Hemp for Victory

 

(This title is adapted from a 1942 US Department of Agriculture film espousing the benefits of hemp for the war effort. For a complete transcript, click here)

Why the corporations don't let you grow hemp

Hemp is arguably the most useful and versatile plant that we know.

It has been cultivated for 10,000 years, and could provide a sustainable source of:

· food
· clothing
· medicine
· paper
· building products
· oil for foodstuffs
· industrial oil for paints, lacquers, and resins
· plastics
· fuel

Our planet is under massive ecosystem threats due to unsustainable consumption of our natural resources. We must learn how to supply our needs without selling our future short.

Replacing our dependence on fossil fuels, pesticides and logging of old growth forests with localised hemp farming is an obvious way to do this. It would produce economic benefits and employment to everyone involved. Yet it is regulated out of existence. Why?

 

Criminalisation of hemp / cannabis

In the 1930s, a propaganda campaign promoted by DuPont (interests in nylon, cotton and arms), Hearst (media tycoon with interest in forest industries), Henry Anslinger (head of Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs) and others declared hemp to be a dangerous, violence inducing drug.

Minority groups such as Mexicans and blacks were targeted (in a similar way that Australia's first drug laws were directed against Aborigines and Chinese) - marijuana was described as "Mexican loco weed", and marines were called in to destroy farmers' hemp crops.

In this atmosphere of disinformation and paranoia, other Western nations drug policy soon followed suit; and even today, countries such as the Netherlands with progressive drug policies are under constant pressure to conform to DEA policy.

The ludicrous 'drug war' being waged (and lost) today stems directly from this misguided and misinformed policy. Recent moves have harked back to the excesses of the Vietnam war, with the aerial spraying of the genetically modified fungus Fusarium oxyporium on Columbian subsistence farmers and their crops, destroying both the cannabis fields and the peasants' food source. Their apparent crime is not growing foreign owned cash crops.

 

The state of hemp in Australia today

Victoria may be the first state in Australia to legislate for commercial production; but significant hurdles need to be passed before we have a successful hemp industry in any state.

Despite massive kickbacks to the destructive forestry industry, Government policy does little to encourage development of a sustainable hemp industry.

Consider:

• ANZFA regulations, classifying the whole of the hemp plant as a 'poisonous botanical' (despite the renowned health benefits of hemp seed)
• Industrial hemp regulations restrict who can grow hemp, permit fees, THC testing fees, which amount to thousands of dollars - placing the industry into the hands of those who can afford it;
• The lack of infrastructure for processing hemp fibre, and absence of ;
• THC restrictions which encourage seed ownership rights while restricting genetic diversity and use of wild stock, and preventing cultivation in tropical regions;
• Federal import / export regulations restricting access to seeds from international sources.

Governments may claim they have done enough to allow a hemp industry to begin; but the reality is, under the current regime, it will be taken over by multinationals once existing natural resources such as native forests and fossil fuels are exhausted.

 

Possible futures for the hemp industry

As a new industry, the development of hemp could have a significant impact on agricultural and industrial practices.

There are two possible models:

A corporate owned hemp industry with its emphasis on ownership and profit margins.

1. Given the current system, it is easy to foresee large, money driven corporations taking over this new industry, profiting from consumers environmental concerns, whilst perpetuating their capitalist heirarchies and methods, such as broad acre monocroping, which would lead to pest and disease increase, followed by genetically engineering to combat these self caused problems, continuing to profit the rich through exploitative practices, and ownership of seed rights and technical know-how.
   
   
2. The alternative is a community owned, decentralised, hemp industry. A hemp industry could be developed which encouraged the use of holistic integrated farming practices, pesticide free cultivation, organic fertilisers, encouraging farm biodiversity, tree planting, water management and land rehabilitation, and the development of green industrial processes, reducing pollution and creating rural employment, not restricted to specific inputs, enabling developing of new crops from indigenous species, encouraging cooperation between farmers and indigenous peoples and protecting and restoring our native flora and fauna.

 

What can you do?

• tell your local representative to promote development of a hemp industry in a manner which maximises its potential for environmental and social benefit
  
  
• boycott non-sustainable and environmentally unfriendly goods (eg. Reflex paper is sourced from old growth forests, Bunnings has a history of impeding environmentally friendly products due to links with forest indistries)
  
  
• use products which are sourced from sustainable, renewable and local sources, to encourage these industries to prosper: ride don't drive, or drive using (sustainable) ethanol; eat organic food; avoid genetically modified foods and fibres; insist on recycled paper; and don't wipe your bum on Old Growth!

For more information on hemp, please visit Rathouse renewables, Marijana News, or Ecology.

 

 

This is not hyperbole. This is not paranoia.

This is a blindingly clear example of where society is getting it wrong.

 

 

return to main