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

 

The Guardian, Tuesday 26 September 2006

 

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

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.

#

PLANE STUPID FLYING LOW

The folks at plane stupid are at it again. Dan Glass made an ass of himself on their behalf late last month when he glued himself to Gordon Brown's sleeve. His congeners in the climate change camp then went to Kingsnorth in Kent to protest a coal powered energy plant, after meeting up at Heathrow, scene of previous anarchy on their part. Granted though, coal power is not ideal, but we cannot have all our eggs in the petrol basket - and that is what we are being forced into by these silly protests. Better some diversity than none, and also better to keep your own citizens employed. Activists on the dole may not grasp the economic concept that if their fellow citizens do not have jobs, they do not get their dole dosh.

They are not the only ones to miss simple concepts. In Recea, Romania Florina Serban was arrested for cannabis after police found hemp plants which she was growing for fibre to be used for carpets. The 71-year-old told the police what she was doing, but they did not listen. The pensioner assserted: "I don't know what cannabis is. For me it's just a plant to make carpets of." The Daily Mail ran the story but ommitted such details, as is usual for the press. Maybe we'll send them a copy of the September issue of the Ecologist in which there will be plenty of information for them to take on board.

In other news, Kim Hough of Australia has been cultivating 'baby hemp'. Years ago I told the hemp world that we ought to harvest hemp when it is young, to see if we can get finer fibres. And voila, here we are. BioRegional, instead of listening, spent obscene amounts of money on field trials in 2005 for mature hemp, and has not produced any clothing from it yet. There are also a number of retting techniques that I hope to experiment with, and between the harvesting time and the retting we are going to see hemp much improved. It does not take that much to come up with these ideas. What holds back progress is the idiot brigade of naysayers and poorly informed protesters who cause confusion in their desire to pull off stupid stunts.

If enough of us keep plowing away on real research, such as can be found in the Ecologist, the Journal of Industrial Hemp, Journal of Natural Fibres, etc., we will be making more than just carpets with coarse Romanian fibre. Expect garments as fine as silk, as earlier authors noted of hemp.

BIOREGIONAL DEVELOPMENT HEMP RESEARCH

In the latest issue (Vol. 11 #2) of the Journal of Industrial Hemp, Sue Riddlestone and Emily Stott, both affiliated with BioRegional Development, and Kim Blackburn and James Brighton of Cranfield University, discuss their research on green decortication. A short preamble gives a history of similar research and then leads into their own work, much of which is based on a hemp crop raised in Battle, East Sussex in 2003. That study was funded by the UK government under the England Development Programme, the European Agricultural Guidance, the Guarantee Fund and OFIC. Support was also given by SEEDA, WWF, Marks and Spencer, The Poldham Puckham Charitable Foundation and The Wyndham Charitable Trust.

The UK company Hemcore grew 1 1/2 acres using Fedora 17 and Chameleon, seeded at the rate of 55kg/ha. From these studies, it was easily seen that Chameleon had a higher fibre content (33.8% vs. 26.1% mean), but a similar hurd content. Chameleon also had a higher number of plants, which were on average smaller. A mean raw moisture content for both was recorded to be 72%. Both varieties yielded more than expected (based on recent reports by Struik/Bocsa and Karus) dry matter, with Chameleon weighing in at 15.1 t/ha and Fedora, 17.2 t/ha, though different accounting and harvesting techniques may have been responsible for this difference.

Other differences noted were the strength of the stems, with Fedora evincing more lignification, and the smell, with Fedora noted for putting forth a strong smelling odour from the oil glands.

Fibrenova assisted in the decortication process, along with Hi-Tech International. Three pilot-scale machines with three different functions which replicate the process of a full-scale harvester were made available.

A second trial was held in New South Wales in 2004, in which different machinery was used, and third hemp variety, CHG, of Chinese stock, was grown by Phil Warner of EcoFibre Ltd in conjunction with Keith Bolton from Southern Cross University. The CHG variety also rendered a lower percentage of fibre than Chameleon.

One aspect of both trials is the high levels of moisture in green hemp (up to 77%), and drying the plants was a large part of the work. Sun drying and wringing out the stems by machine were two methods utilised. One reason for drying the fibre is to reduce the weight for transport, which can add prohibitively to the cost of development.

Since this study, BioRegional has conducted a third trial, in Rochford, Essex, with 10 acres planted with three varieties; however, data from this was not available at the time so this is expected to appear in a subsequent issue.

The UK is at present investigating the use of hemp for many reasons, although the revival of a UK hemp textile industry is a difficult undertaking, especially as the UK has ceased to be a textile producing nation. The majority of hemp textiles are manufactured in China at present. However, there are economic and ecological reasons to pursue this research in other areas, including the development of a hemp industry in troubled regions, such as Afghanistan, where it could well replace the opium poppy.

BioRegional's research is at the cutting edge, and will no doubt be used to a large degree in the near future as the hemp industry worldwide increases. According to Riddlestone and her colleagues, world total consumption of textile fibres stands at ca. 56m tonnes (for 2003), of which cotton accounted for 19.5m tonnes, and polyester staple fiber 9.25m tonnes. Flax production was roughly 250,000 tonnes, and hemp was but 70,000 tonnes.

HEMP ARTICLE BY ANNIE KELLY

Today's Guardian (27 Oct. 2006) has a full page article about hemp. In contrast to so many pieces, it is not another hit and run with clever remarks about cannabis, this one is researched, with a clear effort made to get at the facts. The first source is Bobby Pugh, who one might say is the father of the recent hemp industry revival in the UK, having founded Mother Hemp, The Hemp Shop and Hempiness. He was at one time also a hemp farmer. He is quoted at one point in the article as saying: "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 released into the air, the economies crippled by the cotton industry. All this could have been avoided by using hemp."

The article goes on to discuss the issue with BioRegional, a UK based development company, where Sue Riddlestone, who has been writing on hemp since the mid-1990s, asserts that: "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."

These comments are backed up with research from the Stockholm Institute, which concludes that the ecological footprint of hemp is half that of cotton.

Any article on UK hemp is bound to mention Hemcore, which this does, as that is the company supplying seeds (from a small list of approved low THC varieties) and processing fibre. Hemcore sees construction material as the next big move for hemp, citing the use of hemp bricks in the Adnams brewery in Southwold, Suffolk.

Ian Squire, one of the farmers to whom Hemcore has supplied seed, and who has also worked with BioRegional, talks about the changes in attitude over the last few years, noting that people have mostly wisened up and realise that this is a profitable crop, for which he need only notify the local police station about his field. Some members of the general public, however, perhaps misinformed by a barrage of second rate journalism, still equate hemp with marijuana, of which Squire states: "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 article lists several facts about hemp, such as the use of it in the British navy, the use of hemp fabric dating back to 8000 BC, its use as a cure for tuberculosis in the 1920 and '30s, the nutritional value of the seed (as promoted by Gillian McKeith), Henry Ford's use of hemp ethanol for cars, its use in art both as oil and canvas, and the fact that the US Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper.

Good articles on hemp are few and far between, and as we draw near to the dealine for Gov. Schwarzennegger to sign or veto the hemp bill in California, it is high time for an in-depth one on the hemp industry in that state, where such businesses as Minawear Hemp Clothing and Nutiva

have been operating for years. California's pending legislation is not the only reason to write about hemp however, it is my hope that this issue will be picked up by better journalists all over the globe. Any journalists wishing to get information on the world's most useful plant are invited to contact me at cotingas@hotmail.com.

COTTONISATION OF HEMP

Over the years, BioRegional of the UK has been working with hemp varieties to create a green decorticated, cottonised fibre that will work with the existing machinery in Western Europe. For this they envision cutting fibres to 2mm.

This quest has been going on for centuries, there is a record of such attempts made on hemp and/or flax, published in the Swedish Transactions of 1747, although they were not successful. Further unsuccessful researches were made by: Lady Moira, 1775; Baron Meidingen, 1777; Haag, 1778; Kreutzer, 1801; Globelli, 1803; Stadlter, Haupfer and Segalla,1811; Sokou, 1816; Claussen in 1851. A Col. Jonathan Knowles of the US patented his work on cottonisation after Claussen, and further American attempts were published in 1861, under the auspices of the Fibrila Co. In their book they ominously wrote: "...whether these are of value or not, the public can judge, and time will disclose."

Their work was partly written to give the North a chance to use hemp and flax, and appeared shortly before the Civil War. Perhaps political circumstances were not kind to their enterprise, or maybe it just did not work out, meeting the same fate as their predecessors. 145 years on we are now watching yet another attempt, and this time we hope it will bear fruit.