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HEMP, THE PLANT THAT CAN SAVE MOTHER EARTH 

 
Footnotes 1 thru 3 
 
Footnote #1:
If you are unfamiliar with the facts about hemp, the world's premier renewable natural resource, a great place to start is Jack Herer's information-compressed, Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes, © 1985, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, available in many bookstores (as well as The Ohio Hempery), or from H.E.M.P., 5632 Van Nuys Blvd., Suite 210, Van Nuys, CA 91401. From the Introduction:
The purpose of this book is to revive the authoritative historical, social and economic perspective needed to ensure comprehensive legal reforms, abolish cannabis hemp/marijuana prohibition laws, and save the Earth's life systems.
Other recommendable books listed below are available from the Holiday 1995 edition of The Ohio Hempery Catalog: 

 
Footnote #2:
"About 6% of contiguous United States land area put into cultivation
for biomass could supply all current demands for oil and gas."

Very few people know what "biomass conversion" or "pyrolysis" mean--not only in terms of their dictionary definitions, but in terms of what they mean as alternative sources of energy, to the limited, expensive and dirty petro-chemical, nuclear, or coal sources. The only reason the U.S.--and every other nation on earth--can't once again become energy independent and smog free is because people are not educated concerning the facts about solutions to the environment/energy "crises" continuously lamented and tepidly addressed by "leaders," claiming they are the best informed to decide what to do. The knowledge exists right now for our lifeline to the future and the health and well-being of the Seventh Generation yet unborn. Everyone of us must learn about this existent lifeline and teach everyone else we know what the facts are for THE way out of the current "crisis". 

 
HEMP FOR FUEL
Excerpted from Energy Farming in America, by Lynn Osburn

BIOMASS CONVERSION TO FUEL HAS PROVEN ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE, first in laboratory tests and by continuous operation of pilot plants in field tests since 1973. When the energy crop is growing it takes in C02 from the air, so when it is burned the C02 is released, creating a balanced system.

Biomass is the term used to describe all biologically produced matter. World production of biomass is estimated at 146 billion metric tons a year, mostly wild plant growth. Some farm crops and trees can produce up to 20 metric tons per acre of biomass a year. Types of algae and grasses may produce 50 metric tons per year.

This biomass has a heating value of 5000-8000 BTU/lb, with virtually no ash or sulfur produced during combustion. About 6% of contiguous United States land area put into cultivation for biomass could supply all current demands for oil and gas.

The foundation upon which this will be achieved is the emerging concept of "energy farming," wherein farmers grow and harvest crops for biomass conversion to fuels. 

 
PYROLYSIS IS THE TECHNIQUE OF APPLYING HIGH HEAT TO ORGANIC MATTER (ligno-cellulosic materials) in the absence of air or in reduced air. The process can produce charcoal, condensable organic liquids (pyrolytic fuel oil), non-condensable gasses, acetic acid, acetone, and methanol. The process can be adjusted to favor charcoal, pyrolytic oil, gas, or methanol production with a 95.5% fuel-to-feed efficiency.

Pyrolysis has been used since the dawn of civilization. Ancient Egyptians practiced wood distillation by collecting the tars and pyroligneous acid for use in their embalming industry.

Methanol-powered automobiles and reduced emissions from coal-fired power plants can be accomplished by biomass conversion to fuel utilizing pyrolysis technology, and at the same time save the American family farm while turning the American heartland into a prosperous source of clean energy production.

Pyrolysis has the advantage of using the same technology now used to process crude fossil fuel oil and coal. Coal and oil conversion is more efficient in terms of fuel-to-feed ratio, but biomass conversion by pyrolysis has many environmental and economic advantages over coal and oil.

Pyrolysis facilities will run three shifts a day. Some 68% of the energy of the raw biomass will be contained in the charcoal and fuel oils made at the facility. This charcoal has nearly the same heating value in BTU as coal, with virtually no sulfur.

Pyrolytic fuel oil has similar properties to no. 2 and no. 6 fuel oil. The charcoal can be transported economically by rail to all urban area power plants generating electricity. The fuel oil can be transported economically by trucking creating more jobs for Americans. When these plants use charcoal instead of coal, the problems of acid rain will begin to disappear.

When this energy system is on line producing a steady supply of fuel for electrical power plants, it will be more feasible to build the complex gasifying systems to produce methanol from the cubed biomass, or make synthetic gasoline from the methanol by the addition of the Mobil Co. process equipment to the gasifier. 

 
FARMERS MUST BE ALLOWED TO GROW AN ENERGY CROP capable of producing 10 tons per acre in 90-120 days. This crop must be woody in nature and high in lignocellulose. It must be able to grow in all climactic zones in America.

And it should not compete with food crops for the most productive land, but be grown in rotation with food crops or on marginal land where food crop production isn't profitable.

When farmers can make a profit growing energy, it will not take long to get 6% of continental American land mass into cultivation of biomass fuel--enough to replace our economy's dependence on fossil fuels. We will no longer be increasing the C02 burden in the atmosphere. The threat of global greenhouse warming and adverse climactic change will diminish.

To keep costs down, pyrolysis reactors need to be located within a 50 mile radius of the energy farms. This necessity will bring life back to our small towns by providing jobs locally. 

 
HEMP IS THE NUMBER ONE BIOMASS PRODUCER ON PLANET EARTH: 10 tons per acre in approximately four months. It is a woody plant containing 77% cellulose. Wood produces 60% cellulose.

This energy crop can be harvested with equipment readily available. It can be "cubed" by modifying hay cubing equipment. This method condenses the bulk, reducing trucking costs from the field to the pyrolysis reactor. And the biomass cubes are ready for conversion with no further treatment.

Hemp is drought resistant, making it an ideal crop in the dry western regions of the country. Hemp is the only biomass resource capable of making America energy independent. And our government outlawed it in 1938.

Remember, in 10 years, by the year 2000, America will have exhausted 80% of her petroleum reserves. Will we then go to war with the Arabs for the privilege of driving our cars; will we stripmine our land for coal, and poison our air so we can drive our autos an extra 100 years; will we raze our forests for our energy needs?

During World War II, our supply of hemp was cut off by the Japanese. The federal government responded to the emergency by suspending marijuana prohibition. Patriotic American farmers were encouraged to apply for a license to cultivate hemp and responded enthusiastically. Hundreds of thousands of acres of hemp were grown.

The argument against hemp production does not hold up to scrutiny: hemp grown for biomass makes very poor grade marijuana. The 20 to 40 million Americans who smoke marijuana would loath to smoke hemp grown for biomass, so a farmer's hemp biomass crop is worthless as marijuana.

It is time the government once again respond to our economic emergency as they did in WWII to permit our farmers to grow American hemp so this mighty nation can once again become energy independent and smog free.

For more information on the many uses of hemp, contact BACH, the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp, Box 71093, LA, CA 90071-0093, 213/288-4152.

--excerpt from Herer, Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1992 edition, p. 136. For an updated version of Energy Farming In America, Books In Print lists Ecohemp: Economy and Ecolgy with Hemp; see also the bi-monthly Hemp Line Journal, both published by

Access Unlimited
P.O. Box 1900
Frazier Park, CA
93225
805/632-2644 
 
Footnote #3:
The device invented was named the decorticator and in the mid 1930s it was poised to do for hemp what the cotton gin had done for cotton: create a fast and economically feasible way of "removing the fiber-bearing cortex from the rest of the stalk, making hemp fiber available for use without a prohibitive amount of human labor." (Popular Mechanics, February, 1938) 
 












 

A STRATEGY TO DEREGULATE AMERICAN HEMP

In 1937, a Special Interest Group Got the Cannabis Industry Banned by
Attacking "Marijuana" While Concealing the Many Valuable Uses of the Plant.
Today, a Public Interest Group, BACH, Intends to Deregulate Cannabis by
Promoting "Hemp" and Showing How Everyone Benefits From This Reform. 

 
We start with a natural core constituency: Civil libertarians, Rock-n-Roll/Rasta/Jazz music fans, paraphernalia makers and users, medical users, sympathetic media and officials, Vietnam vets, entrepreneurs, the art community and the "Sixties Generation." We can rapidly win over farmers, economists, environmentalists, holistic/natural medicine advocates, the unemployed, hunger relief projects, tax reformers and free market/anti-Big Government forces and others.

THE FARMING COMMUNITY is our linchpin, linking the Northwest, Midwest and South. It is in financial trouble and will be the first major beneficiary of hemp commerce.

TEXTILE, FUEL, PAPER INDUSTRIES AND MARKETS, MEDICAL AND RECREATIONAL USERS are concentrated in coastal and urbanized population centers.

SHIPPING, INVESTORS, COMMODITIES MARKETS AND BANKS link these regions, create a role for the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in deregulating hemp and add to the financial pressure for reform.

We anticipate strong resistance in pharmaceuticals and plastics, where entrenched forces stand to lose a share of the market when hemp products come into common use.
But this pressure will soon be offset by the support of hemp industry consumers, investors and workers who benefit from new spin-off industries.

CAMPAIGN SUMMARY

PHASE ONE: ORGANIZATION: Develop and target literature and lobby campaigns, alert our consituency, explain the economic and social significance of this reform to potential allies and win "celebrity" endorsements. We need to demonstrate an interstate supply and demand network to establish the economic vitality of hemp commerce, thereby drawing financial and political support and setting the stage for ICC intervention against state laws that impede trade.

PHASE TWO: PUBLIC RELATIONS: Launch a program of speaking engagements and advertisments (PSAs and paid) to redefine the hemp debate, sway the general public and create a climate of support based on people's self-interest. Our goal is to disassociate hemp from "drugs" and align it with jobs, prosperity and traditional American self-sufficiency.

PHASE THREE: DEREGULATION: Introduce non-threatening deregulation legislation, support initiatives/referenda, set up test cases to pursue legalization through the courts and use business pressure to win ICC action. 


   BACH  Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp
         P.O. Box 71903, Los Angeles, CA  90071-0093  
         310/288-4152

"We are able to inform you that ancient grandfathers, the great stands of cedar and redwoods, are in danger of extinction by chainsaws. The maple, chief of trees, is dying from the top down, as was prophesied by Ganiodaiio, Handsome Lake, in 1799. Great rivers and streams are filled with chemicals and filth, and these great veins of life are being used as sewers.

"We were told the female is sacred and carries the gift of life as our Mother Earth, the family is the center of our life and that we must build our communities with life and respect for one another.

"We were told the Creator loves children the most, and we can tell the state of affairs of the nation by how the children are being treated.

"When we return to Onondaga, we will begin our Great Midwinter ceremonies. We will tie the past year in a bundle and give thanks once again for another year on this earth.

"This was given to us, and we have despoiled and polluted it. If we are to survive, dear friends and colleagues, we must clean it up now or suffer its consequences.

. . . But Lyons also remembered turning to Leon Shenandoah, chief of the Grand Council of the Six Nations Confederacy. "My chief, he doesn't say much, but I asked and he said, `They're not taking it serious enough. I don't think they realize what's going to happen to them. What's coming.' He would have liked to see less posturing. We have our prophecies. We know what is coming down the road.'"

-- Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons, on the Global Forum he
helped organize on Environment and Development for
Survival held in Moscow, January 15 to 19, 1990.