Purple Maize Farm: Heavenly Hemp

Fried pies, barbecue, and beautiful plants with the promise of summer bounty are all available at the market on Saturday mornings. Some vegetable farmers already have corn, beans, and okra in the field. Potatoes are planted and bursting through the dirt, and the cabbages are starting to take off. At our farm we're enjoying magnificent spring salads with the lettuce we started in March and the last of this season's watercress. I know a lot of people who already have tomatoes set out. Back here in the holler, I tend to be a little more cautious. I woke up to 26 degrees one morning last week, and no tomato wants to be outside for weather like that!

If it weren't prohibited without an almost-impossible-to-obtain permit from the Drug Enforcement Agency, now would also be the time to sow your industrial hemp crop.

Industrial hemp is considered an environmentally friendly crop and is produced in many countries, including Canada, Spain, Ireland, England, France, and Japan, with the largest producer being China. It requires very few pesticides, no herbicides, and its nutrient demand on the soil is similar to that of wheat and less than corn. The time from sowing to harvesting is just three to four months.

Hemp can produce 25 tons of dry matter per hectare per year, whereas corn only produces about 7 tons per hectare per year. Hemp thus poses the opportunity to provide a more efficient source for fuel production, as well as bypassing the food versus fuel concerns surrounding the production of corn based ethanol, as it is the hemp seeds that have potential as a food crop, and not the cellulose rich, woody stem.

Hemp fibers can be used to manufacture textiles, including clothes and even shoes, as well as biodegradable plastics, construction materials, and paper. In addition to being a valuable fiber crop, industrial hemp also has immense potential as a food crop. The seeds are high in Omega 3 fatty acids, which is grossly lacking in the typical American diet. Hemp oil, high protein seed cakes, and even a milk product that higher in iron than any other type of milk (soy, almond, cow, goat, etc), can all be made from hemp seeds. In 2008 the Journal of Analytical Toxicology found no traceable amounts of THC in hemp food products available in the marketplace.

Hemp paper is more durable and twice as recyclable as paper made from virgin wood pulp. One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose as 4.1 acres of trees and takes only 3-4 months from sowing to harvest, instead of the 20 years it takes for trees to mature.

The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, our country's constitution was printed on hemp paper, and the patriotic literature penned by Thomas Paine that helped stoke the fires of our American Revolution were printed on hemp paper.

Benjamin Franklin started the first hemp paper mill, and President George Washington placed duties on hemp that encouraged its domestic production. Both President Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp on their plantations. Thomas Jefferson, a vehement supporter of the independent American farmer, put his opinion of hemp into no uncertain terms when he wrote that hemp “...is of first necessity to the commerce and marine, in other words to the wealth and protection of the country."

The first American flag, sewed by Betsy Ross, was made of hemp canvas. Additionally, the word “canvas” itself is derived from the Latin word cannapaceus, which means “made of hemp.”

Current legislation regulating the domestic production of industrial hemp is underpinned and perpetuated by the lay person's misinformation about the chemical structure of the plant and the persistent misconception that industrial hemp is synonymous with its contentious cousin, marijuana.

In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act recognized the industrial hemp plant as marijuana, unfairly maligning a very valuable industrial crop. This is a blatant failure to distinguish between the very different and distinct Cannabis strains that produce industrial hemp and the Cannabis varieties from which the medical and recreational drugs are made.

The psychoactive ingredient in Cannabis, known as THC, is present in amounts that range from 3% to 20% in plants cultivated for their flowers and leaves, from which is derived the drug used for medicinal and recreational purposes. However, THC is present only in minute amounts in industrial hemp plants. The maximum legal level in European hemp cultivation is 0.3%. That's 10 times less THC than even the weakest of the medical or recreational strains and 67 times less than the more concentrated varieties.

Even lower in the psychoactive cannabinoid THC is what's known colloquially as “ditchweed” and officially as “feral cannabis.” This plant has THC percentages as low as .05% and is a remnant from World War II, when the U.S. government actually subsidized almost 40,000 acres of hemp production to aid the war effort. The U.S. Department of Agriculture even released a video titled “Hemp for Victory”, which taught farmers how to cultivate and harvest hemp. After Japan cut off this country's supply of hemp and coarse fibers, domestic production was an integral aspect of the war effort, as those fibers were desperately needed to manufacture such products as rope, canvas, and netting that were absolutely vital to the navy.

Escapee volunteer plants derived from that 40,000 acres are now a rampant roadside presence, especially in the Midwest. Midwestern youth have been trying and failing to get anything other than a headache from smoking ditchweed for decades. The DEA now spends upwards of $13 million a year to eradicate this harmless, previously government sanctioned plant from roadsides and ditches all over the country, especially in the Midwest, despite it having absolutely no psychoactive, and thus no recreational or black market value, whatsoever.

This is a crop that has huge potential to be beneficial to the ailing American farmer. If farmers were unhindered from the senseless regulation of this crop, in addition to generating agricultural revenue, the opening of industrial hemp production would present enormous opportunity for the development of entrepreneurial value-added business ventures, from specialty niche-market prepared foods to utilitarian fiber products like rope and canvas. Those upstart business could create jobs and tax revenues desperately needed in this time of financial strife.

The first step towards a more rational approach to this unjustly maligned crop is to end the misinformation that leads people to believe that medical and recreational marijuana plants are one and the same with industrial hemp, which is absolutely, unequivocally untrue. The debate over the legalization of the Cannabis varieties from which marijuana is derived—for any use—should not taint the many advantages of this valuable industrial plant.

The poisonous, wild nightshade plant, known as Belladonna—an unwelcome squatter in many local gardens—is cousin to the potato, tomato, and eggplant. Hemp is no more similar to marijuana than Belladonna is to the Mortgage Lifter tomato on your BLT or the mashed potatoes on your dinner plate.