Interview with Anndrea Hermann

The following is an interview with Anndrea Hermann, one of the most vocal supporters of hemp, involved quite a number of hemp projects including the Hemp Industries Association (president) and VOTEHEMP. She now resides in Canada, but continues to work extensively with US hemp projects.

Q: When did you first get involved with hemp? 

When I was younger I learned about Cannabis and during high school I started writing papers about it. When Jack released his book I got one right away. By the time I got into Univ at Missouri Southern State College my passion for hemp became a dream and now a realityJ

Q: What has the HIA been able to accomplish in the US?

HIA works closely with Vote Hemp to educate and facilitate change in the market place and in federal policy. HIA is kicking off the 4^th annual Hemp History Week a national Education Campaign.

Q: Does it not surprise you a little that the issue is endorsed now more by the GOP
than by the Democrats?

Not really, this is a peoples crop and I guess the GOP get thatJ

Q: Does it ever seem that lefty groups which for years have surprisingly not shown any support
are now jumping on the bandwagon and posting about this issue - might it be that some of this
is simply opportunistic or Johnny-come-lately behaviour?

 

I just think that these groups needed time to learn more about hemp maybe they were unsure of it and needed others do it first. All that matters is that they are supporting it now.

Q: How does the pot issue affect the larger picture of industrial hemp for jobs and the environment?

In Canada we have a fully functioning hemp industry that is not impacted by the pot issue. I can see this happening in the USA also.

Q: What do you think about the current state of monocrop practice in the US, particularly in regards
to cotton, soy and corn, and might the practice monocrop sowing be part of the reason for the decimationof bees which we need to pollinate the crops?

Monocropping is not best management practices for any farm not matter the crop they are growing. I see a general turn away from this due to consumer demands and farmer realizing that being dependent upon chemical and other type inputs are not sustaining the farm or the health of the farm family.

Q: Do you think that there will be trouble if Colorado farmers exercise their right under state law to grow hemp?

There is also a risk of trouble when planting any type of Cannabis in the USA no matter what the state has to say about it. A point will be made and a farmer will end up making it. This is a farming issue at the foremost as without the support of the famer we do not have hemp farming.

Q: Should states challenge the federal government on this issue?

YES

Q: Do you think it is constitutional that there is even  a federal ban on hemp?

The “ban” on hemp in the USA is unconstitutional. It is civil right and can be a matter of national security. 

Article on hemp from Daily Press, Montrose County, Colorado

An article (below map) in the Daily Press by Will Hearst mentions a hemp bill in Montrose County, Colorado which is now under debate. The state has made hemp legal, and some farmers, including Michael Bowman, are thinking of planting in the spring - which may open a pandora's box of legal issues. Montrose Co. is on the west side of the state, as can be seen on the map:


                               

While Montrose County voters opposed Amendment 64 — a recently adopted measure that legalizes the possession, use and retail sale of small amounts of marijuana by adults — state lawmakers now may be opening the door for a potential cash crop for area farmers that is closely related to pot. Hemp, which is against the law to grow, is regarded in some circles as marijuana’s more useful cousin. And if you were to ask state Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, or Jason Lauve of the Industrial Hemp Remediation Pilot Program about he plant, both would cite some reasons local growers soon may consider planting hemp over corn or beans.Lauve was a guest speaker during Don Coram’s Town Hall meeting Saturday at the US Tractor building, and he kept the attention of audience with a variety of facts about the little-known plant.

Minawear at Pecan Street Festival

Minawear will be at the Pecan Street Festival in Austin Texas this weekend, 29/30 September. It is the oldest street fair in the state, and possibly the biggest.
http://www.oldpecanstreetfestival.com/home/
Mina is by the way one of the most established hemp clothing manufacturers in the US. If you miss her in Austin, you can see her on line shop here: www.minawear.com

She happens to live in Victoria, which is in Dr Ron Paul's district, he is a sponsor of the Hemp Farming Bill which would give Americans the rights to grow the plant George Washington grew and which was used in the making of the first American flag. Some people hate America and oppose this. If you're an American, you ought to find out if your congressman is voting for this or against it. And vote him/her in if they do, and out of they don't.

In the future, we hope to see lots of hemp growing in Texas and all over America, replacing the more water hungry crops like cotton and corn which hurt farmers.

ETHANOL FROM STOVER

Finally! An article about making ethanol not from corn kernels, which we eat, but from stover, which is the parts we don't eat. In the New York Times yesterday, 7 July 2011, p. B10, Matthew L. Wald writes about the US Energy Department planning to provide a $105million loan to guarantee the expansion of an ethanol factory in Emmetsburg, Iowa, that intends to make motor fuel from stover. Not yet from hemp, which could be sourced from Canadian growers, but I hope that will follow - along, of course, with hemp in the US - thus providing jobs here.
POET is the company building the new plant, which will produce process 700 tons of biomass daily; currently it only handles one ton. Volume is necessary to make ethanol competitive. POET is not the only company to get a loan, the DoA is lending Coskata, a company backed in part by GM, $250million for a plant in Boligee, Ala., that will also convert household waste. Enerkem, based in Montreal, got a loan of $80million for a plant in Pontotoc, Miss., and Ineos Bio got a loan for $75million for a biorefinery in Vero Beach, Fla.
The increase in such ethanol production will give Americans jobs, reduce dependency on fossil fuels, and drive the price of a gallon.
POET's pilot plant in Scotland, S.D., has been operating since 2008 and converts a ton of corn stover a day into 75-80 gallons of ethanol, which costs today $2.50-3.00 a gallon, about 50cents higher than that produced from edible corn.
The stover is steamed and treated with acid, and then broken down by enzymes into ordinary sugar and a second sugar with one less carbon atom.
POET operates 27 corn based ethanol plants, and hopes to expand. Other companies in the US include Abengoa, from Spain, and Fulcrum Bioenergy from California.
So finally...some really good news. This means that American farmers will have a market for the corn waste parts, and that the energy they use to power their tractors will not come from oil fields across the globe. Of course, the next step is to make hemp legal and use hemp waste for this after growing it for seed.

NEW YORK TIMES LETTERS ON ETHANOL

Of much debate on this blog has been the subject of ethanol, especially following NYT articles. Yesterday, the Fourth of July, a number of people wrote in letters to defend ethanol, among them Bob Dinneen, president and chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, the trade association of the US ethanol industry. He rebuts a Steven Rattner who repeats the claim that using corn for ethanol is to blame for the rise in food prices, noting that while 13 billion gallons of ethanol were produced last year (it is not clear from the letter whether this is just for the US, but it would seem to be), 32.5 million metric tons of feed for cattle, pigs and poultry were produced by the US biofuels industry. He remarks on Rattner's comment that ethanol production increases smog and consumes vast amounts of water - Dinneen notes that ethanol gasoline has reduced smog forming emissions by 25% since 1990, and that a gallon of ethanol uses about the same water as it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline.

Presently, the US ethanol industry employs some 400,00 and contributes $53.6 billion to the GDP, paying $15 in taxes.

Another missive, sent in from Robert Zubrin, author of Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil notes that the argument about ethanol driving up food prices is a red herring - he pegs the price fluctuations to the the changes in the price of a barrel! How right on, and I was happy to see that in print, instead of the thousands of column inches of erroneous figures trying to blame the alternative energy producers for food prices. I hope that more in the press read the letters their readers send in and get their facts right.

And when they do, they just might mention the ethanol producing capabilities of hemp, which is one of, if not the best sources of ethanol.

BURNING OUR FOOD AS THE WORLD STARVES

The New York Times yesterday, in an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, uncovered more about the use of food crops as biofuel. In each and every article there is conspicuous by its absence any discussion of using the cellulose based waste parts of the plants - which are of little use in returning to the soil - as ethanol; for some reason, industry is taking the food right out of our mouths and producing bioethanol from the edible parts of plants - which is backwards, and ought to be addressed. The perception is that by lack of any discussion of this, articles can be used to scare the public away from ethanol and other biofuels - and steer us towards two and only two alternatives: nuclear power and fossil fuels. A recent letter in the NYT recently argued for the former, worded as if these two were the only choices. What both have in common is very rich investors who would like to keep ethanol out of reach.

But why are journalists not working to educate their readers? Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

It can become more of a complex issue than one article can address, as Rosenthal does note by quoting Olivier Dubois, a bioenergy expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome; Dubois notes that is hard to quantify the extent to which the diversions to biofuels have driven up the food prices: "The problem is so complex, so it is hard to come up with sweeping statements like biofuels are good or bad," he informs; yet sweeping statements are what the press likes to make of this issue, along with hype. Biofuel use of grain for non-food uses has risen from 1% to 6% recently, so it hardly equates to the 20 to 40% rises in food prices; which may well be due more to a rise in transport prices and plain old greed, along with some major crop failures in the world recently.

One wonders if the production of bioethanol would not in fact decrease the price of food, as the waste parts of edible plants could be sold thus increasing the yield for the farmer, who could afford to sell the edible parts for less...but this simple fact is conveniently not raised.

And if biofuels were widely produced, the resultant decrease in transport costs would also help decrease food costs...so why are we using so much of the edible parts for this? Thailand recently exported 98% of its cassava crop to China for biofuel development. And the US uses 40% of its maize (corn) for fuel, occasioning a 73% rise in its price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from June t0 December 2010. As far away as Rwanda, the price of this food rose 19%.

The whole thing seems one mess; but why? Look at our leaders and ask: Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

If they were at all serious about biofuels and feeding people, they would legalise hemp in the US - growing if first for the edible seed, and then using the stalks for ethanol.

BIG BUSINESS DOES GOOD

While it may seem that the hemp movement is anti-big business, this has never been a reality, save for a few fringe members. Certainly though a number of large firms have benefitted from selling damaging products and ripping off their workers, and that thread runs through any discussion of hemp, especially the fact that it is illegal to grow in the US. However, big does not mean evil, and I am happy to note the positive side of big business as well. In yesterday's New York Times [Melanie Strom, pp. B1 and B8 of the Science Section] there is a story about PepsiCo working with Mexican farmers to cut out the middlemen and increase their profits. Martin Ramos Torres, of San Gabriel, notes: "In just three years, everything has changed."

It all began as a pilot programme with the company's Sabritas snacks food division, and has now expanded to include 850 farmers. Most of them grow corn and sunflowers.
Another company to do good to its farmers is Danone, which makes a yoghurt product in Bangladesh. And Philips Electronics is helping Africans with little access to the grid by selling low cost solar powered lighting.

So we are happy to promote these companies and support this movement. This is good news for a change!

Now if we could just get major clothing manufactureres to grow hemp...

CORNY STORY IN THE PRESS: FOOD PRICES SET TO ROCKET

The New York Times and other US papers printed a story about the coming food price rise. As it is expressed on the AP newswire, which many churnalists chose to cut and paste, the problem is due to the ethanol trade. The article implies that to make ethanol one uses the kernels, the edible part of the corn (maize). That would not be practical, as ethanol is best produced from the abundant cellulose which is in the leaves, stalk and hobs. Our bodies do not digest this; other animals do.

The articles then go on to point out that corn is used in high fructose corn syrup and corn chips...but does not blame these manufacturers, whose products, unlike ethanol, are not essential. Ethanol is an energy product and is used in cars from Canada to Brazil; Henry Ford proposed using it in cars, using farm wastes and hemp. The powers to be promoted petroleum instead, forcing America to suck on the gaspipe. And suck, and suck and suck. So no wonder that ethanol is being put in a bad light by bad journalists. We can write a letter to the NYT and the NY Daily News but they often ignore anything they do not want to hear....

So corn prices double, and the price of a gallon may do so also. If the papers got behind solid science then we could solve the economic crisis, but that is not what they exist for.

So expect higher food prices and sluggish response to sensible energy development. But at least blame Doritos and Cap'n Crunch for the rise in the corn prices, not ethanol producers, who can use the waste parts of corn we don't use.

2B OR NOT 2B

Much speculation exists as to why bees are dying off in Colony Collapse Disorder, and we have covered a good amount of that here. Mobile phone masts and verroa mites are two suspects, but now there is a hypothesis that ethonal, or rather the byproducts of ethanol, are killing the bees. Killer ethanol. However, there may be a bias to this theory, in that there certainly are interests which desire to keep us away from any alternative energy. On the other hand, we need to look at this and give an answer either way.

Eric Pollitt of Global Hemp has been keeping me informed about the ethanol and corn use debate, his part of the world is Illinois and they know a thing or two about corn there, which is a ubiquitous crop, along with soy. The two monopolistic agrobusinesses can be quite selfishly motivated, we need to grow other crops just to keep a balance. And if we are to produce ethanol, having of course answered the question about its effects on the hymonoptera - fancy word for bees and their congeners, we need to look at whether corn is the most appropriate crop to grow for it. At present hemp is still illegal in Illinois, even though it was once prevalent there. The latest on the legal status of hemp is that in Vermont, the state legistaure voted overwhelmingly in favour of cultivation, and the governor sensibly let this pass into law. However, there is the federal government to deal with next, and we can see what happens by looking at the recent case in North Dakota where the top Republican in the state legislature is suing the feds over their right to cultivate what the Fouding Fathers grew.

Hopefully the states will win, and the feds will buzz off.

MAY IN REVIEW

Hemp is in the air, and in the field, but flowers will have to wait a month or so. As the hemp grows in the field, each day a little bit, so does the movement. Lots of little things to do last month, such as finishing up Bulletin # 1 of the British Isles Hemp & Natural Fibres Industries Association: Hemp as a Replacement Crop for Heroin in Afghanistan. Copies of this 24 page report are available from The Hemp Shop in the UK.

Some dark forces in this world might not like this, as they have, after invading Afghanistan, made poppies to prosper. And guess what, in Iraq, the rice fields are being plowed up and replaced with poppy fields. Is this the progress Bush was talking about? No wonder he wants to stay there forever. US troops are free guards, courtesy of the US taxpayer. One such taxpayer lost her son in Iraq, and when Bush handed her the medal, he joked about it and told her not to sell it on Ebay. Where is the dignity?

And where is the hemp? He finally got talking about ethanol, and it seemed too good to be true. Turns out it was, the idiots used up corn and drove the corn prices sky high so the Mexicans were protesting at his visit. Henry Ford used hemp and farm wastes, but I guess the modern environmentalist does not take the time to read such details, they just jump out there with George Bush and George Monbiot, and when it all fails, they tell us biofuels don't work. Try doing what has been proven effective and you just might be surprised.

Another proven use of hemp to which it has not been put by the wanna-be environmentalists is in the production of shopping bags. Anya Hindmarch came out with her bags in April and was bagged by the national press, and in May we worked on the hemp bag which is featured on this site. Our protests were mentioned in the May issue of The Ecologist, which is doing a reader offer in the July/August issue. We plan some fun with this, as it would really take the mick to carry this bag around all the posh spots of London, and maybe a bit outside the US Embassy.

From the US Dave Olson called to say he was coming over, which means we will be able to give him a hemp bag to take back. Doug Yurchey wrote a sequel to his famous piece on the real reason hemp is illegal, taking a swipe at Judge Judy and the idiot brigade which is keeping hemp out of reach for Americans. So either you buy your petrol from the Middle East or you use up all your corn and the price of corn flakes goes up.

On a sad note, it does not look like Dave Monson of North Dakota got his permits in time to sow hemp, as George Washington commanded. The good ol' DEA dragged its feet and efforts on the part of the US taxpayer were wasted. Let's hope to reverse this sad state of affairs and have hemp in the ground in the US this time next year.

STILL ILLEGAL

To see hemp outlawed in the US is crazy, after all these years you'd think they would welcome a plant that can provide better ethanol than corn, which is now being grown ubiquitously but not quite as profitably as the farmers want. Yes, the price is going up to $4, but so are the expenses, land being one of them, and most farmers rent. Then the way the US government is involved is not quite healthy, and is it any surprise that the companies benefitting from Bush's ethanol initiative are all his buddies?

Could that be the reason that he is into ethanol all of a sudden, going green? Or is it because he is drinking again, and ETOH (what paramedics call it, a code word for 'drunk') is all of a sudden very cool. Rumour has it he was a bit smashed when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England came the the White House. And more than rumour has it that after her visit to Bushland she visited the Chelsea Flower Show in her own land, where she was given a private viewing of some hemp plants in pots at an eco stand.

So it's time for Americans to take Bush over to a flower show to do the same. Or, if they cannot find this species growing in the land of the brave, they have only to look north to see some 50,000 acres of it in full bloom, prospering under the sign of the maple leaf. Above is a logo of one of Canada's first hemp shops, where books, clothes and other hemp items are on sale. It may be a good place to take Bush when he visits Canada.

KILLER KERNELS

This is one image that is very American, a nice fresh ear of corn, about to go on a Bar-B-Q. But Americans are about to lose this to mad scientists who want to genetically modify everything into their own modified image, making man (and his food) made in the image of some big corporation.

To help along the Frankenstein model, there is now MON863, a genetically modified corn approved for use in Australia, Canada, the Philippines, the EU and the good ol' US of A. It has a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis...yummy in the tummy, but researchers are finding a whole bevy of unwholesome effects including liver damage and hormonal changes.

Bon apetit!

GM MAKES YOU SICK TO YOUR STOMACH:

HEMP FOODS ARE GM FREE

In Chapter XXIV of Hemp for Victory, there is a discussion about GM foods and what this bodes for hemp. Generally, hemp is GM-free. All the approved varieties are, and so the websites proclaiming that all UK hemp or all Canadian hemp is GM free are entirely correct in this assertion.

At some stages, hemp has been used to perform GM trials, including the fibre variety Chameleon, used in European tests several years ago. Hemp lends itself to varietal experimentation, it is much like the rose plant which gives us so many types, but is still one species.

Researching GM foods was an eye-opener, there was lots of abuse and disinformation in the industry and in print. Dr. James Watson was noted to remark that the scientists ought to play God. Idiot savants are more than happy to, and it is now a problem world-wide.

One point made in the chapter was that apiarists were having trouble with unwanted GM pollen that would travel considerable distances; GM was insinuating itself into the honey jar.

Sour as this certainly is, there is worse news. GM corn, sprayed with a GM-resistant herbicide, is now posing a problem to our stomachs. Worse, the herbicide is very close to a human protein, and can act on our nervous system. Like, it gets on our nerves. Wow, some sceintific advance. Far ****ing out.

The corn in question is Liberty Link. Get it in your gut and you may not last too long.

BTW, feel free to pass around this warning so others can take heed.

In the meantime, enjoy your GM-free hemp foods.

ETHANOL, HEMP & THE PRICE OF CORN

As the price of a barrel rises these days, and let's review, it has risen sharply since September, 2001, other commodities rise as well; how I wish I had bought gold when it was cheap, at a mere $350 an ounce! Having missed such a golden opportunity, there is comfort in knowing there are other markets. In Iowa this month, the price of a more mundane item, corn, was up for discussion. While it had no such stellar rise as petrol and precious metals , it is nonetheless going up a notch, from $2.00 a bushel to $2.10 a bushel. OK, that's only 5%, but enough to encourage farmers to pick corn this year rather than soy, wheat or cotton.

Part of the rise in the price of corn is due to its cellulose content; cellulose is a carbohydrate which converts easily to ethanol, and for many people tired of paying lots of money for petrol, this is an important bit of information. Truckers have been demanding biofuel for years now in the US, as their incomes are shrinking as inflation rises. So the corn farmers are now able to sell what was once farm waste, the inedible parts of the corn plant, and do the country a service as well. Patriotism, without shedding blood.

However simple some things may be in life, there are always those who can get things wrong, and in the reporting of this in no less a paper than the New York Times, there were worried voices expressing concern about using a food plant to supply energy. Do these people really imagine that they are going to use all the kernels to make fuel? Do they not realise that the kernels are a fraction of the plant's weight, they are the seeds, thus they contain the proteins that make them valuable as a food; the rest of the plant can be dehydrated and fermented for biofuel. We kill two birds here for the price of one.

Sloppy reporting over the years about energy plants is not limited to the Grey Lady in the Big Apple; no less a rag than the UK's Independent will write articles about biofuel without an understanding of the whole picture. Recently, they wrote that it was unfeasible for the UK to farm energy as the rape crop would not produce enough ethanol from its stems. Right they are, but why are they talking about rape when Henry Ford, who certainly did know a thing or two about cars and energy, talked about hemp and farm wastes?

At least the NYT article (Matthew Wald, 16 January, 2006) took notes from those in the business, such as Robert C. Brown, a professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State, who noted that the idea that using corn for energy was taking food from our mouths was incorrect. Benie Punt, also quoted in the NYT, is a manager of a plant in Siouxland, and he was also able to point out that the leftovers from the ethanol conversion are even used as animal feed.

The scare tactics, interestingly enough, come from the Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute, whose director, Joachim von Braun, warns that: "even a small shift could have big effects...the mouth of your car is a monster compared to your family's stomach needs." OK, one does not need to be a rocket scientist, or related to a former Nazi rocket scientist, to see that this argument is actually better suited towards two other goals - reducing driving and reducing dependence on foreign energy. For an idiot, it stands to reason that we better not use farm wastes to produce ethanol, unless we want a big raise in the price of food.

Actually, by harnessing the energy in farm wastes, the US would quite likely get back on its feet finacially, while providing jobs in the energy and agricultural sectors to its own citizens. If farm wastes were not enought to provide the country with its energy supplies, then certain crops could be grown to provide more, such as hemp, which is one of the fastest biomass producing plants in the world, ready to harvest in a season with little effort. Its stems are high in cellulose, and the seeds can be harvested for oil and cattle feed among other products.

The Founding Fathers grew hemp, so there ought to be little objection to growing this in the US, it can, by the way, be grown in all 50 states. With a little more education and the will to succeed we can. Recently, Sir Richard Branson put his money into ethanol production after listening to Al Gore hold forth on the subject in London. Sir Richard is using farm wastes, thus utilising what is already cheap and available. Little wonder that he became the billionaire that he did.