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AN AMAZING PLANT
by Bill Leuders
From ISTHMUS, "the weekly newspaper of Madison" Feb 8-14, 1991
Reprinted by permission. Further reprints permitted with credits.
----------------------------------------------------
There aren't many things upon which long-haired radical Ben Masel,
state Department of Agriculture official Erwin "Bud" Sholts,
agronomy researcher Pat LeMahieu and corporate head George Tyson
can be expected to agree. Among them: kicking puppies is mean,
Drano should not be taken internally, and hemp - commonly known as
marijuana - could become a major cash crop for Wisconsin.
According to these and other participants in a, ahem, budding
scientific discussion, the hemp plant could be cultivated not just
for such traditional uses as rope and fabric, but also as a
readily renewable resource for making paper, construction
materials, high protein food, and safe, clean fuel.
Masel, director of the Wisconsin Chapter of NORML, (the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), in 1990 spoke in
more than 50 US cities on the potential uses of the pot plant.
Scientific American last December published an item on the nascent
"grass-roots" movement in support of hemp; Masel was just
interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an upcoming article on
the same.
A primary organizer of Madison's annual "marijuana harvest"
festival, the oft jailed Masel says his goal is "to relegalize
this useful plant for its paper, fiber, fuel, food, medical and
recreational value."
Sholts, director of the state ag department's development and
diversification program, affirms part of Masel's message: that
hemp grows well in Wisconsin, even on soil not good for much
else.
"My father raised it on his farm," Sholts recalls of the time
during WWII when farmers were encouraged to grow hemp for the war
effort. (Masel, citing old US Department of Agriculture reports,
says Wisconsin was once the nations leading producer of hemp, in
some years accounting for more than half the nation's total
crop.)
Because hemp grows quickly and has a high per-acre yield, Sholts
says "It's a very, very prime product for biomass" -organic
material that can be converted to fuel. Hemp is also seen by
"people with expertise" as preferable to kenaf, (aka ambry) a warm
weather fibrous plant, for making paper and other products.
But alas, Sholts points out, hemp has one big problem: With its
current properties its illegal."
LeMahieu, director of operations for Agrecol, the Agricultural
research division of Madison-based W. T. Rogers Co., has a
solution in mind: the development of a strain of hemp that is
"socially acceptable." In other words, hemp that has been
genetically engineered to remove the alkaloids that get people
high.
"It's feasible," insists LeMahieu, formerly a leading agricultural
researcher at the UW-Madison. "Any trait can be bred out of a
plant with recombinant DNA." Engineering a strain of hemp with the
desired traits for mass cultivation will require "massive amounts"
of money and commitment, says LeMahieu, who thinks Wisconsin-
which has "the top plant-genetics research groups in the nation,
maybe in the world" - is ideally suited for the task.
"It truly is an amazing plant" says LeMahieu of hemp. "If you look
at all the possible products that could be made from the hemp
plant, it makes you wonder why we haven't pursued this."
Tyson, chairman of the board of Xylan Inc., a biomass research
firm in the University Research park, takes the point beyond
wonder to rage. "We have the technology now to convert biomass
into the fuel we're fighting for in the Persian Gulf," he says,
asserting that the United States could eliminate its dependence on
foreign oil simply by growing high-biomass crops like hemp on the
acreage it now pays farmers to keep fallow.
"It just seems silly to be paying farmers $26 billion a year not
to produce something that would replace something that we are
importing at the cost of over $100 billion a year.
"This," Tyson asserts, "is a national disgrace."
GRASS ROOTS
Throughout most of U.S. -and indeed human- history, hemp has been
domestically cultivated for a variety of uses, including textiles,
rope, and paper. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp
on their farms; the rigging and sails of the U.S. Constitution
were all made from hemp (some 60 tons worth; Betsy Ross used hemp
cloth to make the first U.S. flag; hemp canvas (the word "canvass"
comes from cannabis, Latin for hemp) covered the pioneers' wagons
and prairie schooners; Abraham Lincoln used a hemp-oil lamp to
study law.
Hemp was also used to make fine linen and underwear. Masel has a
friend in Hungary [actually Germany] who still uses his family's
hemp tablecloth - made in 1820. According to Jack Herer's pro-hemp
manifesto, The Emperor Wears No New Clothes, the word "towel"
comes from its original material-hemp tow, a silk-like textile
professedly four times as absorbent as cotton.
There is little historical record of people smoking hemp grown for
rope or fabric. Masel, who testified as a marijuana expert in a
1988 court case, says plants used for such purposes would be
harvest before flowering, and thus be more likely to cause
headaches than highs, Still, some hemp grown for seed was smoked
for its psychoactive and medicinal properties-a use no one seemed
too bothered by until the plant became a threat to U.S.
petrochemical companies.
As outlined in Herer's history of hemp, super-efficient fiber-
stripping machines invented in the in the 1930s promised to do for
hemp what the cotton gin did for cotton, Corporations like Du Pont
and industrialists like William Randolph Hearst feared hemp would
compete with their pulpwood paper and synthetic products.
The Hearst chain of newspapers declared hemp and other drugs
Public Enemy No.1. Hemp, renamed "marihuana,." was blamed for
crime and car accidents and linked to black jazz musicians and
Mexican revolutionaries. "Marihuana makes fiends of boys in 30
days," screamed the headlines of one Hearst story, which claimed
that hemp "goads users to blood lust."
Du Pont, which had just patented a new process for making pulpwood
paper and was at work on a petroleum-based synthetic it later
named nylon, behaved similarly. Banker Andrew Mellon, Du Pont's
chief financial backer and President Herbert Hoover's Secretary of
the Treasury, tapped his nephew-to-be, Harry Anslinger, to head
the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Anslinger, backed by the Hearst papers, crusaded for pot
prohibition. (Among his favorite slogans, "If the hideous monster
Frankenstein came face to face with the monster marihuana, he
would drop dead of fright.") Such efforts resulted in the
"Marihuana Tax Act of 1937"-the apparent death knell of legal
hemp.
As it happened, however, the government was unable to keep a good
weed down. Hemp was still needed for a variety of uses, especially
naval ones (hemp being the only natural fiber that can withstand
saltwater for long). When World War II began and Japan blocked
U.S. imports of Indian hemp, the government called on the
nation's "patriotic farmers" to resume growing the monster
marihuana.
A 1942 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) film entitled "Hemp
for Victory" evoked hemp's historical usefulness ("For the sailor,
no less than the hangman hemp was indispensable,"), noting that
the plant - "now little known outside of Kentucky and Wisconsin"
was sorely needed for war items ranging from tow lines to the
webbing of parachutes.
"In 1942, 14,00 acres of fiber hemp were harvested in the United
States," the narrator proclaimed amid strains of patriotic music.
"The goal for 1943 is 300,000 acres. "The film also touted hemp's
agronomical virtues: "A dense and shady crop, hemp tends to choke
out weeds. Here's a Canada Thistle that couldn't stand the
competition, dead as a dodo. Thus hemp leaves the ground in good
condition for the following crop."
When Asian markets reopened after the war, domestic hemp
production again came to a halt. Well, sort of: State agriculture
official Sholts notes that, as a result of its erstwhile
cultivation, hemp still grows wild over much of Wisconsin
- including on his father's farm, 11 miles south of Madison.
Observes Sholts, "It's a very prolific plant."
At this point, no one knows just how prolific or useful hemp may
be-because, unlike such crops as corn, hemp has not benefited from
modern agricultural techniques, including plant genetics.
Although Agrecol (the company's name, like its mission, blends
agriculture and ecology) has had impressive results test-planting
kenaf, division head LeMahieu says hemp has higher-quality fiber,
more potential uses, the ability to withstand cold better, and
possibly higher yields: "If it weren't for the alkaloids
[psychoactive ingredients] in hemp, we wouldn't even be talking
about kenaf."
Masel, who last September garnered 11,230 votes in a pro-hemp
Primary challenge to Gov. Tommy Thompson, is especially fired up
about the potential as a renewable source of paper and other
products traditionally made from wood. One advantage of hemp over
trees, says Masel, is that it contains significantly less lignin,
a natural adhesive whose content must be lowered in the
papermaking process.
Roger Faulkner, a UW research specialist who works at the U.S.
Forest Service's Forest Products Lab in Madison, adds that annual
growth plants including hemp generate four to five times as much
biomass yearly as trees. The disadvantage is that trees can be cut
and stored until needed, but annuals not immediately processed or
properly warehoused will degenerate. A "polymer scientist,"
Faulkner is part of a team of Forest Products Lab researchers
studying the feasibility of using high-fiber plants to make
"structural components." Within the last year, the group has made
high-density construction boards using both kenaf and hemp-the
latter from "ditch weed" (low-grade wild marijuana) that Tyson
brought in. By blending plant fibers and polymers - compounds of
high molecular weight - Faulkner thinks the same techniques can be
used to make hemp and kenaf auto-body parts. (Hemp is already
being used in some wallboard made in Germany.)
"I don't think there's any doubt that hemp's one of the best fiber
crops there is," says Faulkner, "Certainly, it's the best-adapted
plant for Wisconsin."
Faulkner further laments that both the Forest Service and private
industry seem more interested in timber than annual-growth plants
- although the USDA is funding a mill in Texas that will make
paper from kenaf. Cultivating fiber on farms, he argues, is
ecologically preferable to growing "monocultural" forests for
pulp. What's more, it would allow fallow farmland to be put to
use without adding to surpluses of existing crops.
Another potentially useful hemp product is seed, which can account
for 50% of the weight of plants grown for this purpose. Hemp seed,
Says Masel, is about 16% protein and contains eight amino acids,
compared with just four in soybeans. Masel has made cake from
imported hemp seeds (legal if sterilized to make them "incapable
of germination") and envisions their use as a high-protein food or
animal feed. (In China, hemp-cake was used to feed animals for
centuries.)
Hemp-seed oil, at least 35% of seed content by weight, can be used
as a lubricant (as it was in World War II fighter-plane engines),
a cooking and salad oil, or even as a diesel fuel. Gatewood
Galbraith, a Democrat running for governor of Kentucky on a
pro-pot platform, last fall campaigned with singer Willie Nelson
from Lexington to Louisville in a diesel Mercedes powered with 25%
hemp-seed oil. The engine, says Masel, would have run on straight
hemp-seed, but Galbraith didn't have a big enough supply.
Masel, who sells $35 dollar hemp T-shirts and $10.00 hemp product
sampler kits through an outfit called Wisconsin Hemp Products Inc.
(P.O. Box 3481, Madison 53704), also thinks the hemp plant's
"Styrofoam-like stalk" could be used as an insulator, or to make
biodegradable fast-food clamshells. Can Masel see the day when
McDonald's sells hamburgers in containers made from hemp? "I can
see the day when they will be paying me royalties on the patent."
HARVESTING THE SUN
Perhaps the most exciting us of hemp is as biomass fuel. Through
process called pyrolysis-the application of intense heat in the
absence of air-hemp and other organic material can be efficiently
converted to charcoal, oil, gas, or methanol.
Hemp is a favored crop for biomass-organic material-because it
grows very rapidly in a variety of climates. Indeed hemp has been
called "the world's champion photosynthesizer," capable of
converting energy from the sun more readily than any other plant.
Biomass boosters further claim that pyrolytic fuels would be good
for the environment. Pyrolysis charcoal, said to have the same
heating value as coal, is virtually sulfur-free, unlike coal or
other fossil fuels, a key cause of acid rain. What's more, hemp
and other high-growth plants produce beneficial oxygen when grown-
and take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere equal to the amount
they release when burned. Thus, hemp hounds assert, if biomass
replaces fossil fuels, the amount of acid rain and smog will be
reduced and the trend toward global warming - the so-called
greenhouse effect - will have a chance to reverse.
"We're fighting in the Middle East for the right to pollute
ourselves," hemp guru Herer told Al Giordano of Massachusetts'
Valley Advocate newspaper. "We have a plant that can win a war. We
have a plant here that can save the planet."
James Converse, chairman of the Department of Agricultural
Engineering at the UW-Madison, says university researchers hav
done some work converting biomass material - corn, primarily - to
ethanol. But he thinks the day when it makes sense to talk about
biomass fuels replacing fossil fuels is a long way off: "Biomass
will hold possibilities only when the price of fuel or the
availability of fuel becomes such that you can make a profit with
[biomass.]
Tyson, whose company develops and licenses rights to emerging
biomass technologies, disagrees. "These people [the UW scientists]
are ten years behind. They don't know the current state of the
art," he says. "We are much closer than that."
Still, Tyson stresses the need for "a national policy" to develop
the technology and build the refineries to convert biomass to
fuel. "Bring the troops home and put them to work to build this
infrastructure," he urges. "That will scare the daylights out of
that part of the world. When [oil exporting countries] see we
don't need them anymore, oil prices will come down. More
importantly, we will not have to go to war for this reason
anymore."
"Let's harvest the sun through the process of photosynthesis,"
continues Tyson in a tone reminiscent of the narrator in Hemp for
Victory. "Let's harvest solar energy into clean, safe fuels."
OBSTACLES
The revival of hemp and the development of other promising non
food uses for fallow cropland will be discussed at an April 5
conference in Middleton organized by Sholts and other state
agricultural officials. Gov. Thompson, outgoing federal Small
Business Administration head Susan Engeleiter, and representatives
of agribusiness will attend the all-day affair, which is open to
the public for a $20 fee.
Tyson, who is now focusing on "demonstration projects" to prove
the viability of biomass technology, hopes Wisconsin can get the
ball rolling by genetically engineering a strain of hemp that
lacks psychoactive properties. "It can be done," he says
unreservedly. "We can make anything we want to now."
Agronomist LeMahieu agrees, saying the goal should be to create "a
whole new plant" that lacks alkaloids and doesn't look like
ordinary marijuana - ostensibly to foil folks who might wish, as
Masel puts it, to "sneak a few" smokeable specimens alongside
those grown for fiber or biomass.
But LeMahieu frets about the legal roadblocks to any use of hemp.
"State laws would have to change, federal laws would have to
change, and we have international agreements that prohibit it.,"
he says.
Jim Haney, assistant to state Attorney General James Doyle, notes
that the state Controlled Substances Board can issue permits
allowing possession of otherwise illegal drugs "for purposes of
scientific research, instructional activities, chemical analysis,
or other special uses." However, rejoins Masel, the wholesale
cultivation of hemp would still be illegal under state and federal
laws-which define marijuana in terms of plant parts, not alkaloid
content.
Ultimately the psychological obstacles to renewed hemp production
may prove more formidable than legal ones. UW researcher Faulkner
is uneasy even discussing the plant's potential, sensing
"widespread opposition to and repression of the whole idea that
hemp may have other uses."
Masel is more optimistic. "I think [domestic revival of hemp]
could happen surprisingly quickly," he says. Whenever one state
moves the others are going to follow, rather than see that state
make all the money."
Does Wisconsin, which in 1990 seized and eradicated 849,324
domestic marijuana plants, 97% of which were wild plants no self
respecting marijuana smoker would want, have the gumption to
become that first state? Put it another way: Is making billions of
dollars while helping save the environment and achieve domestic
energy independence a strong enough incentive for officials like
Thompson to let a long-haired radical like Ben Masel say "I told
you so"?