HEMP BUILDING MATERIALS

Hemp helps detoxify and regenerate the soil
Falling leaves and shrubs not used in processing hemp fall to the ground and replenish the soil with nutrients, nitrogen, and oxygen. This rich organic mulch promotes the development of fertile grassland. Some of the carbon that is "breathed" in by the plant in the form of CO2 is left in the roots and crop residues in the field. The CO2 is broken down by photosynthesis into carbon and oxygen, with oxygen being aspirated back into the atmosphere. With each season more CO2 is reduced from the air and added to the soil.

Hemp roots absorb and dissipate the energy of rain and runoff, which protects fertilizer, soil, and keeps seeds in place. Hemp plants slow down the velocity of runoff by absorbing moisture. By creating shade, hemp plants moderate extreme variations in temperatures, which conserves moisture in the soil. Hemp plants reduce the loss of topsoil in windy conditions. Hemp plants also loosen the earth for subsequent crops.

The minimum benefit of a hemp crop is in its use as a rotation crop. Since hemp stabilizes and enriches the soil farmers grow crops on, and provides them with weed-free fields, without cost of herbicides, it has value even if no part of the plant is being harvested and used. Any industry or monetary benefit beyond this value is a bonus. Hemp could be grown as a rotation crop and not compete with any other food crops for the most productive farmland. Marginal lands make fine soil for hemp, or hemp can be grown in between growing seasons.

Rotating hemp reduces cyst nematodes, a soil parasite, without any chemical input.

Hemp plants can even pull nuclear toxins from the soil. In fact hemp was planted near and around the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site to pull radioactive elements from the ground. The process is called phyto-remediation, which means using plants (phyto) to clean up polluted sites. Phyto-remediation can be used to remove nuclear elements, and to clean up metals, pesticides, solvents, crude oil, and other toxins from landfills. Hemp breaks down pollutants and stabilizes metal contaminants by acting as a filter. Hemp is proving to be one of the best phyto-remediative plants found.

Environment
All hemp products are completely biodegradable, recyclable, and hemp is a reusable resource in every aspect: pulp, fiber, protein, cellulose, oil, or biomass.

Hemp can grow in any agronomic system, in any climate, and requires no herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, or insecticides to grow well. Hemp is its own fertilizer, its own herbicide (it is a weed), and its own pesticide. Hemp plants only need 10-13 inches of water, 1/3 of the amount that cotton requires, to grow to 2-4 metres in 3-4 months.

Deforestation is a big problem. Keeping trees alive and standing is necessary to our oxygen supply, and our well being. Trees provide the infrastructure that keeps microbes, insects, plants, fungi, etc. alive. The older and bigger the tree, the better for the environment it is. The more trees there are, the more oxygen is in the air, which helps reduce global warming.

Using hemp as biomass fuel would also reduce global warming. Hemp biomass burns with virtually no sulphur emissions or ash, which helps also to minimize acid rain.

Hemp growing could completely eradicate the necessity to use wood at all because anything made from wood can be made from hemp, especially paper. The paper demand is suppose to double in next 25 years, and we simply cannot meet this demand without clear-cutting all of our forest. Using hemp for paper could reduce deforestation by half. An acre of hemp equals at least 4 acres of trees annually. Hemp paper can be recycled 7 to 8 times, compared with only 3 times for wood pulp paper. Hemp paper also does not need to be bleached with poisonous dioxins, which poison waterways.
Carpets made from nylon, polyester, and polypropylene contaminate underground water. Hemp carpet is biodegradable and safe for the ground water when it is discarded. In 1993, carpet made up 1% of solid waste and 2% of waste by volume.

Our garbage facilities are overfilling with plastics. Hemp can make plastics that are biodegradable.

Petrochemicals lubricants, paints, sealants, etc., poison the ground when they are discarded. Hemp can replace all of these petroleum-based products with non-toxic biodegradable organic oil-based products.

If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect, and stop deforestation; THEN there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time . . . And that substance is the same one that did it all before. . . Hemp! --Jack Herer's challenge in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, unanswered for twenty years.

"Why use the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the fields?"--Henry Ford

While the leaves of "marijuana" and hemp appear similar, the differences outweigh the similarities greatly. Hemp is not "marijuana". Smoking hemp will not get you "high" (whatever that means), because it has almost no THC.

Industrial hemp in a field looks vastly different from marijuana. Hemp is tall and closely spaced, with little branching or leafing except at the top. Marijuana is planted with yards of space between plants, to encourage branching and budding (flower tops are where the THC is).

Neither hemp farmers nor marijuana growers will want their crops anywhere near each other.

Cross-pollination from hemp will destroy the potency of marijuana seed crops. Also, since hemp farmers will be under "special" scrutiny by law enforcement, marijuana farmers will continue to plant their crops somewhere else, like wherever they plant them now.

The fact is farming, manufacture, and marketing of industrial hemp will follow a chicken-egg-chicken-egg path of mutual dependence and adjustment and will grow in a more-or-less orderly fashion directed by the free market.

Excellent rotation crop

A. Ability to suppress soil-borne diseases
"Even though hemp is an ancient crop, there are few reports on soil-borne diseases in this crop and the general impression is that cultivation of hemp poses few problems with plant diseases" (as cited from (Termorshuizen 1991) in Kok, Coenen & de Heij 1994, p6).  Part of the Netherlands Hemp Research Programme included a study of the effect a particular cultivar, Kompolti Hybrid TC, had on selected soilborne pathogens.  "Kok et al. (1994) investigated the effect of fibre hemp on three major soil pathogens...  all three pathogens were suppressed by hemp, and the authors concluded that the introduction of hemp in a crop rotation might improve soil health" (van der Werf, van Geel, & Wijlhuizen 1995, p5).  This is very important research because if it is found that fiber hemp can suppress certain soil-borne pathogens, it could then be used as a rotation crop and help eliminate or suppress these pathogens for other crops which are more susceptible to them.

B. Herbicides, Pesticides
van der Werf concludes his thesis by asking the question, is hemp a promising 'new' crop?  He says, "...on the whole there is no reason to use pesticides in hemp: herbicides are superfluous, fungicides have not been found effective and other biocides are not needed" (van der Werf 1994, pl39).  Ian Low, the manager in charge of the hemp trials in England, said in his report at the Bioresource Hemp, "we have not found it necessary to use herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides on the crop and have no reason to think this will change in the future" (1994, p2).

C. Weed Smotherer
Hemp grows very quickly, approximately four meters in three months under ideal conditions (Katelaris, Dr. A., pers. comm., 1 June 1995).  Because it grows so fast and densely, it blocks out sunlight to any other weeds trying to grow.  Unless plant densities were very low, the Netherlands' experiments showed that hemp crops suppressed weeds.  "This confirms literature reports stating that fibre hemp is an extremely effective weed suppressor...  (Heuser 1927, Tarasov 1975, Lotz et al. 1991)" (van der Werf, van Geel, &: Wijlhuizen 1995, p5).

D. Improves soil structure
If sensitive farming methods of agriculture are practiced, hemp will improve the soil structure due to its deep tap-route aerating the sub-soil.  Also, after the hemp is harvested, the remaining tops of the stalks (leaves and seeds) will serve as a 'green' manure (Katelaris, Dr.  A., pers. comm., 1 June 1995).

Consumption of carbon dioxide
Dr. Katelaris, who runs the Cannabis Clothing Company in Sydney, said hemp was very effective in eliminating carbon dioxide from the environment.  He said every tonne of cellulose grown and used removes 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.  For example, if 200,000 hectares of hemp were grown (averaging a yield of 12 tonnes (dried stem matter) per hectare) 3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide would be removed (Katelaris, Dr. K., pers. comm., 4 May 1995).  This would have obvious benefits for the greenhouse effect.

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