(Click on cover for free preview .pdf
ebook)
Hemp can help us bootstrap
out of our
economic crisis
and into the
Emerald Age of Hemp
Hemp, still America's
number one cash crop,
was a billion dollar crop in 1938,
making hemp a multi trillion dollar crop now!
Hemp puts the green back in greenback!!!
Hemp For
Victory:
Volume 5
The
Trillion Dollar Crop
By Richard
M. Davis
Founder & Curator, USA Hemp Museum
Let science drive
policy.
Learn how
hemp can help
save our economy and ourselves.
Save $44 billion from Prison, Inc.
Earn $33 Billion on hemp sales tax
Recommended Reading Drug War Crimes by
Harvard Economist Jeffrey A. Miron
1. WELCOME
Welcome to the USA Hemp
Museum's economics room. Hemp is the perfect tool for us to use to
bootstrap ourselves out of this economic mess and into the era of
peaceful abundance.
My book above, HEMP FOR
VICTORY: THE TRILLION DOLLAR CROP is an early edition of material I'm
working on to answer the call for more information on how to use this
most remarkable plant to make life better.
Below are excerpts from the
papers listed above. The room guide is linked to the original
papers at their hosting links/source.
$77 Billion A Year
Can Be Saved/Earned
By Ending The War On Drugs
According To Harvard Economist Jeffrey Miron
Save $44 billion from Prison, Inc. Earn $33 Billion on hemp sales tax
" If America had
not been infected with marijuana hysteria, hemp could be solving our
energy problems today. When marijuana was outlawed most people did
not know "marijuana" was Mexican slang for cannabis hemp. The
American people, including doctors who routinely prescribed cannabis
extract medicines, thought hemp and marijuana were two different
plants. Otherwise hemp prohibition would never have happened.
Eastern Europeans were not subjected to the hysterical
anti-marijuana syndrome plaguing the West. Poland, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia among others, continued to make clothing from hemp
fibers and medicines from hemp flowers. They pressed the versatile
and edible oil from the seeds and used the left over high protein
seed mash to make breakfast cereal and livestock feed. And they used
surplus hemp for building insulation.
GREEN
ECONOMY based on a hemp multi-industry complex will
provide income for farmers in every state. . . .
thousands of new products generating tens of thousands
of sustainable new jobs. "
Return the federal reserve
to the federal government
Learn how and why from THE WEB OF DEBT THE SHOCKING TRUTH
ABOUT OUR MONEY SYSTEM AND HOW WE CAN BREAK FREE
There are
many other areas of the economy that would benefit from ending hemp
prohibition and the resulting stimulation of commerce in rediscovered
hemp products, according to the Hempstead Company, Ecolution, The Body
Shop, Hanf Haus, etc.
Legal
hemp will return billions of dollars worth of natural resource potential
back to the farmers and bring millions of good jobs in energy production
to America’s heartland. Hemp energy farmers will become our nation’s
largest producers of raw materials.
Family
farms will be saved. Crops can be tailored to the needs of the nation.
Hemp can be grown for BDF (biomass derived fuels) resources at about $30
per ton. Hempseed crops will again supply the paint and varnish
industries with a superior organic and life sustaining alternative to
petrochemicals. Hempseed oil has chemical properties similar to linseed
oil. And the market is wide open for highly nutritious and delicious
foods made from hempseed with its health-giving essential fatty acids
and proteins.
Hemp
grown for fiber will take the paper and textile industry out of the
hands of the multinational corporations, and back to the local
communities. "
[Text of 14 minute U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture
Film, 1942]
"Long ago when these ancient Grecian temples
were new, hemp was already old in the service of mankind. For thousands
of years, even then, this plant had been grown for cordage and cloth in
China and elsewhere in the Far East. For centuries prior to about 1850
all the ships that sailed the western seas were rigged with hempen rope
and sails. For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was
indispensable. A 44-gun frigate like our cherished Old Ironsides took
over 60 tons of hemp for rigging, including an anchor cable 25 inches
in circumference. The Conestoga wagons and prairie schooners of pioneer
days were covered with hemp canvas. Indeed the very word canvas comes
from the Arabic word for hemp. In those days hemp was an important crop
in Kentucky and Missouri. Then came cheaper imported fibers for
cordage, like jute, sisal, and Manila hemp, and the culture of hemp in
America declined.
But now with Philippine and East Indian sources
of Hemp in the hands of the Japanese, and shipment of jute from India
curtailed, American hemp must meet the needs of our Army and Navy as
well as of our industry. In 1942, patriotic farmers at the government's
request planted 36,000 acres of seed hemp, an increase of several
thousand percent. The goal for 1943 is 50,000 acres of seed hemp. In
Kentucky much of the seed hemp acreage is on river bottom land such as
this. Some of these fields are inaccessible except by boat. Thus plans
are afoot for a great expansion of a hemp industry as a part of the war
program. "
"According to the 3rd
edition of “Environmental Chemistry”
by Professor Stanley E. Manahan, “Meeting
US demands for oil and gas would require that about 6% of the land area
of the coterminous 48 states be cultivated intensively for energy
production.” (40) According to one source, the
US has 60 million idle acres of farmland (41) -
about 3% of US land area – and another 130 million
or so acres devoted to raising meat (42). According to another source,
more than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for
the
U.S. livestock population
-- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares
for cultivated feed grains. (43) Either way, it seems there's more than
enough land to grow fuel with, if we each eat five or ten fewer steaks
every year. As well, urban agriculture is another option to free land up
for fuel crops – for example, 6% of Cuba's
food supply is grown in the city of Havana. (44) Not only would urban agriculture
increase the area available for food, it would conserve energy
previously used to transport food."
International Association for Cannabis as Medicine:
www.acmed.org/english/main.htm
Web
The Hemp Commerce & Farming Report: www.hempreport.com
Industrial hemp information network: www.hemptech.com
Journals
Journal of the International Hemp Association. Vol. 1
(1994)–Vol. 6 (1999). (Vols. 1–5 and part of Vol. 6 available online
at mojo.calyx.net/~olsen/HEMP/IHA/). Superseded by Journal of
Industrial Hemp.
Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics. Hawarth Press. Vol. 1
published 2001.
Journal of Industrial Hemp. Haworth Press. Vol. 1 to be
published 2002.
Books
Blade (1998), Bócsa and Karus (1998), Ceapoiu (1958), Clarke
(1977, 1998a), Joyce and Curry (1970), McPartland et al. (2000), de
Meijer (1994), Nova Institute (1995, 1997a, 1997b, 2000), Ranalli
(1998), Riddlestone et al. 1994, Small (1979), Van der Werf (1994a).
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World Health Organization. 1997. Cannabis: A health
perspective and research agenda. World Health Organization, Geneva.
(abstract at www.ndp.govt.nz/cannabis/cannabiswho.html).
" Enterprise Combination. Modern farmers
plan their production to include the most profitable mix of products in
a Acropping sequence@
or crop rotation. (Wilcox et al, 1974) The result is a mix of crop and
livestock enterprises which is determined by the principle of equal
marginal returns. Hemp, due to its exceptionally low fertilizer and
irrigation needs, high nutrient return (with up to 70% of all nutrients
absorbed by the plant returned to the soil), and its short-day growing
cycle, is an ideal rotational alternative for use with short season
high-demand crops. (Hemp, 1994) Thus, it offers modern farmers the
opportunity to make optimum use of available resources with the lowest
possible average cost figures, given the nature of the secondary crop
(which often can utilize, at least in part, the nutrient and soil
enrichment properties of the hemp crop in lieu of expensive and
ecologically damaging fertilizers) and, therefore, provides a far more
attractive cost curve than is the case for other agricultural products.
In addition, because many of the byproducts of hemp production are
appropriate for use as livestock feed, the range of efficient product
mixes is even greater than is the case with many other product choices.
The Farm Market System.
As a close approximation of a perfectly competitive market
organization, agricultural firms have above average needs for efficient
and cost effective means of production. In addition, due to the nature
of a competitive market, the opportunity to compete on the basis of
product differentiation is essentially non-existent, and the sole
criteria for successful production becomes the ability to produce goods
profitably given the fact that the product demand curve for agricultural
products is perfectly price elastic (from the standpoint of the
individual firm, of course, from the industry perspective, the curve is
highly inelastic). Thus the selection of a product mix which maximizes
the potential for profit under as wide a range of conditions as possible
is a necessity for any firm which wishes to remain competitive.
Moreover, due to the nature of the farm market itself, which is based in
large part on speculative investment in future production (the
commodities market) as well as the wide range of uses for its outputs,
which in the case of hemp include such diverse applications as the
production of paper, use as a fuel, food production, clothing
production, and industrial applications, crop selections which maximize
not only production possibilities but market possibilities as well
increase the likelihood of profit while minimizing the impact of any
potential substitution effect as a result of the lowering of the price
of other agricultural products. Indeed, given the exceptionally wide
range of products which incorporate hemp into their production, the
likelihood that a substitute product will adversely affect product
pricing is exceptionally low, a positive inducement to farmers to
produce the crop."
Currently, the markets for bast
fibers like industrial hemp include specialty textiles, paper, and
composites. Cordage markets have long disappeared, as natural
fibers have largely been replaced by plastic and steel (Miller, 1991;
Orgel and Ravnitzky, 1994). In recent years, Canada, Australia, and a
few European countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, have
researched industrial hemp as a possible fiber for textile and paper
production. Hungary and China currently are the major producers of
high-quality, water-retted hemp textile fibers (Ehrensing). Small
specialty pulp and paper mills in Britain, Spain, and Eastern Europe
process flax, hemp, and other specialty fibers. Other potential uses of
hemp bast fiber include molded automobile parts and as a replacement for
fiberglass. In addition, hurds are utilized in various applications such
as animal bedding.
Industry sources and some academic
studies, such as Thompson et al. (1998) and Gardner and White (1998),
cite numerous current and potential uses for hemp bast fiber and hurds.
For these applications to develop or expand, hemp will have to compete
with current raw materials and manufacturing practices. In the market
for nonwood fibers, hemp would have to compete with cotton, flax, abaca,
sisal, and other nonwood fibers in terms of fiber characteristics, fiber
quality, and price. The U.S. market for hemp fibers is, and will likely
remain, a small, thin market. Changes in price or quantity could be more
disruptive and have a greater adverse impact on market participants than
would be the case in a larger market. For example, small increases in
world hemp fiber and tow production caused export prices to fall by half
to a world average of 35 cents per pound in 1996 (Vantreese, 1998). See
Appendix II for a discussion and some examples of oversupply in small,
thin markets.
Specialty Textiles
According to Ehrensing (1998),
hemp textile production is based primarily in Asia and central Europe.
Most hemp fiber used in textiles is water-retted in China or Hungary.
However, water retting has been largely abandoned in countries where
labor is expensive or environmental regulations are enforced. Several
companies in Poland also make hemp yarn and fabrics (Gardner and White).
A small market based on hemp textiles imported from China, Poland, and
Hungary has developed in North America and western Europe during the
1990’s. In the last few years, a couple of U.S. companies have begun
producing hemp yarns and/or fabrics (Gross, Gardner and White).
The current, low-end size of the
U.S. market for hemp raw materials may be defined as the equivalent
domestic production and acreage required to replace imports of hemp
fiber, yarn, and fabric in 1999.
1
Reichert (1994) reports hemp fiber yields of 800 to 2,320 pounds of
fiber per acre. Assuming a potential U.S. yield of 1,550 pounds of fiber
per acre (midpoint of the range) and using linen yarn and fabric
conversion factors (1.0989 and 1.1447, respectively), the total import
quantity of hemp fiber, yarn, and fabric in 1999 could have been
produced on less than 2,000 acres of land. Given the average size of
farms in the United States (near 500 acres), just a few farms could have
supplied the hemp fiber equivalent of 1999 import levels.
Detailed data are not available on
the amount of hemp seed or oil or the levels of hemp-containing clothing
and household furnishings imported into the United States. Thus, this
calculation understates the production capacity needed to replace all
hemp product imports. Nevertheless, the calculation does demonstrate the
small, thin nature of the market for industrial hemp and its products in
the United States.
Hemp’s closest competing fiber for
textile uses—in terms of fiber production, processing, and
characteristics— is linen, which is derived from textile flax.
Textile flax is not grown in the
United States, with demand met wholly by imports. While U.S. imports of
hemp fiber, yarn, and fabric have increased dramatically in recent
years, 1999 hemp imports (January-September) represented just 0.5
percent of U.S. linen yarn, thread, and fabric imports. However, the
U.S. market for linen may indicate the longer term potential demand for
hemp fiber and products. During 1989-99, imports of linen yarn, thread,
and fabrics accounted for 62 percent of total linen imports (table 2).
Linen apparel accounted for another 33 percent, with household
furnishing and floor coverings taking up the remainder. The United
States also exports a small amount of linen products (table 3).
A long-term, high-end size of the
potential U.S. market for hemp fiber could be defined by considering the
equivalent domestic production and acreage required to replace both hemp
and linen imports. The hemp fiber required to replace the equivalent
level of hemp and linen fiber, yarn, and fabric imports in 1999 could
have been produced on 250,000 acres—roughly 40 percent of 1997 tobacco
acreage, 5 percent of U.S. oat acreage, or 0.4 percent of wheat acreage."
"Then came World War II. The
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shut off foreign supplies of "manilla hemp"
fiber from the Phillipines. The USDA produced a film called Hemp For Victory
to encourage US farmers to grow hemp for the war effort. The US government
formed War Hemp Industries and subsidized hemp cultivation. During the War
and US farmers grew about a million acres of hemp across the midwest as part
of that program.
After the war ended,
the government quietly shut down all the hemp processing plants and the
industry faded away again.
During the period from
1937 to the late 60's the US government understood and acknowledged that
Industrial Hemp and marijuana were distinct varieties of the cannabis
plant. Hemp is no longer recognized as distinct from marijuana since the
passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970. This is despite
the fact that a specific exemption for hemp was included in the CSA
under the definition of marijuana.
The United States
government has published numerous reports and other documents on hemp
dating back to the beginnings of our country. Below is a list of some of
the documents that have been discovered:
* 1797: SECRETARY OF
WAR: U.S.S. CONSTITUTION'S HEMP
* 1810: JOHN QUINCY
ADAMS - RUSSIAN HEMP CULTIVATION
* 1827: U.S. NAVY
COMMISSIONER - WATER-ROTTED HEMP
* 1873: HEMP CULTURE IN
JAPAN
* 1895: USDA - HEMP
SEED
* 1899: USDA SECRETARY
- HEMP
* 1901: USDA LYSTER
DEWEY RE; HEMP & FLAX SEED
* 1901: USDA LYSTER
DEWEY 13 PAGE ARTICLE ON HEMP
* 1903: USDA LYSTER
DEWEY RE; PRINCIPAL COMMERCIAL PLANT FIBERS
* 1943: USDA - HEMP FOR
VICTORY - DOCUMENTARY FILM
* 1947: USDA - HEMP DAY
LENGTH & FLOWERING
* 1956: USDA -
MONOECIOUS HEMP BREEDING IN THE U.S.
These documents and
many more are published online by USA hemp historian extraordinaire,
John E. Dvorak. His Digital Hemp History Library is the most complete
source for historical hemp documents and data anywhere. To visit the
Library click here.
A New, Multi-Billion
Dollar Discovery --With over 50,000 commercial uses, today's hemp is the
most versatile, sustainable and valuable natural resource on Earth. Conservative
estimates of its profit potential surpass $500 billion per year and tens of
thousands of new jobs, once the trade barriers are removed and this valuable
cash crop is again allowed to compete. Restoring hemp to its traditional role as
the primary source of food, clothing, shelter, fuel, paper, fiber, medicine and
other consumer goods will put money into local communities for an ecological and
financially stable economy.
In order to allow a return to sensible
behavior, the economics of hemp prohibition needs to be addressed. There are a
number of factors and forces that went into making hemp illegal in the first
place. Economics always plays an important part in any human activity. "Follow
the Money" is now a phrase from popular culture, which does nothing to take away
from its ability to arrive at the truth.
There are four major areas where hemp was
undesirable competition for the economic powers existing at the time it was made
illegal. Let's call these the four F's: fiber, food, pharmaceuticals, and fuels.
Although few alternative crops can be expected to yield
high returns comparable to tobacco, industrial hemp fiber for paper and textile
production has been suggested as a possibility. Industrial hemp is a bast fiber
similar to flax, jute and kenaf. Bast fibers tend to have high production costs
because they are only a small portion of the plant stem and must be separated
from the rest of the stem before they can be used in textile or paper
production. A report examining the possibilities for industrial hemp and other
bast fiber crops such as kenaf in Kentucky was released in June 1995 (“Report
to the Governor’s Hemp and Related Fiber Crops Task Force”).
The executive summary of the Kentucky report is attached as an appendix. That
report highlights the uncertainty about the economics of industrial hemp.
The Economics of
Industrial Hemp Production: The latest US experience with hemp dates from World
War II when hemp was grown for fiber in Kentucky and other states. Today there
is only a very small market for hemp fiber in the United States; about $30,000
of hemp fiber and yarn was imported from Europe and Asia in 1994. In recent
years, European countries including the Netherlands, have conducted research on
industrial hemp as a possible fiber for textile and paper production. There are
small specialty pulp mills in Britain, Spain and Eastern Europe which process
flax, hemp and other specialty fibers. Researchers in the Netherlands suggest
that industrial hemp probably is not competitive in European specialty paper
markets but is being considered as a fiber supplement to recycled paper pulp.
Field trials have shown industrial hemp can be grown in Britain but the economic
use of the fiber has yet to be established. Few estimates are available for
modern production and processing costs and the market potential is uncertain.
Cannabis, also
referred to as "fiber" or "non-drug" hemp, should not be confused with
marijuana. Industrial hemp and marijuana are genetically distinct varieties of
Cannabis, much like a St. Bernard and a Chihuahua are very different
breeds of Canine. It is not possible to extract a drug from the
industrial hemp plant, and industrial hemp can't "get you high." Industrial hemp
contains virtually no THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the active ingredient
in marijuana. Industrial hemp has less than 0.3% THC, while marijuana typically
has 5-25% THC.
Additionally, industrial hemp contains a
relatively high percentage of CBD (cannabidiol), which negates THC's
psychoactive effects.
Every other industrialized nation in the
world permits the farming of industrial hemp for fiber and seed, and industrial
hemp is recognized in international law. Article 28(2) of the 1961 United
Nations' Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, to which the U.S. is a signatory,
states "This Convention shall not apply to the cultivation of the
Cannabis plant exclusively
for industrial purposes (fiber and seed) or horticultural purposes."
In spite of this,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continues to intentionally
confound industrial hemp and marijuana. This has resulted in an absurd policy:
hemp seed, oil and fiber are all currently legal for trade in the U.S., and
domestic industry imports industrial hemp for diverse uses. Yet, at the same
time, U.S. farmers are prevented from producing industrial hemp for the domestic
market. It is time to remove unnecessary barriers to the domestic production of
legal industrial hemp.
Industrial hemp can be grown with little
or none of the psychoactive properties of marijuana by utilizing low-THC
varieties. However, most seedstock in the world has been bred for European and
Asian production. The development of a US-based industrial hemp seedstock
industry may improve yields (if varieties were engineered for North American
production) and lower seed costs. However, this is not guaranteed.
Many have argued the merits of hemp fiber
and oil -- superior fiber length and strength, excellent oil quality for both
industrial and feed uses, and a myriad of other applications. Despite these
claims, world production has steadily fallen; dramatically since the early
1980s. Declines in production may be signaling that hemp profits are also on the
decline -- either absolutely and/or relative to other production alternatives.
Industrial hemp faces significant competition from other natural fibers (cotton
comprises 98% of the natural cellulose textile fiber market), oils (particularly
soy) and a multitude of synthetics. Specialty pulp fibers are limited to less
than 5% of normal demand of other major grades of paper.
Hemp processing technology remains
antiquated. However, new innovative fiber separation techniques are being
tested, particularly in western Europe. Given that US hemp production is
essentially non-existent, if production was legalized, farmers would be limited
to selling bulk production until (and if) a US hemp processing industry was
established. The domestic market for hemp is relatively small ($100,000 of raw
or processed hemp, 1996) and is comprised primarily of value-added products
($1.3 mil of hemp fabrics and products, 1996). The lack of processing facilities
and other infrastructure necessary for a viable commercial hemp market in the US
makes demand and profit projections extremely speculative. The US retail hemp
market was projected to be $23.3 mil last year. (It would be interesting to find
out the farm-value of hemp fiber in a pair of jeans.) If legal constraints were
lifted today, growers would primarily be bulk suppliers to a limited domestic
market, at least in the short-run.
Potential US industrial hemp growers would
compete with many low-cost producers (China, the FSU and Eastern Europe) where
labor costs remain low. The European Union continues to subsidize industrial
hemp at the rate of $100/ton (approximately half the market price). Despite
these subsidies, hemp production in France (which has always been legal) has not
grown in recent years, and newly legalized production in the Netherlands,
England and Germany remains negligible. Canada and Australia have both recently
authorized limited hemp production. It is not reasonable to believe that the US
would subsidize hemp production.
Further, many of the multinationals
purportedly interested in hemp production (Weyerhauser, Masonite, International
Paper and Inland Container Corporation) are not confined to the US for
investment opportunities. Multinationals have the capacity to invest in
production and processing facilities all around the world. Non-existent US
industrial hemp production does not impede their investment elsewhere. It is
notable that foreign investment in hemp processing facilities in China and
Europe are small. It is logical to assume that these decisions were based on
prudent business sense.
US hemp farmers would face considerable
world price variability. When world hempseed production surged in the 1980s,
prices fell below the break-even price required for production (as estimated
from Canadian research). US hemp fiber import prices averaged $3.85/kg in 1996,
also below the break-even price projected by Canadian research. If the profit
margin collapses, or remains risky, alternative crops are increasingly
attractive.
If industrial hemp production was
permitted in the US, it is reasonable to assume that production would be
relatively low in early years (the EU experience bears this out). Commodity
prices can be more volatile in thin (low volume) markets, creating more market
risk than US farmers might be willing to bear. Contract production would
alleviate some of that risk.
Any price, thus profit projections,
for industrial hemp production must take into account the effect of changes in
both production and demand on world price.
Many independent growers are still in the process of
developing markets for this year's crop. This suggests primary
processors will likely play a key role in developing markets and
that at present, the market is not structured for large scale
and long-term growth.
Contrary to many reports, hemp is at present a niche market.
Increasing demand for hemp products over the last decade has not
yet fueled an increase in world production of fibre and grain.
Furthermore, there are limited markets for this year's
production, although some key players are said to have markets
secured. Expanding the range of value-added industrial products
available and fostering the necessary consumer demand will take
time.
Careful product positioning and advertising for consumer
awareness will be important to success in the higher-value oil
and food markets. To quote one respondent, "the sizzle sells the
steaks". Growers must understand that while infrastructure
investment tends to be less than that required for fibre
markets, considerable working capital is needed to launch a new
product into the health market.
One respondent suggested there is a danger in trying to
pursue hemp in too large a scale for the Maritimes. Local uses
and niche markets should be the focus initially suggesting a
"get there first" situation versus unlimited demand.
J.7 Vertical Integration
This is considered by many to be blueprint for success in
hemp. The fibre market, the primary focus of Maritime growers,
is not one where one individual farmer is likely to develop
given the volume that is needed to economically sustain
processing facilities. For example, HempFlax in the Netherlands
complements its large growing base (over 5,500 acres) with two
decorticating plants and a recently purchased a paper mill with
an annual capacity of 30 thousand tons of paper (25% hemp
composition). The company has spent millions developing
harvesting and processing machinery.
Primary processors should consider contracting hemp
production to guarantee price and consistency of supply.
18.
Readings on hemp & the economy
If you would like to join the USA Hemp Museum
or communicate with the curator, send an
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