming practices, it will regulate itself,” he said.
Thomason described himself as “truly an accidental farmer” who was asked to help find seed and land for the hemp industry because of his real estate background.
“When I did, we formed a company to move the project forward,” he said.
He said his plants are growing rapidly and are intended for the medical market. The German seeds seem to do the best, perhaps because its climate is similar to Oregon’s, he said.
The other licenses issued so far are:
27B Stroke6 Farm, Corvallis; American Hemp Seed Genetics, Salem; Cannalive Organics, Yamhill County; Central Coast Enterprises, Seal Rock; Genesis Media Works, Baker County; Hemp for Victory Gardens, Wilsonville; Hughes Farms LLC, Bend; Integrative Health Source, Corvallis; Mark McKay Farms, St. Paul; Oregon Agriculture Food and Rural Consortium, Eagle Point; Went to Seed LLC., Bend; and Wildhorse Creek Hacienda, Adams.
I was just asked by a friend in Canada about what the hemp movement is doing in the US. Lots of stories about medical marijuana, and that is going state-by-state - about 16 states now have legal cannabis for patients, with varying degrees in the quality of the administration. In 2012 Mina Hegaard - www.minawear.com - started a petition to the White House to make industrial hemp legal again, and soon afterwards the feds did just that, but allowing the states to set their own agenda. So far only two states have made it legal, Colorado and Kentucky. And while a crop of 60 acres was sown in Colorado, in advance of it being legal, and in what may have been the catalyst for the lifting of the ban, there has been little mention of its cultivation elsewhere in the US.
Ironically, not 10 seconds after I replied to the Canute, I saw the following:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. —Locust Grove, the 18th century home of the sister and brother-in-law of George Rogers Clark and William Clark, is growing industrial hemp.
The seeds were planted last week at the site by its gardener, Sarah Sutherland. Locust Grove says the crop was grown by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Locust Grove is participating in the hemp pilot program administered by the Kentucky Agriculture Department and plans a Hemp Festival on Aug. 9.
The festival will feature a Hemp Village, where products may be purchased, a Hemp Cafe with foods made from hemp oil and seeds, rope and paper-making demonstrations and a question-and-answer session with experts about the future of hemp in Kentucky. A World War II-era documentary, "Hemp for Victory," and a new film, "Bringing It Home," will be shown.
Cannabis sativa medicine is getting a much better rap these days, and one Colorado company is even getting it certified kosher at the Orthodox Union in New York. Companies are even doing roadshows, such as Captain Amsterdam, which is in Vegas today to promote cannabis medicine, below are the details: ASD Tradeshow the dates are March 1-4, 2015Las Vegas Convention Center
This is a letter published in the Victoria Advocate on 7 February, 2014, from Mina Hegaard, owner of Minawear, who lives in Victoria:
Editor, the Advocate:
I am a clothing designer here in Victoria, and the main material used in my clothing, Minawear Luxury Hemp Loungewear, is hemp and organic cotton. The reason I only design with hemp and organic cotton is that I believe our environment is in grave danger of becoming severely imbalanced by the overuse of chemicals, which affects humans on many levels - whether it be a rise in illnesses from water contamination or air and soil pollutants.
Unlike conventional cotton that requires one-third of a pound of chemicals per T-shirt, hemp is grown without the use of harmful chemicals, and that is profitable to farmers as well as beneficial to the health of the planet.
Hemp has more than 25,000 applications, including fuel, textiles, building materials, food, paper, batteries and more.
Texas recently introduced a HB 84 (R) to legalize hemp farming on the state level, while H.R. 525, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015, was introduced by Representative Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, on Jan. 21 to allow American farmers to once again grow hemp to the extent that it is allowed under state laws.
Forty-two states have introduced pro-hemp legislation and twenty-eight have passed pro-hemp legislation as a resolution, hemp study bill or other.
In order to legalize growing industrial hemp, we need to first educate ourselves, and then take action. Please visit votehemp.com/write_congress.html and follow the links to find your legislators and send them email letters.
There are also many informative publications available including "Hemp For Victory," a book that my brother wrote about the uses, history, processes and financials of hemp. Woody Harrelson wrote the foreword, and I wrote the textile chapter. See link at minawear.com/shop/general/hemp-for-victory-by-kenyon-gibson.
Thank you for taking the time to educate yourself.
Mina Hegaard, Victoria
Years ago I did an article with The Guardian, but somehow I missed this very telling piece by Guilio Sica, which detailed how the UK government ignored hemp as a biofuel and even downplayed biofuels - which is ridiculous, as biofuels can be sourced from existing farm waste; wheat straw etc. can be turned into alcohol at very low cost and in the process generate local employment. Too many politicians are on the take and it can be said are committing treason by working against national interests.
The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.
What struck me as astonishing about these reports is that they all managed to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol and biodiesel, is environmentally friendlier to produce than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the crops mentioned in the report and can grow in practically any temperate to hot climate leaving the ground in better condition than when it was planted.
That plant is hemp.
Last year, the Conservative MP David Maclean tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been made about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England. Pearson responded:
Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production.
So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing.
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The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it, grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels currently being so roundly criticised by the various official research bodies.
The influential Biodiesel magazine reported last year on the cultivation of hemp as a biofuel and it too could only point to its lack of economic competitiveness (due to its minimal production) as a reason for not seeing it as a viable biofuel. But surely if it was mass-produced, this one drawback could be overcome and its many benefits as an efficient biofuel could be harnessed.
As far as research and implementation of hemp for biofuel, the US is way ahead of Europe and there are a range of websites dedicated to the use of hemp as a fuel for cars.
In the UK, companies such as Hemp Global Solutions have been set up very much with climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions in mind, but there is little, if any, research in this country that has looked into the viability of the hemp plant as a fuel for cars.
So why was there not a single mention of this miracle crop, that, in addition to being able to be used as fuel, can also be used as paper, cloth, converted into plastic and is a rich food source containing high levels of protein?
Hemp is today a hard to get item. The consumer that once purchased items made from it now can get clothes made from cotton, paper made from trees, medicine made from manmade chemicals, and oil sourced from fish livers. Textiles, paper, medicine and edible oils are but a few of the products that hemp provides; it is a simple-to-grow plant that can be cultivated on all continents save the Antarctic. Part of the whole enigma is that hemp is a plant of great varietal variability, lending itself even to experimentation as the great Russian plant geneticist Vavilov proclaimed. Thus it can produce tall slender stems with high cellulose fibre, or it can grow short and branched with many flowers which can contain high levels of THC and other cannabinoids. These compounds make some strains valuable to medicine and also appealing to marijuana smokers; most strains do not provide much in the way of medicine of drugs, but there is such a volume of literature on the marijuana culture that the general public at times associates all hemp with marijuana. There is also a large body of literature on hemp as an industrial plant, spanning centuries.
In the not too distant past, entire nations, empires to wit, depended on its availability; Russia, the chief supplier in the 17th-19th centuries, sold to both the British and the American navies. Britain and America themselves grew at that time no small amount, and both nation's legislators expressed alarm at the rate of expenditure on foreign hemp for their military. The superior quality and price of Russian hemp, however, ensured that Western powers relied on Russia's. Thus it was once the world's most traded commodity and cultivated nearly worldwide not only for its commercial value, but for the fact that many of its products, in addition to rope and sails, were necessary to survival; Thomas Jefferson, for instance, exhorted it be grown for the wealth and defense of the colonies. Over a century after his advice, the United States was eager to cultivate this crop and produced a film in WWII titled "Hemp for Victory." The threat to rope supplies in the Pacific prompted the legislature to make sure that American farmers were able and willing to plant hemp.
With the advent of metal ships running on steam and petroleum sails became almost obsolete, and abaca from the Philippines replaced hempen cordage on modern ships. Despite a dramatic downturn in demand in the maritime industry, this plant continued to be grown into the 20th century, providing a range of products from paper to food. It excelled in both of these categories, as its long and strong fibres interlocked perfectly for long lasting paper (the oldest existing fragment of paper is 2,000 years old and contains hemp) and its Omega 3,6 & 9 rich seeds full of all essential amino acids were excellent for food. Farmers also found the plant not only easy to grow in most countries of the world, but it acted as a natural pesticide (with one US cotton farmer sowing it on one third of his land at a time to rid the soil of pests).
Many changes in the law, however, in the 1930s to the 1960s in the US and other nations made hemp illegal, as these laws mistakenly lumped all forms of Cannabis sativa in with high THC producing strains known as marijuana. A few nations continued to cultivate hemp; mainly China, which today profits from its policy. Western nations have had a reawakening due to activists who struggled to make hemp not only legal but in some countries a subsidized species. These efforts have largely paid off, and there is presently a thriving hemp textile and hemp oil industry.
All of which might bode well for the US, as hemp, which was such a part of its history that the first US flag was made of it, can be grown in all 50 states. However, the present status of hemp is prohibitive, even with the recent ruling at the federal level that states may decide for themselves whether to allow its cultivation. So far, only two states have made cultivation legal: Colorado and Kentucky. Both were largely responsible for the change in the federal law, with farmers in the former sowing 60 acres of hemp in a field before the change; thus challenged, Washington lawmakers saw the gauntlet on the ground and conceded. Soon afterwards, a complex battle in the Kentucky House ensued, perhaps an epic note in American history, with both Republican senators, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, supporting the hemp issue in Washington, while a Democrat worked hard to keep it illegal. The governor promptly signed the bill, allowing the Bluegrass state, which was in the 19th and into the 20th century the hemp-basket of America, to regain its heritage.
While hemp is still illegal to cultivate in 48 states, and not yet produced in any quantity in Colorado or Kentucky, many American businesses manufacture hemp items, the largest sector being the hempseed oil industry, which sources its oil mainly from Canada, where farmers are profiting greatly from America's ban. A number of other firms manufacture hemp clothing, such as Minawear in Texas, which started in 1998 in California when the hemp movement was still rather small. The years of manufacturing hempen apparel by this and other companies has brought hemp to the awareness of the general public and has helped to restore the crop to legality in the US.
Another outfit in the same state working in this field is Canvasland, which makes artist's canvas - which are not only archival quality but true to original material; the use of hemp for canvas is of such longstanding practice that the very word 'canvas' derives from 'cannabis'; canape in Italian, chanvre in French. Hemp was a major crop in many Renaissance countries, including Italy and the Netherlands. Not only was the textile used in art, but also the oil, which is clear and long-lasting. This last mentioned use of hemp is one that is not yet available on a commercial level, but is being researched by artists with a view to only bottling hemp oil as an art supply but also in finding the best variety among the thousands of varieties of hemp for this purpose, with the possibility that in the future it will replace linseed and safflower oils, both of which are prone to some degree of yellowing.
From the innovative to the well established, hemp has many uses, making it an essential part of the economy, as well as being a top choice ecologically, given the fact that it needs less water than cotton and also far less pesticides. Since there is no real reason not to cultivate it, and every reason to do so, it is the challenge of this present generation to reverse the mistakes of our predecessors and restore hemp to its place in our fields and the marketplace, hopefully succeeding and earning the respect of future generations.
Kenyon Gibson
Author of "Hemp for Victory: History & Qualities of the World's Most Useful Plant"
We have been following on this site states' progress in making hemp legal; there has been little progress, despite the federal ban being lifted. Mainly a handful of southern and western states are fighting for their rights. This just in from North Carolina:
Andrew Klein (left), senior in natural resource policy and founder of the Raleigh Hemp Society, and Linda Booker, co-producer and co-director of the documentary, "Bringing It Home," posing behind a display of the many applications of hemp. Raleigh Hemp Society organized the screening in Witherspoon Student Cinema Sunday. The documentary highlights the struggle to get industrial hemp legalized in the US.
Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:27 am | Updated: 12:29 am, Thu Oct 23, 2014.
NC State students are advocating for the legalization of hemp, arguing that the misunderstood dichotomy between hemp and marijuana has inhibited the U.S.A. from receiving the benefits from mass-producing hemp.
The Raleigh Hemp Society screened the award-winning documentary, “Bringing It Home,” which emphasizes the benefits that hemp can have on our society and the struggle to get it legalized in the US on Sunday in the Witherspoon Student Cinema.
About 30 students attended the screening to hear the film’s message that hemp’s benefits are being ignored by American society due to the fundamental mischaracterization that the hemp plant is the same as recreational marijuana.
“You can smoke a field of hemp, and you would die of CO2 poisoning before you got high,” said Andrew Klein, a senior in natural resources policy and administration and founder of the Raleigh Hemp Society. “Hemp and marijuana are both cannabis sativa, but the point is that they are completely different. It’s like comparing a house cat to a lion.”
The documentary presented one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’a (DEA), arguments against hemp, stating recreational marijuana can be hidden among hemp stalks because the plants look similar.
Hemp supporters, however, argue this is unlikely due to the special, climate-controlled conditions needed to produce “smoker’s” marijuana.
Hemp is widely produced in 31 other industrial countries including France, China and the U.K.
The THC content of industrial hemp is 0.3 percent or lower, which, according to the documentary, is too low a level to be psychoactive in the body. It is significantly less than the THC content found in recreational cannabis, which stands at about 40 percent.
Historically, this misconception has been a major factor in hemp’s illegal status in the U.S., dating back to 1970 when President Richard Nixon first declared it a Class I drug along with recreational marijuana and heroin, among others.
While interning for the Virginia Hemp Company this past summer, Klein said he spent a significant amount of time lobbying in Washington D.C. where he ran into the problems with this misconception frequently.
“I talked mostly with staffers, but most agriculture reps said that [the politicians they represent] are anti-marijuana,” Klein said. “This shows that, for many politicians, the fear of politically associating with marijuana keeps them from seeing the benefits of hemp.”
Before it was declared illegal, the U.S. government promoted hemp to help the U.S. win WWII with the “Hemp for Victory” propaganda campaign, which encouraged farmers to produce hemp to make rope, cloth and cordage for military use. Hemp was also the first material ever used to make cloth in 800 B.C. China, according to the documentary.
Klein and his staff members set up a table showing off some of the varied ways that hemp can not only provide a greener alternative to common products but even improve on them. The table had hemp cooking oil, which has more omega-3 than traditional oil, hemp paper, which can be produced four times more efficiently than paper from trees, the different hemp fibers used in clothing, which can be produced with less water than cotton, and raw hemp, which can be made into a concrete substitute.
The use of hemp to make concrete, or “hempcrete,” has particularly interesting prospects for the U.S. as a whole, according to the documentary.
Not only could it provide thousands of new jobs due to building renovations and new building construction, but it can improve quality of life for homeowners.
According to the documentary, hempcrete is a carbon negative material, which means that it actually absorbs CO2 in the air as well as filters out other pollutants. The construction process could also made safer by the use of hempcrete, as it does not require workers to wear masks or gloves because it is nontoxic. Power tools would also be unnecessary when using hemp, which would eliminate loud noise and wires on construction sites.
“Hempcrete wall construction is not complicated, but there is a learning curve in working with low temperatures and wet conditions,” Linda Booker said, co-producer, director and editor of “Bringing It Home.”
When Booker and her co-producer Blaire Johnson began filming in November 2010, Booker was new to the history of hemp.
In 2011, Booker and Johnson attended the Hemp Building Symposium in Granada, Spain where they were able to meet with global hemp business leaders which changed her perspective on this issue.
“I was skeptical like a lot of people,” Booker said. “I realized that we need a good film to educate people about this.”
President Barack Obama signed the Farm Bill in February, which made hemp legal for research and academic uses, which is a step towards legalization. However, hemp is still illegal to grow without a DEA issued permit.
The DEA has only issued three of these permits since 1970, according to the documentary released in 2013.
“Until we take hemp out of the substance one narcotic classification, the DEA will still have jurisdiction over seed imports for research,” Booker said.
Booker said DEA pressure forces higher prices for legal hemp products because they have to be imported.
Andrew Klein said he is working to inform people about hemp close to home.
“The future is working with businesses, farmers and political leaders to formulate policy to help legalize hemp in NC,” Klein said. “The long-term future of the hemp society is to get passionate, intelligent students jobs in the hemp markets.”
