What Is Hemp Good For?
http://foodfacts.mercola.com/hemp.html
A controversial crop that’s been alternately
demonized and defended for at least 80 years,
hemp has run the proverbial gauntlet in the US
due to political factions, special interests, and
downright suspicion.
Nevertheless, every bit of this ancient plant is
useful and valuable, and not just for rope, but
for textiles, auto parts, cosmetics, dynamite,
supplements, food, and medicine. In ancient
China, hemp seed was regarded as food for
the lower classes, and in Europe, a peanut
butter-like spread was made from the seeds,
in both cases with the hulls intact.
Today, you’ll find nutty-tasting (hull-less)
hemp seeds and their oils baked in breads,
cookies, and cakes, blended in smoothies, or
tossed into quinoa and pasta dishes, burgers,
pizza, vegetables sautés, soups, salads,
oatmeal, yogurt, trail mix, and salad
dressings. It’s a niche market, with a growing
number of specialty outlets due to a growing
understanding of this food’s nutritional
benefits.
Cultivated in at least 30 countries, monikers
for the hemp plant often allude to its origin or
use, such as Manila hemp (abacá, Musa
textilis), sisal hemp (Agave sisalana), Indian
hemp (Apocynumcannabinum) and New
Zealand hemp (Phormiumtenax). Worldwide,
hemp seed production alone has soared from
around 33,000 metric tons in the late ’90s to
more than 100,000 metric tons annually
between 2005 and 2011.
than trees. Farmers from the Midwest to the
East coast harvested more than 150,000 acres
for the war’s Hemp for Victory Program,
implemented by the USDA from 1942
through 1946, but rumblings by the
competition had already started.
American industrialists led by newspaper
mogul William Randolph Hearst (who owned
vast timberlands) and DuPont executives,
who’d begun processing petroleum and wood
for plastics, became disgruntled by the way
hemp cut into their market shares.
A 1994 Vegetarian Times article2 describes
the group’s devastatingly successful tactics
for twisting the public’s perception of hemp:
“The plan?
Whip the public into a frenzy over ill effects
of marijuana, the psychoactive leaves and
flowers of the hemp plant; the reputation of
the fibres and seeds used by industry would
be posing little threat to society emerged as
the ‘assassin of youth.’ The strategy worked.
In 1937, with virtually no warning, Congress
announced a prohibitive tax on hemp,
effectively ending the production and sale of
the plant in the United States.
“The effects of the ban on growing hemp
were widespread. Polluting, non-renewable
petroleum products replaced hemp lubricants
and paints and oil… From that point on, hemp
was viewed solely as an illegal drug; its role
in constructing our national economy was
forgotten.”
Jefferson penned, “Hemp is of first necessity
to the wealth and protection of the country,”
so hemp held a distinguished place in early
America. Colonial farmers were required to
grow it in the 1700s, mainly for its strong
fibre. This perpetuated what may be one of the
country’s biggest frauds. An aptly named
article nailed it: “US Missing Out On
Agricultural Millions Because The DEA
Can't Distinguish Hemp From Pot,
which is telling.
By 1938, Popular Mechanics called hemp the
“Billion Dollar Crop,”1 praising its potential
to produce 25,000 different products, as high
as $192 billion in today’s market and capable
of producing four times the paper per acre It’s not just the debate about medical
marijuana. Part of the confusion is that some
people assume hemp and marijuana are one in
the same, especially since in explicably, they
share the scientific name Cannabis sativa.