One Nutter Saves The World: Hemp is Better

Let's begin by emphasising that Marijuana and Hemp are completely different plants. Marijuana is a shorter, dwarf variant higher in THC and other mind-altering chemicals. Hemp is a much taller plant with almost zero THC and attempting to breed the two is not friendly for anyone's purpose. There you go. You can put away all the arguments about hippies hiding their dope in Hemp fields. Kindly stop trying it.

Hemp is an amazingly useful plant. The fibres can make both fabric and paper, and the seeds are also relatively nutritious but - this is the interesting part - they can also be rendered for Hemp Oil.

The Hemp we know as 'industrial hemp' has a multitude of uses, including but not limited to:

• Food
• Fiber
• Plastic
• Paper
• Water and Soil Purification
• Biofuels

Some details over in Wikipedia.

One acre of Hemp can deliver over three hundred kilos of grain, and at the same time yield almost six hundred kilos of fibre [source]. The grain can become over eighty litres of oil and two hundred and forty pounds of hemp meal.

You should check out how nutritious Hemp Meal is... It's amazing how much we've shut ourselves off from something this amazing. Corn, by comparison, is a wimp. So why does corn have subsidies to be grown by the hectare whilst hemp is the bogeyplant?

Well, the answer lies in a combination of racism and people with the upper hand. In brief: Richard Nixon didn't like black people or hippies, but since he couldn't ban them, he banned what they were associated with - marijuana. Hell, he's even responsible for the common name because Foreign Mexican Terror was a good thing to exploit. [Pardon me whilst I hurl...]

That let other sources of oil, fibre, and whatnot gather more money and influence the lawmakers by handing out huge amounts of money and otherwise being "friendly" to the people with their fingers on the buttons. Corn became the universal cash crop, and more and more waste happened to happen as a result. Long term? Food is less nutritious and simultaneously expensive. Also grown with a honkton of chemicals that should not be good for any living thing.

Yes, Hemp is a complicated plant and needs some TLC that won't come from named chemical corporations, but I have two words about that: Boo hoo.

Corporations are ruining the world and everyone knows it. Well. Everyone except the people who like corporate money and are willing to engage in wilful ignorance... and those who slavishly follow those people with an adulation akin to worship.

If I had world-changing levels of money or complete and utter control over the entire globe - I would quit the corn and wheat subsidies and get back to Hemp. The utility crop. No need to tear down old-growth forests for TP... Hemp! No need to create sinkholes by fracking for oil - Hemp! No need, even, to create almost everything out of nutritionally-poor corn - Hemp!

Better yet - hemp-sourced plastics are completely biodegradable. So we could quit making single-use plastic products out of fossil oil, and start making them out of Hemp Oil. Of course, there's bound to be someone allergic, so let's also subsidise some testing to make certain that it's not going to hurt anyone.

But 'Nutter, I hear you cry, what about the fishing nets that actually make up almost half of the ocean's plastic waste? What about the fact that an acre of Hemp won't make nearly enough oil?

Have no fear, gentle reader. I'm certain that smarty-pants farmers will soon develop a strain of Hemp that is great for becoming more oil than cereal (or even fibre), so the oil problem will be easily solved inside of ten years. Give that same pace of time to develop Hemp-sourced fishing nets that will only biodegrade under specific idle conditions.

I'd subsidise the hell out of those, just in case. We don't need more fishing nets in the ocean. I'm sure we all agree on that. Make Hemp-sourced fishing nets so ridiculously easy to get that nobody wants the plastic ones. Yay.

Weaning humanity off of limited mineral resources isn't hard. It just seems hard because the people with the money keep wanting their fix of mind-bogglingly huge amounts of cash.

Next week: The complete elimination of mining for shit to make steam.