HEMP VS COTTON

A year or so ago I spoke at a natural fibres fair and made note of the facts about cotton. My inconvenient truths were not welcome, either by the cotton and bamboo merchants or by the press. Cotton is the world's largest crop, and is destroying the ecosystem. It is time we stopped it, but try to get the press to say anything! They don't like to. I almost succeeded with Drapers, a London based fashion and textile industry magazine, they listened and asked me to send in a letter, but then never published it. Over 90% of what they report, and advertise, has to do with cotton. So no surprise. Anyway, here is the letter they never published:

The Stones once painted the world black. Today, we are painting it green, which is the 'new black'. Do-gooders are dancing in the aisles, but are they in tune? They destroyed forests in Indonesia to plant palm oil; gave us low carbon bulbs full of mercury; ravaged the Amazon with soya; created chaos in India with jatropha, and; depleted water supplies by growing more cotton. This last issue I addressed on 18 May at the Fashion Made Fair, just after Katherine Hamnett signed cotton T shirts. Cotton, organic or otherwise, is water intensive. I poured out a pitcher of water for effect, and quoted Jeremy Smith of the Ecologist, who calculated that a hemp T shirt uses 2,800 litres of water less than a cotton one. Hemp, however, is eschewed by some. The good news is that hemp has arrived: Minawear is worn on prime time TV, Jilly Cholmondeley sheets are praised by the Independent, House of Hemp can scarce keep up with demand, Braintree occupies the flagship space in Camden Market, and THTC is de rigeur. Hemp attire is not Biblical sackcloth, and neither am I a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Similar observations are made by the aforementioned Smith and Cholmondeley, Louisa Pearson in Scotland on Sunday and Lucy Siegle in the Observer, who tackles Hamnett. We need to tune up to facts, however inconvenient they may be. For those wishing to repent of ignorant mistakes, there are coarse grades of hemp which make a good sackcloth; feel free to paint it black with organic ashes.

PLANE STUPID TALK AT ST. MARY THE VIRGIN

Image left is Tobias Kendall of Oxford, aka Ken Tobias, who got kicked out of Plane Stupid last month when Tamsin Omond of Cambridge outed him dramatically. Allegedly, he was working for C2i, a spook firm that must have some pretty low recruiting standards. Are they the ones behind Rachel North and David Shayler, both of whom claim they are not working for MI5? Maybe a double bluff on their part, but as to Kendall, er, um Tobias, his bluff got called. What made Omond see through it so easily? Was it the Armani jeans, or was it the fact that Omond is from Trinity College, a known recruitment ground for spooks and would know one when she saw one? Many of the Trinity crowd were sex addicts who betrayed their country to the Russians in the '30, '40s, '50s, '60s and whenever else they could get away with it; much of which was noted in the famous and suppressed book, Spycatcher.
The present day Trinity College alumnus was on hand last night at an event at St. Mary the Virgin in Primrose Hill, where the merchants of soya were on hand to sell their product. Somehow the vicar there must have forgotten that 2,000 years ago someone drove the merchants out of the church, but then again, there are a lot of vicars who have forgotten that the same person also said: "better a millstone tied around the neck of a person than they should hurt the little ones". Maybe the vicar was off at a sex shop, where the Tamsin Omond crowd can be found when not preaching to us or getting into trouble with the police or hasssling members of the general public at the Natural History Museum.
So, with the vicar away, the mice could play with people's minds and promote soya, a plant which is now one of the biggest problems facing the world today. Try telling this to Nigel Winter of the Vegan Society or the folks at Slow Foods London, and you just get a cold stare. Tamsin Omond then comes over to show her ignorance, and there is little one informed person can do against them, even if in the House of God, which they seem to have taken over.
And with the power and money behind Tamsin, one is not surprised. Her grandfather is none other than Sir Thomas Lees, who owns a good deal of land in the proserous South England county of Dorest, once a hemp growing and processing capital of the realm. Her father is a rich banker. She herself hangs out with l'ecume de l'ecume, having matriculated at some very expensive spots for rich kids, the kind who have money for both sex shops and the church.
But apparently, not much brains, or they would have known about hemp, and not used the House of God for a promo on soya, adding to the misery of poor farmers in Brazil, who are seeing more and more land cleared for this monocrop.
The irony is that the very people behind this misery are acting like eco-warrriors, running around in trendy spots talking about saving the planet, along with the dodgy people who forced palm oil plantations on the Indonesians and jatropha on the Indians (see previous post on this).
They are now threatening to force us to use more oil, which is set to rise to $200 a barrel (not so long ago it was $30). What they do is bash all biofuels, either directly, or by getting into the game and giving biofuels a bad name with their stupid ideas. Without biofuels, we are dependent on one fuel, and guess what, the price of that one fuel goes up.
Thus it is intelligent analysis to suspect that the rich kid bondage toy church attending crowd from Trinity College may just be the progeny of the pampered traitors at MI5, and that the game is to infiltrate environmental groups and stifle debate about biofuels. One easy way to do this is to write about it, then dissuade the public from taking action. Perhaps an example of this can be found in yesterday's Guardian, where the double barrelled Duncan Graham-Rowe mentions Henry Ford and his production of ethanol, but then talks only about rapeseed and maize (corn). Further, he warns against using up agricultural land for biofuels, but not a word about waste cellulose, such as stems, unwanted bark and other parts of the plant not used for food or fibre. This is crucial to the debate, and what is devious on the part of so many of the glorified debaters given space in the church and the media, is that they leave out the CRUCIAL part of the debate, entering at large celverly on some PART of the debate so as to push their agenda, which, dangerously, leads us back to petrol dependency, cotton usage, and soya consumption. By keeping us on petrol, major players in the options market can make a killing - literally - and they can well afford to pay people like Tasmin Omond to carry out this subterfuge.
But then again, this analyis may be rebutted by those who think that Tamsin Omond and crew are just 'plane stupid'.
And maybe they are. Whichever the case, treachery or stupidity, we cannnot afford to let this self congratulatory and trendy crowd ruin our lives with their mistakes. They are very self-centred gatekeepers with huge influence in the press, it is like they have hijacked a plane and we need the rational to storm the cockpit and get it back on the correct course.
Let's roll.

VANDANA SHIVA VISITS THE UK

Hampstead Town Hall was our destination Monday evening, as we had a very special guest, author and activist Vandana Shiva, India's leading environmentalist. Sagar Shah brought our attention to this event, and it was well worth the price of admission. The Gaia Foundation and the Soil Association were largely behind it, and they certainly picked a top notch speaker. I might note that there was also a very good spread of food, not only organic delicacies, but real food, which means it tasted good. Baby beets with soured cream, falafel wraps, Welsh Brie, and, to my surprise, a tofu canape which rose above the usual bland tofu disasters using trendiness as an excuse for blandness. However, no hemp was on the table, but there was plenty of hemp hearts and oil at home to feast on later.

The real meat of the event was, however, hearing Vandana. She hails from Dehra Dun, a city in the north, where she runs a farm. Sagar Shah had visited last year and poked around making notes for future hemp coops in India. At present, there is very little hemp grown there, though hemp was once grown extensively, especially in the north.

Instead of hemp, there are millions of acres of cotton, which Vandana notes is a major threat to people's lives. In one area in Orissa state, there is a farmer committing suicide every eight hours. The suicide rate stands in the tens of thousands (related posts on this blog can go into more detail). Not only does the cotton use tons of pesticides, but is depleting India's water. This is starting to be noticed by the more observant journalists, such as Louisa Pearson of Scotland on Sunday (previous post has link to her article), but so many trendy do-gooders in the green movement just ignore this inconvenient fact as they shop for 'organic' cotton, which actually uses more of India's precious resource, water. Vandana posits that we may be in big trouble in the near future over the diminishing water resources.

Not only is there too much cotton, but there is in her opinion too much of another plant, jatropha. Ealier this month we blogged about how D1 Oils is in a bitter controversy about jatropha, and we left it open as to whether this crop was bad or not. Vandana did not leave anything open to doubt, she cut down the jatropha as a reaper swings a scythe. Jatropha was rammed down the throats of Indian farmers who were forced by government officials to grow this plant for its oily seed to be used for biodiesel. Up to 11m ha of it were planted all over India, at times replacing rice fields and grazing land, especially in the desert state of Rajasthan, where only 11% of the land is arable (as opposed to the national average of 56%). Another aspect of jatropha cultivation is the fact that it is poisonous to man and beast; ironically, the jatropha fans put up hoarding exhorting farmers to grow lots of it: "No one can eat me, wouldn't you like to grow me everywhere?"

Apparently, no one wants to grow anymore of this unfriendly plant, even the farmers who were supposed to receive a subsidy of 18 rupees per plant; which they never did get in full, and are now regretting pulling out other plants to make way for this little crop of horrors.

One wonders why they did not plant hemp? There were lots of wanna-be environmentalists beating the drum for the poisonous little fiend, but none would mention hemp; the truth is that a few years ago jatropha was trendy and there was money behind it. So those of us talking sense were drowned out, and India lost out.

Other ways in which India loses out in include the influence of companies pushing GM crops, including Bt cotton. Vandana explained that this was pushed through use of statistics showing that after GM crops were introduced, exports increased. This statistic was due to the fact that farmers were too poor to buy local produce after using GM seeds, and so their crops were sold off to foreign lands more than in the past. Again, they could have made money on hemp, but there are too many parties pushing false environmentalism and globalism, with profits going to foreign companies. By the way, there is still an arrest warrant in place for those responsible for Bhopal, including Warren Anderson, who lives in NY.

While there was much agreement with her message, I had some question at the end when I realised there was much talk against various energy forms; nuclear, coal, petrol, diesel and even bio-ethanol were definitely not in style. Vandana runs her farm with four bullocks. That is great, but realistically, can we run the world on that model? Too often enthusiastic environmentalists get on to an idea and try to push it on everyone, tested or not; that is why we have destructive palm oil plantations and jatropha. There is often a debate as to which energy we ought to use, and I think that putting all one's eggs in one basket is wrong; as Vandana pointed out, diversity is a safer approach. With that in mind, while she might not completely agree, I support some amount of bio-ethanol, especially as this can be made from waste material - which brings me to a point on which I disagree with many so-called 'activists'. It is often stated at these meetings, especially by the more zealous and ignorant in the camp, that we ought to return all wastes to the soil and not use cellulose as a raw material for ethanol. If this lot, including Andrew Boswell, would spend time listening rather than bashing biofuels, they would realise that cellulose is only a carbohydrate, and that taking carbon, hydrogen and oxygen away does not deprive the soil of nutrients, but that these are common elements the soil can get lots of. Many of those handing out leaflets at rallies have not studied any of the science, and are well on the way to creating the next overzealous craze, following in the footsteps of the palm oil and jatropha fanatics.

On the subject of diversity, I came across a recent article in Positive News (whose editor, Jane Taylor, was in attendance) which highlighted a solar tower in Spain. Large mirrors reflect the light up to the top of the tower, where temperatures reach 250 centigrade. This heats water, making steam, and energy is produced with no carbon emissions. For India this would be good news! A second article in the same paper talked about tidal turbines supplying almost all the energy for Samso, an island with 4,000 inhabitants off the coast of Denmark. This too could be of use in India, with all its coastline and major rivers.

Also in attendance was Stanley Johnson, who looks just like MP Boris Johnson; due to the fact that Stanley is Boris' dad, no doubt. Stanley had some very positive news for me, as he related the recent Law Lords' decision to throw out the US request for extradition of Ian Norris on all but one count, which has been passed back down to the lower courts, and one would expect common sense to prevail after the senior jurists set a tone. That fact, however, diverges from the main train of thought, but it is certainly good news that deserves passing on. Returning to the subject of this blog, let me note that both Stanley and his look-a-like dad will be getting copies of Hemp for Victory soon, especially as Stanley has a very interesting environmental site, http://www.stanleyjohnson.com/

Vandana was given a copy of Hemp for Victory so perhaps we will indeed be seeing fields of emerald in India soon. Even if she does not support its use as a crop for bio-ethanol, it has so many other uses that it will surely find a place on her bullock-powered farm.

WATKIN DEPARTURE FUELS DEBATE ON BIOFUELS

On Monday(10 March '08) Karl Watkin announced his resignation from D1 Oils, the UK company that was promoting jatropha (photo above) as a biofuel. Jatropha had been the hope of many, and world leaders, including Bill Clinton, had backed it. 250,000 jobs had been created as part of the emerging jatropha industry, and jatropha plantations had sprung up from India to Africa.

All this was not without controversy, as some claimed that this plant poisoned the environment. While I am not sure about this, it is certain that the debate poisoned the investment climate and jatropha has suffered a setback. Watkin pointed out a number of parties as guilty of suppressing this plant, including commentator George Monbiot of the Guardian. A statement put out last month by D1 included Lord Oxburgh's assessment that Monbiot's views were 'absurd'. His lordship is correct, and statements on this very sight reflect much the same. One thing noted here was the way Monbiot and others talked about biofuels in such a way as to lump all together, even biodiesels with bioethanol. "This lack of differentiation," asserts Watkin, "combined with the London Stock Exchange's failure to address both the liquidity problems of [its junior market] Aim and the impact of shorting of illiquid stocks, have conspired to erode the value of D1."

Friends of the Earth also weighed in against jatropha, but then again it is not impossible FoE just bashes anything they are not getting funding for. Here in London they run around wearing environmentally desrtuctive cotton and using tree pulp paper. Any efforts to interest them in hemp has been a waste of time.

So is jatropha the next wonder crop? My answer is I do not know. There may be some legitimate complaints about it, and it may take more time to evaluate the equation. But would I put hemp forward here are the crop for biodiesel? No. Hemp can produce a good oil, but the fact is that hemp oil sells for much more in health food markets (retailing for £20 a litre), so it would be hard to get it at a cost that would work to the public. Hemp bioethanol, however, made from the stem, is very cost effective and tons of it can be produced from an acre in one season.

Jatropha does deserve real evaluation, not just slagoffs from journalists with an agenda, or competing organisations given too much space in the press. Hemp has its purposes, and other plants have their uses too. We support the cultivation of the best possible crops, including hemp, black salve, bamboo, jute, nettles, jatropha, etc.