Save Trees - Grow Pot!

Dave Seber, in an interview for High Times magazine, indicates that being in the "lumber business for almost 15 years now...I have watched the forests being taken out here." Seber has been a redwood logger and contected with C&S Lumber, an R&D organization in Oregon dedicated to finding replacement fibers for wood.

"As I see it," Seber says "we've got 10 to 20 years, tops, before the entire ecosystem, as we know it, will collapse because of what they are doing in these forests." He goes on to suggest that the "environmental threat" to forests will worsen if no alternate fiber to wood is found. And, as you probably guessed, he thinks hemp is the answer.

Carol Moran heads a company called Living Tree Paper Company in Eugene, Oregon. She, according to an article in ENN Online, is convinced that hemp can "single-handedly stop worldwide deforestation." Her company's magazine is even printed on non-tree hemp paper.

Further, Mary Kane, publisher of HempWorld, a quarterly journal of the hemp movement says that "eventually the DEA will be forced to relinquish the ban on hemp farming. It's a plant that can provide alternatives to anything synthetic." She further states that "hemp can save the world but we have to give it a chance."

It does seem that hemp is making a comeback almost everywhere except the United States. Canada has made experimental hemp cultivation a policy. China is a leading country in the production of hemp and hemp products. South Africa is growing hemp, New Zealand is growing hemp, Switzerland is growing hemp, and on and on. Projects in Kentucky and California were politically strangled, and hemp cultivation in the U.S. is a long time in coming, if ever.

In summary, the hemp movement feels that hemp fiber is more durable than wood and can be recycled more frequently than tree fiber. Hemp produces a highly nutritious seed crop that can be of comparable value to the fiber crop. Agriculturally grown hemp would fit well with natural forests and tree plantations.

...or would it?