|
The fiber of Cannabis, the "True Hemp", is tightly woven into the tapestry of human life. Since earliest times, this great plant ally has provided people with cordage, cloth, paper, medicine, and inspiration. For all the many benefits it bestows, Cannabis hemp is a friendship well worth cultivating. Hemp is many things to many people, and it is known by hundreds of names. Poets sing its praises, and preachers damn it. Executioners hang condemned men with hemp rope, but sailors and mountaineers hang onto it for dear life. Doctors prescribe it as a medicine, yet prohibitionists proscribe it as a poison. Armies and navies make war with hemp, while lovers use it as an aphrodisiac. The resinous virtue generates real happiness, enlightenment and entertainment, equal in quality and worth to the similar joys of love, freedom, and good health --- and it complements them all, and it comforts those poor souls who are without such blessings. Hemp is a most interesting and paradoxical plant, one that defies control and begs understanding. Hemp is one of mankind's best (and few) friends on Earth, yet it is a prisoner within its own cells, bound in a Gordian Knot of laws. Yet again, hemp is Ariadne's Thread, a guideline out of the labyrinth of bureaucratic tyranny and into a new state of liberty and grace. James Allen expressed the sentiment most passionately in the closing words of The Reign ofLaw (1900): |
|
Read more...
|
|
General Hemp Information, Facts
• On an annual basis, 1 acre of hemp will produce as much fiber
as 2 to 3 acres of cotton. Hemp fiber is stronger and softer than
cotton, lasts twice as long as cotton, and will not mildew.
• Cotton grows only in moderate climates and requires more water
than hemp; but hemp is frost tolerant, requires only moderate
amounts of water, and grows in all 50 states. Cotton requires large
quantities of pesticides and herbicides--50% of the world's
pesticides/herbicides are used in the production of cotton. Hemp
requires no pesticides, no herbicides, and only moderate amounts of
fertilizer. • On an annual basis, 1 acre of hemp will produce as much paper
as 2 to 4 acres of trees. From tissue paper to cardboard, all types
of paper products can be produced from hemp.
• The quality of hemp paper is superior to tree-based paper.
Hemp paper will last hundreds of years without degrading, can be
recycled many more times than tree-based paper, and requires less
toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process than does paper made
from trees. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Managing Hemp
