A hemp haven? Overlooked provision in Prop 64 may have a big impact in California

[Zorro]

It’s not amber waves of grain that Christopher Boucher sees in his dreams, but emerald waves of hemp.

“I think you’re going to see a lot of industry move into California to set up operations,” said Boucher, whose decades of advocacy for the plant has earned him the nickname in some quarters as “Johnny Hempseed.”

“There are so many different players in the industry, so much investment money for people who want to set up their operations.”

California voters passed Proposition 64 back in November, legalizing recreational use of marijuana for adults 21 and older. But one part of the proposition was little-noticed — a provision allowing for the production of industrial hemp.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/sd-fi-prop64-hemp-20161213-story.html

[politicat]

1. Some farmers have been growing it here for three seasons.

The upsides: doesn't need pesticides or insecticides and out-competes most weeds. It can even smother bindweed, to an extent, which makes it a goddam miracle plant.

Downsides: water. It's not as thirsty as alfalfa or clover, but it's up there. If harvesting for fiber, it can't be combined and must be harvested by hand. Pollen is similar enough to ragweed that being down-wind gets uncomfortable. It wants fairly rich soil and doesn't much like clay or caliche. It's a good cover crop, but not a primary, and unlike alfalfa or clover, it's not a nitrogen fixer and it's not as nutritionally valuable for grazers as alfalfa and clover. The market for oil and seed is still pretty small, and depends on where it's legal to possess, since industrial hemp seeds are also still illegal in places.

It never should have been illegal. It should have been the basis of our paper industry. But as an economic panacea now, given CA water situation? I'm hopeful, but not betting on it. Medicinal and recreational are the economic drivers.

[KamaAina]

2. Seed would make great feed for California poultry.

It might even help revive the industry in Sonoma and environs, which has been losing out to mass-market competition from the Central Valley.

[politicat]

3. Sure... if the water to grow the seeds is less than the water requirement to grow the current feed.

Colorado is dry, too. Very dry. And we have to let the water roll downhill, because downhill has older claims. So the water issue is not trivial. The cost-benefit on hemp is complicated, and getting more so. We're the side that thinks, so we have to think it out and do the math.

I'm not saying don't try it. I'm not saying it's not worth the experiment. I'm just saying that entropy always wins and nothing is as simple as the slogan.

I don't think California is the right place to be growing a lot of field crops -- corn, soy and alfalfa grow better in the midwest for less irrigation cost. Rice performs much, much better in the Mississippi Delta and along the Carolina-Georgia coast. But California is our only source of a Mediterranean climate, so plants that require that climate should get first priority, both in land and water, there. And that includes hemp, which can grow elsewhere.

OTOH... my future thinking is that CA should absolutely work on getting industrial hemp ramped up, because when there may come a time when we're going to need all the industrial materiel we can scrounge, borrow or make.

[KamaAina]

9. Hemp cannot grow elsewhere legally, yet.

And as for rice, would it surprise you to learn that the two Northern California counties that grow most of it control one-third of the entire Sacramento River, thanks to another one of those old water claims?

[politicat]

10. Nope, the river water scam doesn't surprise me at all. And I have major problems with it.

But I am one of those nasty, practical environmentalists who thinks government should interfere in stupid old laws, especially water rights law. Which needs a full re-write away from water is for placer mining and stupid irrigation practices.

There are 10 states that have legalized industrial hemp, but the problem is the Feds. Which is a CA problem, too. As long as the Feds remain hostile, hemp oil, seed and fiber must remain a local industry because crossing state lines becomes a federal crime. (CA,OR and WA can now test that, since they control their state borders.) And all local industries get into NIMBY issues, even among supporters, because industrial processes aren't guaranteed silent and odorless. (Even if they're safe.)

[hunter]

4. Paper, and now soft fabrics.

Enzyme processes have been developed that turn industrial hemp into fibers very similar to cotton.

Hemp is easier on the earth than cotton.

[politicat]

5. Eh... don't get too excited about the textiles yet.

Natural hemp fiber fabric has most of the same properties as flax linen, except the minimum wet spin of the fiber is less fine than the minimum wet spin of flax. (Translucent, veil linen is possible -- expensive and difficult, but possible. Hemp's finest natural fabric is about what we modern people consider 4.4 oz linen or 5 ounce cotton twill, and goes up to burlap.) Otherwise, hemp and flax process the same way -- soaked in retting (rotting) ponds, run through a hammer mill, steam burst to break apart the fibers, then lye scouring. This is all pretty time/labor/energy intensive, and cotton is still less energy/labor intensive. (Cotton dominates because it's less labor/time intensive.) Both woven hemp and woven flax will last for near-ever, and they continually improve with washing, getting softer and less prone to wrinkles, but all three fiber/fabrics have similar issues with retaining water, and neither flax nor linen have the tensile strength to knit well at a very fine gauge, so hemp tee shirts are a long way off, and the ability to knit/weave a fiber is crucial to how well it does in the market. I can see a hemp twill/denim on the horizon, but not hemp tees.

The "new" enzyme process is closely related to how wood pulp is broken down to make viscose rayon. Which is also energy intensive, and chemically sketchy. Rayon comes with some nasty side effects for the workers, who are exposed to carbon disulphide during production, and CS2 exposure can cause... psychosis. Then death. Clearly, since the world makes a lot of viscose, we've got this safety issue under control, but it IS a safety issue, and it's a cost. Making hemp viscose comes with the same costs to the planet as making wood pulp viscose (or bamboo viscose) so we don't get around the environmental cost just because the feedstock is different. Knit hemp viscose will have the same issues as knit wood rayon or knit bamboo rayon -- those semi-disposable clothes from H&M or F21? Those are usually rayon jersey, which runs and shreds easily and isn't very mechanically stable.

Textiles are my hobby. There are some very, very practical, non-conspiracy reasons that hemp fabric (and linen) fell out of heavy use.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

6. Love it - an info-heavy post!

[hunter]

12. I don't have links to the patents I recall, and a quick google search didn't turn them up.

The process I remember involved enzymes mass-produced in bioreactors, much as the enzymes in common household laundry products are produced. It wasn't a rayon type process, and it wasn't the "stone washed" enzyme process that makes your jeans wear out sooner, or even more bizarre, look worn out when you buy them (madness!).

I have a friend who works in the pharmaceutical industry as an engineer who keeps the huge bioreactors running and diagnoses their upsets, so it may be related to that. (It's a lot like mass producing beer or wine, except that some of the little beasties, frequently genetically engineered, are a lot fussier than the common brewers yeasts.)

The google search is complicated by all the hemp enthusiasts; those are the articles that flood the internet, and those are the articles most frequently linked too, so they rise to the top of search results.

Personally, I'm as allergic as hell to enzyme detergents, and those enzymes are likewise very hazardous to the workers who produce these products. A lot of these workers ended up with lungs as messed up as any chain smoker or coal miner.

Alas, the world is flooded with inexpensive cotton and too much of it produced by slave labor and wage-slave labor, in a process that requires heavy applications of pesticides and herbicides.

I'm not one of the people who think hemp is a panacea, but I strongly support legalization.

On edit: I added "bast fiber" to my scholarly search, but still no. It's irritating me because one more word might do it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

13. What about hemp blends

I've seen it blended with cotton, rayon, even silk.

[politicat]

15. Hemp is an interesting textile.

Truly. It has better abrasion resistance than viscose (if it's wet-spun, not turned into rayon) and it wicks like linen, so it's a very cooling fabric. Too cooling, in that it can facilitate hypothermia the same way wet linen and cotton can. Its tensile strength is more variable over the length of the fiber than cotton, linen or silk, so that means it can be cross-woven really well; it works great as a weft thread with a high tensile linen or cotton warp. It is a perfectly fine warp thread when it's woven in a full hemp fabric; it can get flakey when it's spun with another fiber. (And I mean that literally -- bits flake off -- aka lint -- because hemp does not like to be dry-spun, while cotton does not like to be wet-spun.) It does have the issue of not knitting well at fine gauge, but that's true of linen, too. (This is why linen stockings were cut on the bias of woven fabric and seamed, rather than knitted. Cotton, wool and silk are more elastic fibers; rayon, old school nylon, hemp and linen aren't.)

Dying becomes an issue, because it's a plant fiber, so it dyes best with fiber-reactives, not acid dyes. That means it will blend best with cotton, linen and rayon, not wool or silk (which are proteins, and use acid dyes.) And the blend is best when it's a cross-weave, not a thread-blend. Think chambray or oxford cloth, not poly-cotton.

The biggest issue is that it starts off a bit scratchy -- like ramie -- and takes several washings to get soft enough to wear* or to become absorbent. Linen starches better, and cotton crisps better with a dry iron, but hemp drapes nicely for a heavy fabric. It is heavier than linen or cotton, and can't spin as fine. But it also waterproofs gorgeously with linseed oil -- that was the original oilcloth and sailcloth. (Which is flammable, alas.) It's a far superior backing for carpets than jute or nylon, and bast is a very good fiber insulation (along the lines of either blow-in or fiberglass batting.) Its best utility is mostly as an industrial/upholstery/utility fabric, not a fashion one.

It can be grown on land that's not suitable for linen (which wants a cooler, wetter climate), but is not warm enough for cotton, but hemp still wants good soil. It really does not like being on dry, clay soil, but there aren't a lot of plants that like dry, clay soil (mostly grasses, which should be used to feed sheep, not cattle, for wool and mutton). To turn the western deserts green with hemp, we're going to have to build pumping stations and flood the Salton Sea and the Playa for intercontinental salt seas to re-engineer the weather. Also, there's a conflict -- hemp grown for seed can't be used for textile fiber**, because the harvesting method for seed breaks the fiber; but hemp for fiber is hard to use for seed, because hand-harvesting means hand-threshing. (This is true of linen, too -- linseed is grown from its own flax plants; flax for fiber is a different variety. This didn't matter before mechanical harvesting, but it does, now.)

The best use, at this point, is paper. It's a great paper fiber, and hemp pulp to paper takes relatively little infrastructure refit compared to cotton fiber to hemp fiber for fabric. (Do not underestimate the differences between wet spinning and dry spinning.) Plus, a marginal hemp crop on dry land using mechanical harvesting for the seed doesn't matter to paper pulp, so we're not looking at a huge infrastructure change there, either. We have a lot of technology for using paper and pulp instead of plastics. And an acre of hemp produces annual tonnage of fiber, unlike wood pulp, which can take years to regrow. It's a good cover crop -- plant beans and corn on an annual rotation with a winter hemp cover crop to prevent soil erosion, which gives the farmer a third income source that takes little attention over the winter-early spring. It's not a nitrogen fixer, but it doesn't suck a lot out of the ground like corn, either.

*I'm not talking about hemp viscose/rayon, because that's just viscose/rayon.
** it can be turned into viscose/rayon.

[TexasBushwhacker]

7. I think the market for hemp oil and seed is small because it's expensive

If it was grown domestically instead of imported, I would think the cost would come down. Plus, the nutritional profile of hemp seed/oil is far better than cottonseed, with complete protein and a better balance of Omega 3s to Omega 6s.

[politicat]

8. Sure. Not arguing it.

It's an emerging market and it will stabilize. It's just getting a lot of hype like ostrich or llama ranching. And that got a lot of small farmers into bad economic trouble. The less of that we do, the better off everyone is.

I personally want the market to succeed, as long as it's labeled. (I am deeply allergic to the plant -- seeds, pollen, oil, leaves, fiber - so I've long been in favor of legalization and industrialization. I couldn't have a legal epi-pen before legalization, and the more stuff it's in, the more it gets labeled, so the better I can avoid it. Otherwise, I have to accept life as an agoraphobe.) I'd like to see hemp textiles return in a big way, because hemp sails are the best sails ever made, and large-scale kite-propulsion is possible and desirable, if we can get the carbon-fiber automated rigging production ramped up. (Sail lost to steam because of the labor cost.)

As for the nutritional profile. Okay. Sure. People are behaviorally conservative about foods. There are a lot of superfoods that come and go.

[Warren DeMontague]

14. It's great stuff. I put it on salads.

Has a very distinctive nutty flavor, I really do think it confers some health benefits.

[MurrayDelph]

11. The more-conservative of my two Senators here in Oregon

has been pushing that for years.