Credit: Granville Online

Came across this interesting article on Hemp vs Cotton. It’s just another reminder of how the plant is not only extrememly versatile, but can how, once again, it’s an extremely eco-friendlier alternative to a very environmentally damaging crop. Here were some key points:

• It takes about 1,400 gallons of water to produce just 1 pound of cotton
• Cotton require only half that
• One acre of land can produce 250% more hemp fiber than cotton fiber
• A field of hemp can also yield two crops a year
• Cotton consumes 25% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of the world’s pesticides
• Most hemp is grown without pesticides/insecticides
• Hemp doesn’t require herbicide because it over-shades weeds
• Hemp is a tremendous carbon trap

The environmental advantage of hemp, I think, are strikingly clear. But the article also goes on to explore how hemp and cotton compare in terms of industrial applications and market potential, and hemp still comes out on top.

It makes you wonder how hemp every got outlawed as a fiber crop. Oh yeah, I remember: William Randolf Hearst printed his news on cotton paper and owned a bunch of interests in cotton farming, so he used marijuana to launch a smear campaign again the cotton’s biggest (non-psychoactive) rival, hemp.

It’s outright tragic and injust that 70 years later, us and the planet are still bearing the burden of Hearst’s corrupt corporate interests.

Hemp History Week

Today marks the beginning of the first annual Hemp History Week. A joint effort between Vote Hemp and the Hemp Industry Association, the week long event is a grassroots educational campaign to raise awareness of the industrial and environmental potential of hemp farming.

Hemp History Week will consist of 185 event across 32 states. Organizers will also be working to collect tens of thousands of hand-signed postcards addressed to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder asking them to end the ban on hemp farming and let farmers once again grow the versatile and profitable crop. You can download your own postcard here.

And for those who can’t make it to any of the events, but still want to support or get involved in Hemp History Week, you can follow Hemp History Week on Twitter or join the Facebook Page.

A problem that vegetarians face when it comes to getting enough protein, is getting a complete protein. While meat contains complete protein, many vegetarian alternatives need to be combined with other things to get a complete protein — such as lentils with brown rice.

But hemp seeds offer a great source of complete protein, and in a particularly high concentration, as well. As columnist Rhonda Beckham for the Tahoe Daily Tribune points out:

It turns out that hemp — which has many uses including fuel, building supplies, textiles for clothing and housewares — is a complete protein in itself. And no, you won’t get the giggles or munchies after ingesting the seeds grown for food.
[...]
Here is what Rocky Mountain Grain Products of Alberta, Canada, has to say about “nature’s power food:” “If you eat the contents of this bag (2 ounces) for breakfast with whole fruit or raw vegetables, you can expect abundant energy and no hunger for many hours, sometimes all day. You can save the cost of hemp hearts many times in reduced grocery bills and supplements, more productivity and less health care.”
[...]
Two ounces of hemp hearts contains 314 calories, 25.9 grams of fat (87 percent omega, more than fish), no cholesterol, 6 grams of carbohydrates, 20 grams of protein, and 36 percent of your daily need for iron.

So hemp seeds are not only a great source of protein, but of iron, but omega fatty acids as well. They also contain all 10 essential amino acids.

Hemp seeds have a nutty flavor, are similar to sesame seeds in texture, and great in shakes/smoothies, over salads, or mixed into any other dish or desert.

If you want to give them a try, but are having trouble finding them at your local grocer, you can order them online from Manitoba Harvest. All their hemp products are organic, and their selection is quite vast.

The company Naturally Advanced Technology has been on quite a roll lately. They successfully conducted some bulk commercial hemp trials that have already lead to a partnership with Hanes, and the scientists who made those trials a success then won an award for figuring out how to alter hemp fibers so that they could be processed on cotton machinery (it’s called Crailar fiber).

The breakthrough is a big deal because this way, no new machinery needs to be invented and then sold to fabric manufacturers. It will pretty much make processing hemp affordable which, in turn, will make hemp products affordable which, in turn, will fuel hemp industry growth. That’s important because the sooner that hemp can replace cotton, the sooner we can depleting our soil and water supplied just to put clothes on our back.

In any case, here is a clip of that scientist, Dr. Wing Sung, explaining how its done.

Hemp’s potential as a biofuel is not exactly a secret, but it’s not common knowledge either. Well, the biomass industry is well aware of it’s potential, and the lawsuit being waged North Dakota farmers seems to have the industry watching hemp closer than usual. A recent article in Biomass Magazine titled US industrial hemp development continues echoed how:

Developers and farmers continue to pave the way for hemp as a biomass crop in the United States.

The North Dakota case is, undoubtedly, and important. It will effectively determine the future of industrial hemp in the US for generation to come. As much as that will impact on the biomass industry, it will effect so much more. Hemp is also a particularly pomising cotton alternative, not to mention a great source of nutrition.

Of course, when the energy sector starts eyeing a profit maker, things usually give sooner rather than later. So perhaps there might be some behind the scenes political dealing that will play out in favor of not only the plaintiff farmers in the North Dakota case, but hemp enthusiasts and entrepreneurs writ large.

A mop-up crop, simply put, is a crop that pulls contaminants out of the soil. Well, hemp has been shown to pull heavy metals out of the soil, but apparently it can also help used in sewage treatment.

You see, raw sewage is a problem for water because it causes eutrophication, which is when so many nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients seep into the water that most life cannot survive. Basically, these nutrients cause so much algae to grow that fish life suffocates. Next thing you know, there’s nothing but algae living in your water — and that’s not much of a diverse ecosystem.

Eutropihication is most common when manure fertilizer and other farm animal waste runs off into the water table. But imagine if you were dumping that manure directly into streams or river. Well, that’s pretty much what we do with sewage.

Well Keith Bolton, Chief Scientist and Director of Ecoteam, recently conducted some trials using a variety of fiber crops to as a mop-up crop in sewage treatment, and hemp greatly out-performed all the other crops. Collaborating with a water treatment company, Bolton irrigated a hemp crop with sewage, and teh hemp absorbed 90% of the nitrogen. Also of interest was that at one point, someone dumped ammonium into the sewage, and the hemp absorbed 95% of that.

Sydney Indymedia has an interview with Bolton where he discusses both using hemp for water treatment and his experience with hemps as a building material. An mp3 version of the interview can be downloaded here.

Yesterday, Gourmet Retailer featured a great overview of hemp as both a raw material and culinary ingredient, and then followed it up with a recipe.The article goes over some of the health benefits of hemp and then reprints this recipe for Hemp Orzo Pasta Salad from Manitoba Harvest.

Cook one cup Orzo pasta in boiling, salted water. Fold in the following ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons cold-pressed hemp seed oil
• 1 tablespoon hemp seed butter
• 1 tablespoon shelled hemp seed
• 1 tablespoon tahini
• 1 tablespoon agave nectar
• 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 2 tablespoons Bragg’s amino acid, or
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper or cayenne
• 1 small cucumber, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1 cup black beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans or shelled edamame, as you prefer

What was really interesting about the piece, however, was that it didn’t just focus on the nutritional benefits of hemp, but also on many of industrial and environmental benefits, not to mention many of the socio-political issues surround hemp. For instance, to illustrate some of the paradoxes of hemp production, author James Mellgren writes:

In France and China, they use it to strengthen concrete. Mercedes Benz uses it to make many of their interior door panels, and the original Levi jeans were made from it. Christopher Columbus had ropes made from it as he sailed to the New World, and our own Declaration of Independence is written on it. It was grown by the Puritans, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin used it to make paper in America’s first paper mill. All around the world, it is used to make paper, clothing, rope, textiles, biodegradable plastics, food and fuel. It requires no chemicals to make it grow or keep bugs away, controls the erosion of the topsoil, and produces oxygen. It also can supplant many industrial materials that have been proven to be harmful to the environment and to ourselves such as paper made from trees (not only does this require the cutting down of trees but the use of bleach and other toxic chemicals contribute to water pollution anywhere paper is made), cosmetics and plastics that are petroleum-based and do not break down easily. What is this wonder material? Is it some new high-tech substance, perhaps? The answer is, of course, hemp, a plant (a weed really) that has been cultivated for nearly 10,000 years, and has been used for various purposes since the Stone Age. It could be the answer to untold environmental issues, not to mention world hunger, and yet you can’t grow it because it’s against the law in the United States.

Seeing this kind of socio-politico awareness in a gourmet magazine gives me hope that we’re that much closer to introducing hemp products into the mainstream. That kind of market demand would stimulate not only technological advancements that would facilitate mass-production and drive down the price of hemp-related products, but likely inspire legislative reform in immense but prohibitive markets such as the US.

So today is election day in America! Incidentally, you might have noticed (top right of the page) that VoteHemp.com is one of our new sponsors. Well, the folks over at VoteHemp.com have prepared a 2008 Presidential Candiate Report Card to help guide American voters who have an interest in hemp-related legislation. They weren’t able to actually survey each candidate, but they did grade them “based on their public records and/or direct feedback from their campaign offices.” Anyway, here is how each of the candidates scored. If you want to click through to read more about each candidate, however, you’ll have to first go to the original 2008 Presidential Candiate Report Card because this is just a screenshot

There is more to the benefits of hemp seeds than just your health. They are also great for those who have trouble digesting soy. As the VegEater points out:

For the soy-sensitive vegan (it aggravates my eczema), Hemp is the holy grail. I don’t know what I would do without it. Drink yucky rice-milk? — bleh! Hempmilk is nutty and creamy and goes great in coffee and smoothies, and even bakes well. Hemp protein powder also works great in my morning smoothie, to give me an extra boost of 13g of protein per serving, and 8 g of fiber, as well as omega-3′s to boot! Hemp oil makes great salad dressing, and hemp seeds make great topping. And it has all 10 necessary amino acids, a complete protein!

As great of a foodstuff as soy is, it has it’s drawbacks. For instance, the manner in which it is farmed often leaves it full of synthetic hormones that can seriously disrupt your endocrine system over time. Hemp, on the other hand, rarely requires pesticides or fertilizers, leaving you with a much safer way to enhance your health. And as WH Foods points out, the nutritional content of hemp seeds abounds:

Hemp seeds and hemp oil are found in an increasing variety of food products and have also been fairly well studied in terms of their nutritional content. Seeds from this group of plants- like most plant seeds-are a good source of essential fatty acids. Linoleic acid, the omega-6 essential fatty acid, accounts for about two-thirds of the essential fatty acids found in hemp seeds. The other third comes from alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), the omega-3 fatty acid that forms the starting point for production of all other omega-3s in the body. There are also amino acids found in the protein portion of hemp seeds that can make important contributions to daily protein requirements.

In fact, the health benefits of hemp seeds are so substantial that you can even apply it topically. Hemp seed personal care products are available to help you improve the look of both your skin and your hair. It really is a shame that hemp foodstuffs aren’t more widely available on the market, and more affordable where they are.

Just last week, we posted about an article in the University of Maryland’s student newspaper, The Retriever Weekly about hemp in American history. Well, it seems that the editor at that student paper have are sympathetic toward the cannabis plant, and have just run another piece. This one looks at the environmental potential of hemp biofuel. The article is called Government should look toward hemp as a viable alternative fuel, and in addition to discussing how hemp can be used to actually produce biofuel, the author also provides an overview of all the other environmental benefits of cultivating the hemp plant en masse:

Hemp Global Solutions researches the use of hemp as a biofuel. They advocate hemp as a “potential solution to some of the major social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.”
[...]
Perhaps one of hemp’s best characteristics is its environmental friendliness. It grows faster than other crops like corn or rice and it comes with the added benefit of improving soil quality where it’s grown. Similarly, it does not need cleared land to grow and is naturally pest resistant, meaning that pesticides are not necessary which would help to ultimately reduce CFCs and nutrient leeching. Furthermore, hemp even kills pests in the soil, further reducing the need for pesticides. Unlike fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide and sulfur into the air, hemp actually converts carbon dioxide back into biomass at an astounding rate. The crop itself is extremely diverse and able to grow in conditions that other biofuel crops cannot. Its drought resistance makes it an ideal crop for farmers in the Midwest and other areas that are so-called “dust bowls.”

Although researchers have been looking at corn as a possible biofuel, hemp is much more productive and cost-effective. One acre of hemp can produce ten times as much methanol as an acre of corn, with an exponentially faster rate of growth. Capable of producing ten tons of biomass per acre in less than four months, hemp would only take six percent of the American land mass to grow enough hemp to completely eliminate our need for fossil fuels. The infrastructure change would not be a problem either, as traditional farming equipment could be used to harvest hemp.

Written by the same author as the article that The Retriever ran last week, this piece also touches on the role that hemp has played throughout US history — from Henry Ford’s famous hemp car to how Congress lifted marijuana prohibition during WW II. This writer just might be someone for the hemp industry to keep an eye. Of course, he might also just be another starry-eyed student who’s bound to grow disenchanted and apathetic once he actually has to start paying taxes and bills. Let’s hope that the former wins out over the latter.