Newsflash:
the US declaration of independence was written on hemp paper. FACT.
a hectare of hemp produces more paper than a hectare of trees. FACT.
What the hell, world?! Let's hemp it up again, what happened?!
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Take 2!
ReplyDeleteDISCLAIMER: In essence, I agree with your point, but feel compelled to offer up these nuggets, Devil's Advocate-style. I love hemp.
"a hectare of hemp produces more paper than a hectare of trees"
This is a popular figure! It's flashy, emphatic, and technically true, but sidesteps the issue and is thus quite often misused.
Starting with bare ground, hemp produces more pulp-friendly fibre annually than any tree, or for that matter just about anything, with the possible exception of some interesting experiments (look to Kudzu, and also ocean farming kelp for fibre, for a couple of examples). So if you've got a blank hectare, and you want some fibre, it's probably the way to go.
That said, for fibre production, a good expanse of big old already-existing trees beats the pants off of anything we've discovered, natural or otherwise.
A big hurdle we have in even getting to that point is convincing people (consumers, not loggers and executives in black hats) that it's worth their money to spend the extra effort it takes to grow our fibre instead of stealing it. It would take that to make hemp fibre so much as relevant on any scale.
THEN, once we've convinced everyone to stop doing irreversible damage to existing forests, there's another hurdle for the hemp fibre industry. There's a strong argument for using trees for pulp farming: A properly managed environmentally friendly tree farm is a forest, complete with a system of other plants and animals, where a hemp farm is a single use monoculture. So a place where animals can live that we get lumber as well as some fibre from sounds pretty good, granted we can dramatically reduce the consumption of pulp-based products.
Lots of angles on this one. I'll blow the hemp horn like nobody's business, but it's not the wonder-plant some other stoners would have you believe it is. A monoculture of hemp as far as the eye can see is no better than the same of corn or wheat.
Forgive me, the first time I threw this up I'm sure it was more concise and eloquent, but I resorted to rambling in my second attempt.