Contributor's Note: The following article is from NEW SCIENTIST
(British) 13 November 1980....written by Tim Malyon (previous
coordinator of the Legalize Cannabis Campaign), and Anthony Henman,
author of Mama Coca (Hassle Free Press, London, 1980) Also note:
One hectare=10,000 sq. meters.


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          NO MARIHUANA: PLENTY OF HEMP
     French farmers are doing well out of the growing market for
hemp fibres. British farmers could face 14 years in jail if they
followed suit...
     Eight thousand hectares of EEC-subsidised cannabis growing in
France--it seemed inconceivable. Our source of information,
however, left little doubt as to its accuracy. The neat scientific
pamphlets of the Federation Nationale des Producteurs de Chanvre
(FNPC) could hardly be accused of pandering to the pot culture.
Anxious to confirm the fact at first hand, we hopped on the early
morning train out of Paris's Gare Montparnasse, and two hours later
were met in Le Mans by the research officer of the FNPC. It was
early in September, just as the harvest was getting into full
swing. With a justified pride in his achievement, our contact
showed us out to the experimental fields, where acre upon acre of
the French type of monoecious hemp (with male and female flowers on
the same plant) vied with the trial introductions of five-metre
dioecious plants (only one sex per plant) from Italy, and thick-set
Lebanese bushes of the kind normally used for producing hashish.
Apart from these latter plants--a mere dozen or so, grown
exclusively for "comparative purposes"--we were assured that the
rest of the crop had been subject to selective breeding which
reduced the levels of THC--the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis-
-to virtual insignificance. On collecting a few "female flowering
tops" and smoking them in Paris later that same evening, we were
forced to concede the truth: French hemp is useless as a drug
plant, and the smoking of even large quantities of it succeeded
only in giving us a mild but irritating headache...
     Hemp's history of service to human culture is as long as it is
diverse. The Neolithic "yang Shao" culture of China (4000 BC) is
believed to have used the long fibrous strands on the outside of
the cannabis stalk for rope and cloth. According to Professor Hui-
Lin Li, an economic botanist at the University of Pennsylvania,
cannabis seeds rich in protein, "were considered, along with
millet, rice, barley and soybean, as one of the major grains of
ancient China." The first paper was made of hempen rags, while the
earliest pharmacopoeia in existence, the Pen-ts'ao-Ching, states
that "the fruits of hemp...if taken in excess will produce
hallucinations [literally seeing devils.] If taken over a long
term, it makes one communicate with spirits and lightens one's
body." Writing in the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus
describes how the Scythians would purge themselves after funerals
by inhaling the smoke of hemp seeds thrown onto hot stones. "The
Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure..."
Linguistic evidence indicates that in the original Hebrew and
Aramaic texts of the Old Testament the "holy anointing oil" which
God directed Moses to make (Exodus 30:23) was composed of myrrh,
cinnamon, cannabis and cassia.

PRECIOUS PLANTS     
     Up to the middle of the last century France alone was
cultivating more that 100,000 hectares, whilst so precious was the
plant in Tudor England that Queen Elizabeth I exacted a bounty of
5 gold sovereigns on any farmer who did not cultivate it. The
reason for such a penalty was simple: hemp fibre is the strongest
vegetable fibre known to man, and can be grown easily and in a
single six-month cycle from April to September. Before the
introduction of tropical sisal and Manila hemp, it was essential
for the rope and canvas (the very word derived from cannabis,
according to the OED) used to outfit the Navy. An American
commentary on the 1764 Hemp Law governing importation from "His
Majesty's colonies into Great Britain" notes the necessity to
"render their mother country independent of certain northern powers
(mainly the Baltic States) upon whom her former dependence, for a
supply of naval stores, has been frequently very precarious."
     This strategic aspect of cannabis as a basic fibre source
reappeared for a short while during the Second World War. In the
wake of Pearl Harbour and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines,
the US was cut off from its supplies of Manila rope and twine, and
made considerable efforts to revive its by then sagging hemp trade.
Planters' manuals were rapidly reprinted, and the estimated area
under cultivation increase from 585 hectares in 1939 to 59,500
hectares in 1943. By 1946 the total had dropped back to 1950
hectares and the industry was on its way to extinction in the
industrial West.
     A number of factors combined to bring about this state of
affairs. The production of high-quality hemp fibre is a labour-
intensive business. The hemp stalks must be dried in the field,
then transported to a "retting pit" where they are left in water
for several days to start the process of separating the fibre from
the woody core (known as hurds) of the stalk. The retted plants are
then taken back to the farm to be dried out in buildings similar to
hop oast houses. The stalks are passed through what is essentially
a large mangle separating fibre from broken hurd. The hurds are
then shaken out, and after "scutching and heckling" (a process of
cleaning and separating individual strands) the long, strong fibres
are ready for spinning and weaving. In a pre-industrial society,
the bulk of this work could be carried out during the winter when
farmers had little to do. With the importation of cheap tropical
fibers and the demise of the sail, however, such labour-intensive
work no longer proved financially viable. A mechanical hemp
"breaker" was introduced in the early 1900s, but it had arrived too
late to save a trade which by then was having to cope with
international cannabis prohibition and a new image for the plant,
from essential crop to assassin of youth.
     Synthetic textiles also helped hasten hemp's decline, as so,
too, did the 19th century introduction of the chemical woodpulping
process. As already mentioned, hemp textiles were one essential
source for rag paper. After the Second World War, for instance,
Robert Fletcher and Sons, the paper manufacturer owned by the
Imperial Tobacco Group, brought up large stocks of Nazi
concentration camp uniforms made from hemp, which it converted into
paper. Since then, Fletchers has stopped using textiles for paper
because it is almost impossible to obtain them free of synthetic
materials which wreak havoc on the machinery. It now imports raw
hemp fibres from France.
     For, curiously enough, as wood-pulp paper replaced rag paper
and hemp textile products disappeared from the market, a new
process was being developed in France that used the raw hemp fibres
for the production  of high-quality, strong papers. The fibre is
extremely resilient and ideal for the manufacture of cigarette
paper, which must combine high tensile strength with extreme
lightness. Fibre for paper is cheaper to produce than fibre for
textiles, because it needs neither to be as long nor of such high
quality. Paralleling the growth in the consumption of illicit,
high-THC forms of cannabis, the new hemp cigarette paper industry
was launched in the early 1960s in France, and established its
present prominence in the halcyon years between 1967 and 1971.
Statistics show a decline in the area of French cannabis sown for
textiles from 1084 hectares in 1961 to 147 hectares in 1968, the
last year for which official records of this type of cultivation
exist. In contrast, areas dedicated to paper production increased
from 61 hectares in 1961 to 3181 hectares in 1968, peaking at
10,595 hectares in 1977.
     The growth of this new market for the plant in France was
accompanied by a radical restructuring of the economics of the hemp
business. Though a few farmers grow the crop principally for the
sake of the subsidies they receive (1405 francs per hectare last
year), the bulk of current production comes from mechanised
concerns with high levels of productivity. One of the great
advantages of hemp for farmers lies in its use as a rotation crop,
breaking up the soil with its deep root system and also eliminating
weeds, thus leaving the land ready for the direct sowing of a
winter wheat crop before the arrival of the first frosts. An
enthusiastic response to this potential has brought about the
large-scale introduction of hemp into areas where it was not
traditionally cultivated, and in Bar-sur-Aube, for instance, 200 km
south-east of Paris, a flourishing cooperative has been established
to represent the interests of part of the new hemp agribusiness.
There, 93 farmers helped finance their own breaking mill which in
1978 was processing 2500 hectares of hemp.

STREAMLINED MECHANIZATION
     A certain amount of trade secrecy surrounds the exact
mechanical process involved in "breaking" the dried hemp stalks and
separating bast fiber--the phloem fibres, most suitable for paper
production--from the woody hurds. The director of the Bar-sur-Aube
cooperative politely refused us saying that as he sold 20 per cent
of his product to England, he did not wish to encourage "English
competition." The De Mauduit mill likewise refused to receive us,
even though the FNPC intervened on our behalf.
     Their reticence is understandable. It is streamlined
mechanisation in the breaking mills which has made the production
of crude bast fibre for paper much more cost-effective when
undertaken on a large industrial scale. Not surprisingly this new
system has led to an ever-increasing centralisation of the hemp
business. Various small mills were involved in the early 1960s, but
in the past decade the field has narrowed to two major concerns,
besides the Bar-sur-Aube cooperative. One is the relatively
traditional Job cigarette paper company in Toulouse, and the other
giant De Mauduit factory in Quimperele, which has prevailed over
all its competitors in the main hemp-growing areas of central and
north-eastern France. Its aggressive business acumen--De Mauduit is
actually a subsidiary of the US paper multinational Kimberly-Clark
who makes Kleenex tissues--is based upon a fine understanding of
the profitability of the trade: French farmers receive 435 francs
per tonne for the dried hemp stalks and De Mauduit charges 2500
francs for the prepared bast paper fibre, for which the British
paper maker ends up paying 650 Pounds per tonne. De Mauduit's
treated paper fibre, hemp pulp board, costs an astonishing 6500
francs per tonne.
     Since the break mills have a virtual monopoly, the FNPC in Le
Mans is looking for ways of diversifying the market for the hemp
its members produce. Research is being undertaken into the
possibility of including a proportion of hemp in various coarser
grades of paper,  including wrapping paper, as a means of
increasing strength. Some printing paper manufactures, including
the company that produces the glossy pages of Paris Match, are
considering introducing a proportion of hemp into their paper pulp.
So far the only indication that British companies other than Robert
Fletcher and Sons are actively researching hemp's paper potential
comes from the Manchester University's Department of Paper Science,
which refused to divulge information on recent work in this area
because what information it had was a "trade secret."
     Further potential for hemp in paper manufacture involves
utilising the plant's woody core, the hurds. While the average
fibre yield per hectare is approximately 185 kg, fully two-and-a-
half tonnes of hurds are produced from the same area. These are now
being sold for animal bedding and for producing building boards
with good sound-proofing properties. As far back as 1916, however,
the US Department of Agriculture carried out a number of semi-
commercial tests on the use of hurds for paper production and
concluded:"After several trials, under conditions of treatment and
manufacture which are regarded as favourable in comparison with
those used with wood pulp, paper was produced which received very
favourable comment both from investigators and from the trade and
which according to official tests would be classed as No.1 machine 
finish printing paper." Not only could hemp hurds compete with wood
pulp on cost and quality, but they were also found to be far more
economical in terms of land use. "Every tract of 10,000 acres which
is devoted to hemp raising year by year is equivalent to a
sustained pulp producing capacity of 40,500 acres of average pulp-
wood lands." Despite a 1977 Italian study which found that this
usage remained commercially viable, paper companies are apparently
disregarding the potential for hurds, even though paper production
from hurds is much less polluting than from wood-pulp. Hemp hurds
contain on average 4 per cent lignin, as opposed to 18-30 per cent
in wood, and it is the effluent resulting from washing out the
lignin that causes the most serious pollution in the chemical
pulping process.
     Some thought is now going into researching non-paper
applications for hemp products. At present seeds (farmers receive
10 francs per kg; average yield is 50 kg/ha) have a limited use,
being sold mainly as animal feed, bird food and anglers' bait.
However, cannabis seeds contain 30-45 per cent high protein oil,
which is edible, or may be used in future in paint production.
     The French hemp industry is of course entirely disregarding
cannabis' textile potential, despite the fact that in Brittany some
small farmers still produce hempen sheets and other hard-wearing
cloth for their own use. We were informed in France that the
production of the high quality fibres required for textiles remains
prohibitively costly and that rope and sacking are imported from
Eastern Bloc countries where labour costs remain lower. Scottish
hemp fiber importers obtain a large percentage of their material
from Poland. According to our research, the finest hemp cloth has
always been produced by the Chinese and Italians, and Yugoslavia,
India and Japan are still producing hemp textiles, the latter in
combination with synthetic fibres.
     What might be the future for a revitalised hemp fibre industry
in the UK? Certainly, the British paper-makers could not but
welcome any attempt to undercut prices they pay for imported hemp,
but in order to achieve this, considerable capital must be invested
in British breaking mills. However, what is possibly of more
interest than the now established use of fibre for high-quality
paper is the future of hemp fibre in textiles. Given careful
preparation, high-quality hemp cloth can be produced in Britain
that is both comfortable and more durable than any other natural
textile. A hemp/wool mix was once widely used in France, being
known generically as berlinge. Demand is growing for durable
natural fibre products where the public will pay a somewhat higher
price for a superior product. Certain clothing manufacturers in the
US have expressed an interest in hemp jeans (Levi Strauss's
original jeans were made from hempen sailcloth,) while the outdoor
equipment industry is also returning where possible to natural
fibres, and hemp might be ideal in, for instance, specialists
mountaineering backpacks. Given the mess in which the British
textile industry finds itself, such innovative ideas could well
bear fruit, particularly if the technology can be developed from
the existing machinery in the linen industry to keep the cost of
preparing weaving quality hemp fibre within reasonable limits.
     All this, of course, presumes a more sensible government
attitude to British cultivation laws. (Cannabis stalks and seeds
are already legal, and can be safely imported.) While international
law governing cannabis cultivation makes a specific exemption for
industrial uses, no such exemption exists in British law, and
growers must obtain a special license from the Home Secretary. The
only farmer to apply for such a license in 1980 was refused. In
France, the law is more flexible, but no less precise. Farmers must
have a guaranteed purchaser of their crop and must obtain their
official, low-THC seed directly from the FNPC, informing the
Ministries of Health and Agriculture of their intentions. Such a
model could easily be introduced into this country in conformity
with the Common Agricultural Policy. Since the rapid expansion of
the French industry furnishes proof of profit potential, British
farmers might be justifiably annoyed at being threatened with a 14
year jail sentence for growing a plant, generously subsidised by
the EEC on the continent, from which their French neighbours are
making good money. Or perhaps Her Majesty's government should sue
the EEC commissioners for conspiring to aid and abet a criminal
offence?
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