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From The NY Transfer BBS 718-448-2358
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SAVING TREES WITH GRASS
Aldis Ozols
Visitors to Toulouse, France, are confronted by the sight of
more than 8,000 hectares of lush marijuana plants waving gently
in the breeze, while in the central USSR, over 40,000 hectares
are under cultivation. These are not the hallucinations of
terminal dope-fiends, but government-backed plantations used to
supply raw material for paper manufacture. In Australia, the
Industries Assistance Commission is considering hemp farming as
one of the alternatives to woodchipping old-growth forests.
The exclusive use of trees from virgin forest in paper
manufacture is a disease of the latter part of this century.
Paper, of course, has been an integral part of human civilization
for thousands of years. Common teaching has it that the Egyptians
produced the first crude writing material by pounding soaked
papyrus reeds on flat rocks to fashion a coarse form of paper. In
fact, for thousands of years before this the Chinese had been
creating a fine and durable paper with fiber pulp derived from
the common hemp plant, of the family Cannabanaceae.
Indeed, until the first third of this century the marijuana
plant was the dominant source for paper production. Most
surviving texts from last century, including practically all the
bibles and encyclopedias, were printed on hemp paper directly, or
on so-called "rag paper" from cloth originally derived from hemp
fiber.
By far the bulk of hemp fiber was produced to supply the needs
of wind-propelled navies. In fact, the word 'canvas' is a Dutch
derivative of 'cannabis'. With the replacement of sail by steam
power the area under cultivation contracted greatly. The
development of synthetic fibers and high speed, large output
automated production processes made further inroads into the
demand for natural fibers. This was exacerbated by the slow
development of machinery capable of processing hemp fiber on a
large and economical scale, such as that developed for the cotton
industry.
A further factor was the political suppression of the use of
marijuana by some disadvantaged minorities in American society.
After thousands of years of productive cultivation by many
different cultures it was deemed necessary to apply the full
force of the police and judiciary to eradicate this "threat" to
humanity.
Even so, the extremely favorable weight to strength ratio of
hemp fiber retains for it a place in industry. Most readers would
be familiar with hemp rope and hemp fiber widely available at
hardware stores for plumbing purposes, and some of the finest
linens produced in the world are a blend of not flax and cotton
but hemp and cotton. An extensive cottage industry in Italy
produces clothing from hemp.
This versatile plant also has properties that could save our
native forests. Cellulose for paper derived from the cultivation
of hemp occurs in two physical forms. The outer bark of the stem
yields the long, strong fibers that have been used since time
immemorial for rope and cloth. These have to be separated from
the pith, or phloem, at the center of the plant by a process
known as retting. What results from the separation process is
referred to as hemp hurds and would generally be considered a
waste product, but for the pioneering work of Lester Dewey of the
US Department of Agriculture in 1916.
In an attempt to increase the efficiency of the hemp industry,
Mr Dewey conducted experiments with the paper manufacturers of
his day to establish the suitability of hurd pulp as a paper
substrate. Adapting existing processes, he found that a paper
could be produced that satisfied all the requirements of the
printing industry and, in fact, exceeded in strength and folding
endurance that produced from wood stock. The importance of this
work is that the usable yield per hectare is increased from
approximately 160kg/hectare of long fiber to 1010kg/hectare of
hurds for paper manufacture. Under these circumstances it is
possible to produce as much paper from ten hectares of hemp as
from forty hectares of trees!
Also significant is the difference in lignin content between
wood and hemp pulp. This averages 30-40% in wood but only 3-4%
for hurds. It is the removal of lignin that requires much of the
harsh chemical treatment that makes the current Kraft process
such an environmental disaster.
The large scale cultivation of hemp can be carried out in an
environmentally sensitive fashion. The suitability of Australia
as a location for hemp cultivation was established as early as
1845, when Dr Francis Campbell conducted small scale experiments.
He found that the loamy soils of the river flats from the Hunter
region to Grafton provided ideal conditions. This land is
presently devoted to cattle grazing, and along with much other
Australian agricultural land, suffers from infestation of noxious
weeds and gross soil erosion. As reported in Scientific American
in 1915, two or three seasons of hemp cultivation will largely
clear a field of weeds due to the dense shock of leaves produced,
while the deep tap-root system aerates and stabilizes the soil.
In fact, early farmers used hemp to prevent soil erosion after
forest fires.
Land already devoted to pasture can be readily adapted to hemp
cultivation without disrupting dwindling native habitats. The
leaf, which has no place in the paper-making process, makes an
excellent fodder. Marijuana leaf is used to fatten stock in
Borneo and other Asian countries with excellent results, while
the seed, due to its high vegetable content, is currently widely
used as a bird seed.
It is not my intention in this article to debate the merits or
otherwise of marijuana as a social drug. It is, however important
to realize that while the plant grown for fiber and that
cultivated for smoking are the same species, the conditions under
which fiber plants must be grown render them totally unsuitable
for drug use, with almost undetectable levels of THC.
The possibility of using hemp fiber cultivation to save native
forests in Australia is being researched by Dr Andrew Katelaris,
who provided the information in this article. He can be contacted
care of P.O.Box 451, Strawberry Hills, 2012, NSW, Australia.
This article was originally published in Simply Living magazine,
Volume 4, No 3, June 1990. Please credit if reprinted.
Source: PeaceNet - gen.newsletters
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