“American farmers are prohibited by law from growing a low-input sustainable crop common in Europe and Canada with tremendous economic potential: industrial hemp.”
– Hemp Industries Association, HIA.org
In early May 2000, as permitted under Oglala Sioux Tribal Law, the White Plume family of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota planted a one-and-a-half-acre field of industrial hemp along the Wounded Knee Creek. The hemp was being grown for the purpose of making fabric and other products for the tribe.
On August 24, 2000 the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided the reservation using 25 federal agents wearing bulletproof vests and carrying semiautomatic rifles. The agents surrounded the field as one helicopter and two small-engine planes flew overhead. The field of hemp, which was nearing its harvest stage, was plowed under. The agents left. Nobody was arrested.
In 2001 the White Plume Family planted another field of hemp crop. On July 30, 2001 armed federal agents once again raided the land and destroyed the crop. Nobody was arrested.
“As I stood there and watched, a helicopter would hover above. And the hemp plants were so tall, they would wave back and forth and knock those agents around a little bit you know. I seen that, and I said alright, they’re fighting.”
– Alex White Plume
Under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 the tribe is allowed to engage in agriculture and retains the right to grow fiber and food crops.
Why did the DEA invade sovereign reservation land to destroy the industrial hemp crop of these hard-working people? This question is explored in the 2007 documentary Standing Silent Nation that was broadcast on public television in the U.S. on July 3, 2007. Among the people interviewed in the documentary is James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Woolsey believes industrial hemp farming needs to be legalized in the U.S. to help farmers and to protect the environment. DVD copies of the documentary are available through VoteHemp.com. (Access: StandingSilentNation.com.)
Today, in 2007, like millions of other people in the U.S. you can go to your local natural foods store and purchase hemp chips, hemp food bars, dehulled hemp seeds, hemp bread, hemp salad dressing, hemp waffles, hemp tortillas, hemp shampoo, hemp conditioner, hemp lip balm, hemp body lotion, crunchy hempseed chocolate bars, hemp nutritional powder, hemp oil, and reusable hemp shopping bags.
Stopping by other stores, you can buy hemp fabric rugs, hemp furniture, hemp pillows, hemp shower curtains, hemp drapes, hemp mops, hemp dinner napkins, hemp tablecloths, hemp table runners, hemp shirts, hemp pants, hemp ties, hemp socks, hemp jackets, hemp hats, hemp yoga mats, hemp backpacks, hemp wallets, hemp purses, and hemp shoes.
At new-car lots you can purchase cars that have hemp fiber used in door panels, dashboards, insulation, and other parts.
At artist supply stores you can buy hemp canvas to paint on. Some of the oil paints you purchase may contain hemp oil.
At office supply stores you can purchase paper and envelopes made with a percentage of hemp pulp.
Music bands and performers including The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jackson Browne, and the Foo Fighters have used hemp-blend paper for CD inserts. The paper was supplied by the Living Tree Paper Co. of Eugene, Oregon.
All of the hemp products you can buy in the U.S. contain hemp materials that have been imported from other countries.
“The bark of the hemp stalk contains bast fibers which are among Earth’s longest natural soft fibers and are also rich in cellulose; the cellulose and hemp-cellulose in its inner woody core are called hurds. Hemp stalk is not psychoactive. Hemp fiber is longer, stronger, more absorbent, and more insulative than cotton fiber.”
– Hemp Industries Association, 2006; TheHIA.org
In the future there will be cellulosic ethanol made from hemp as well as hemp oil diesel fuel. These fuels burn cleaner than petroleum gasoline and diesel, which greatly reduces the amount of lung damaging particulates that result from burning fossil fuels. Hemp ethanol and biodiesel also do not emit the cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and benzene found in petroleum exhaust. Hemp fuels also don’t contribute to acid rain.
The whole world has become the site of the largest oil spill and environmental disaster ever, but it is in the atmosphere and being absorbed into the landscape, rivers, lakes, and oceans. It is the result of burning hundreds of billions of gallons of petroleum, and using enormous amounts of coal, tar sands, oil shale, and natural gas every year.
Hemp plants grow so densely, absorb air pollution, and are an excellent source of oxygen. Cellulosic ethanol can meet the demands of ethanol where limited starch (corn) ethanol leaves off. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides the requirement that the U.S. should be deriving 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012 from any feedstock. This can and should include hemp, and it should include ethanol made with landscape clippings.
Another plant that can be used for cellulosic ethanol is arundo donax, which is grass that is also known as “giant reed.” This plant grows as much as two feet per week and produces more biomass per acre than hemp, and more than any other crop. But, giant reed is considered an invasive weed that is overtaking land in the western states, and farmers would not welcome it being introduced into their region. Other crops that can create more biomass per acre include corn, kenaf, and sugar cane.
The benefit of hemp is that it provides a wide variety of uses, more than any other plant.
The Energy Policy Pact also requires the production of 250 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol, which excludes corn, beets, sugar cane, etc. (starch or sugar ethanol). But this can include hemp ethanol as well as ethanol made from the number-one crop produced in America: landscape clippings – which can be collected from neighborhoods, schools, sporting facilities, and other places that produce lawn clippings. A friend asked me how we could go about collecting all of those landscape clippings. I told him that we are already collecting huge amounts of it, and we are doing it with trash trucks that treat it like it is worthless, and that haul it to landfills and other trash dumps. Instead of landfills the landscape clippings could be taken to biorefineries to make cellulosic ethanol.
U.S. farmers are missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in industrial hemp farming. According to VoteHemp.com, over $350 million worth of hemp products were sold in the U.S. during 2007. Canadian hemp farmers are shipping hemp food products (oil, protein powder, milk, nutrition bars) to over 15 countries. Manitoba Harvest, a Canadian company that makes hemp food products, has seen its three flavors of hemp milk (vanilla, chocolate, and plain), quickly become popular in natural foods stores across the U.S., and now compete with sales of soy and other non-dairy milk products. Hemp Oil Canada, which makes other hemp food products, experienced a surge in sales of over 40% during 2007. Hemp companies are among the fastest growing companies in Canada.
U.S. farmers can’t grow hemp. If they did they would risk arrest and expensive legal battles.
In Canada, just north of the U.S. border, industrial hemp farming was legalized in 1998. Now farmers there are legally growing thousands of acres of hemp. In 2006 Canadian farmers grew an estimated 48,000 acres of hemp.
The European Union has provided subsidies to industrial hemp farmers since the 1990s.
The U.S. not only doesn’t allow hemp to be grown, it subsidizes crops that would compete with and that are environmentally inferior to hemp, including corn, soy, cotton, and forestry (paper). And the U.S. also provides tax subsidies to the petroleum industry (hemp can be used to make ethanol and fuel oil). The U.S. even provides hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies to the tobacco industry.
Why can’t farmers in the U.S. grow hemp?
Keep reading, and decide for yourself.
“California farmers are missing out on a multimillion-dollar market that already exists in California.
Hundreds of hemp products are made right here in California, but manufacturers are forced to import hemp seed, oil, and fiber from other countries. This measure will allow California to lead the way in tapping into a $270 million industry that’s growing by $26 million each year.”
– California’s Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno, co-author of bill, AB1147, which would have been a step toward allowing California farmers to grow hemp, June 2006. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger later vetoed it. It was reintroduced in 2007, and never made it into law.
For thousands of years hemp was the most common plant grown for industrial uses. It is believed that hemp was brought from Asia into Greece by the Scythians, who are also credited with bringing it into Russia and Europe. It is believed that Arabs brought hemp into the Mediterranean port towns. By the Middle Ages hemp farming was well established in Europe and the fiber and seed of the crop was used to make fabric, food, fuel, and shelter.
Today it is illegal to grow hemp in the U.S. Farmers can’t grow it. Native Americans can’t grow it on reservations. If you plant five seeds you are committing a felony. Some of the founders and first presidents of the U.S. grew hemp on their farms. Today they would be arrested.
On June 1, 1996, actor and hemp activist Woody Harrelson challenged the legislation making industrial hemp farming illegal in the U.S. It was the day he planted four hemp seeds on his property in Lee County, Kentucky. Arrested on a misdemeanor, Harrelson was entangled in legal issues that lasted four years. Harrelson and his legal counsel argued that it was unconstitutional to prohibit the growing of hemp. Harrelson’s attorney was former judge and Republican Governor Louis B. Nunn. Harrelson rejected the prosecutor’s plea bargain of a five-hundred-dollar fine and one month in jail. The day he appeared in court to hear the jury’s decision Harrelson wore a suit made of hemp fabric. The jury ruled that Harrelson was not guilty. The money spent on prosecuting Harrelson was clearly a waste, and the case stands as another example of how pathetic the laws are that keep hemp farming illegal. (I include Woody Harrelson’s court brief in the Appendix of this book.)
“Now it is time to start promoting the growth of hemp so we can have a great economic future in Kentucky. We need to educate people about the distinction between marijuana and hemp.”
– Louis B. Nunn, attorney for Woody Harrelson
Today the U.S. federal law still prevents the growing of industrial hemp because hemp is considered to be a drug. The laws are mixed up with laws governing a sister plant commonly known in the U.S. as marijuana.