“There is one farm crop that can fill all our energy needs. Hemp is the only biomass resource capable of making America energy efficient…
By the year 2000, America will have exhausted 80 percent of her petroleum reserves. Will we go to war with the Arabs for the privilege of driving our cars? Will we stripmine our land for coal, and poison our air so we can drive our autos an extra 100 years? Will we raze our forests to make fuel?”
– From an unfortunately prophetic 1980s-era flier, Hemp for Clean Sustainable Fuel, distributed by the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp. For the record, while hemp does hold amazing promise as a crop with energy benefits, it can’t answer all of America’s energy needs. But, it can make a large dent as part of the solution to the energy problems, especially in that it absorbs greenhouse gasses and puts forth oxygen, and it can be used to produce a variety of fuels.
“Hemp could end our dependency on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, such as natural gas, oil, and coal, are nonrenewable resources since they are the by-products of eons of natural decomposition of Earth’s ancient biomass. Fossil fuel contains sulfur, which is the source of many of the aggravating environmental pollution problems threatening America. When burned the ancient [collections of] carbon dioxide trapped in these fossil fuels are released and increase the effects of global warming and the greenhouse effect.
… According to Environmental chemist Stanley E. Manahan, if we dedicated about 6 percent of continental U.S. land to hemp biomass, cultivation could supply all current demands for oil and gas. This production would not add any net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Pyrolysis is the process of converting organic biomass into fuel similar to the process currently used to create charcoal. Hemp ‘charcoal’ has the same heating value as coal, with virtually no sulfur to pollute the atmosphere. Hemp yields approximately ten tons per acre in four months, is drought-resistant and produces a heating value of 5,000-8,000 Btu/per pound of dried hemp. Hemp biomass can also be converted to methanol.”
– Hemp: A True Gift from God(ess), by Dr. Heather Anne Harder, SeattleHempFest.com/Facts. For the record, the figure given is an example of how much land might be needed. The claim that it could supply all of the current demands for energy and gas is a stretch. In combination with other crops, including landscape clippings, the U.S. can certainly become more energy efficient. Technological breakthroughs in fuel-efficient engines, public transportation, the spread of the bike culture, and in household items would also need to play a part. A change in the typical American lifestyle, including in what is considered to be food, how it is grown, and how it is prepared, also would play into the factor. Food growing, harvesting, production, marketing, and preparation use the majority of natural resources.
“According to the U.S. Department of Energy, hemp as a biomass fuel producer requires the least specialized growing and processing procedures of all hemp products. The hydrocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources, from fuel pellets to liquid fuels and gas. Development of biofuels could significantly reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and nuclear power.”
– Hemp Industries Association, 2006; TheHIA.org
Hemp produces about 200 to 300 gallons of oil per acre from the seed of the plant, which has a 35 percent oil content. A crop that produces more oil per acre is canola, but the plant fiber of canola does not provide as many uses as hemp.
Because hemp grows to its full height in just a few months, hemp also produces an impressive biomass tonnage per acre.
Using hemp oil for fuel and hemp cellulose to create cellulosic ethanol, one acre of hemp provides as much energy as 18 to 25 barrels of petroleum oil. Hemp grown for seed takes about a month longer to mature, and is planted wider apart than hemp grown for fiber or pulp.
Extracting the oil from the hemp seeds and using the plant cellulose to make cellulosic ethanol, a revived modern-day domestic hemp industry can greatly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and help prevent the damage now created to the ecology by oil drilling, crude oil processing, and the heavily polluting worldwide shipping of petroleum.
Currently the most common crop being used for ethanol production in the U.S. is corn. Corn is not the best plant substance to use for ethanol. Corn ethanol/petroleum gasoline blends reduce greenhouse tailpipe emissions by about 12 percent from regular petroleum gasoline. Soybean oil biodiesel reduces greenhouse tailpipe emissions by about 41 percent from regular petroleum diesel. According to Department of Energy studies conducted by the Argonne Laboratories at the University of Chicago, cellulosic ethanol made from plant fiber (such as hemp, landscape clippings, or switchgrass) reduces greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 85 percent.
The leftover material from the creation of hemp ethanol can be used to make fiberboard, which would reduce cutting down trees for building material. It can be used for insulation, which reduces the use of heating fuels, which would reduce the production of greenhouse gasses. It could also be composted back into the soil to help maintain soil health.
The leftover “seed cake” material from creating hemp oil can be used for nutritional powders for both humans and animals. The seed cake can also be used as compost.
“The potential for carbon neutral ethanol production is still a topic of intense research and debate. At the optimistic end of the debate, life-cycle assessments have suggested that cellulosic ethanol could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 percent below those of gasoline, as compared to a 20 or 40 percent reduction in emissions (at best) derived from corn-based grain ethanol. (This is in large part due to the fact that, as in the paper pulping process, waste material in the cellulosic ethanol process can be gasified for energy to power the mill facilities.)”
– March 2008 Reason Foundation Study on Hemp, Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition. Policy Study 367, by Skaidra Smith-Heisters
The most commonly grown plant material in North America is landscape clippings. This material can be used to make cellulosic ethanol. Lawns already exist throughout towns and cities, and the crop is already harvested by lawnmowers, weed eaters, and bush trimmers. The lawn clippings are also already being collected, but with trash trucks that take the useful material to garbage landfills. Cities should be collecting lawn clippings and taking these to cellulosic ethanol refineries. This cellulose material can be gathered freely as a waste product from lawns surrounding homes, school campuses, office complexes, sports parks, and government buildings. This would be smarter than turning to the farming industry and paying them billions of dollars in government subsidies (corporate welfare) to grow more corn and soybeans to produce fuels that are not as environmentally safe as the cellulosic fuel that can be made from grass and from a rotation crop of hemp.
Currently the U.S. government is spending billions of dollars subsidizing the corn and soy industries to produce more crops to turn into fuel. This is in addition to the billions those farm crops already receive to provide animal feed. Even if 100 percent of American corn and soybean crops were used to make ethanol and biodiesel, the fuel would provide only 12 percent of gas and 6 percent of diesel.
As detailed in the documentary, “King Corn,” this surge in corn farming is increasing the practice of monocropping, which is planting thousands of acres of a single crop. Monocropping is not good for the soil, for water tables, or for wildlife. On May 12, 2007, the U.N.-Energy consortium of 20 United Nations agencies and programs released a report warning: “Use of large-scale monocropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and nutrient leaching.” Also problematic is that corn and soybean fields are commonly treated with farming chemicals such as the herbicide Atrazine, which is not good for the soil and is known to cause cancer, especially of the breast.
The growing use of corn for ethanol production has increased the price of corn on the world market. This is increasing food prices, especially in poorer countries like Mexico. A National Academy of Sciences study concluded that ethanol and biodiesel would have a major impact on the food supply if the world keeps turning to corn, soy, and other current farm crops to make biofuels. What people may not consider when they hear that statement is that most food grown in North America, and an increasing amount of food grown in other parts of the world, goes to feed farmed animals. Those of us who follow a vegan diet do not support this terrible waste of resources.
Corporate single-crop farming is taking over family subsistence farming around the planet, displacing poor people from land their families have lived on for generations. Additionally, multinational corporations dump huge amounts of monofarmed crops into markets of poor countries, making it difficult to impossible for local farmers there to make money from farming – thus the farmers leave their land and move into cities. They also risk their lives to get into richer countries to make money to survive.
This leads into the reasons why the 700-mile border wall the U.S. government wants to build along the Mexico border is a VERY bad idea. The wall would be a catastrophe for wildlife of all sorts – what is bad for wildlife is bad for all life. Building that wall is a far from helpful solution relating to the issue of “illegal immigrants.” Building walls and multinational monocropping does not help anyone, damages wildlife, damages human cultures, and does not help solve the problem of human suffering or of immigration issues.
Both corn and soy are grown using large amounts of pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. Cotton uses even more of these chemicals, which are largely fossil fuel-based. Nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas (a fossil fuel) accounts for nearly half of the energy used for corn farming in the U.S. Most of the nitrogen fertilizer used in the U.S. is imported. Hemp does not need any of these harmful chemicals. Hemp also produces up to 200 percent more fabric per acre than cotton.
“In western Germany between 1982 and 1995, hemp cultivation was illegal except for use as a barrier to cross-pollination in commercial beet breeding. Subsequent research has shown that hemp hedges don’t completely block the spread of beet pollen, but this sort of detail helps to highlight the value of inter-crop relationships in general. Hemp might be an especially valuable option as a secondary crop for organic vegetable farmers, or as a value-added cover crop between either organic or conventionally grown crops, naturally reducing weeds and other pests in the process. Hemp is reportedly used in China as a barrier to repel insects from vegetable crops.
Researchers in Canada have reported that in rotation with soybeans, industrial hemp reduces cyst nematodes, a parasitic pest, by 80 percent. (Kenaf and corn, among other crops, produce similar benefits, though maybe not to the same extent.) Dutch research has suggested similar results through hemp rotation on nematodes that damage potato crops. In the Netherlands, rotation experiments with corn, hemp, winter barley, and winter rye indicated that hemp was the best crop for reducing infestations of Cyperus esculentus, a weedy nutgrass. Fiber hemp has also reportedly suppressed aggressive agricultural plant pests quackgrass (Agropyron repens) and Canadian thistle (Cirsium arvense). Complimentary crop rotations can boost the field productivity of both hemp and the subsequent rotational crop. One study reported that in the Netherlands a 10 percent increase in yield of winter wheat was observed following rotation with fiber hemp. Some of the benefits seen in crop rotations with hemp—in particular, the contrast between vegetable and fiber crops—illustrate the positive value of crop diversity as opposed to the regional dominance of any single crop.
– March 2008 Reason Foundation Study on Hemp, Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition. Policy Study 367, by Skaidra Smith-Heisters
Hemp can be grown as a rotation crop on farms, and on the approximate one-sixth of U.S. cropland that is being left fallow to control food prices. Industrial hemp would not take away from the food industry. Instead, hemp would improve certain soil conditions to grow other crops because hemp both destroys invasive weeds while mining nutrients from deep below the soil.
As mentioned, the leftover material from creating hemp biofuels could be used to make fiberboard and food. It also can be returned to farm soil as compost to build soil base, prevent erosion, and provide nutrients for soil organisms.
Not allowing farmers to grow industrial hemp also presents another issue. Why should farmers have to purchase fuel made from petroleum, which is often shipped thousands of miles from other countries, and causes a tremendous amount of pollution to drill for, refine, and ship, when instead farmers could be growing hemp for fuel, or get hemp fuel from farmers’ hemp fuel co-ops? Why? Because blatantly ridiculous taxation and drug laws that should never have been created now prevent it.
If U.S. farmers and businesses began using hemp fuel in their diesel engines rather than petroleum-based diesel fuel, the petroleum industry would lose tens of billions of dollars every year… Unless of course they instead got involved with the hemp fuel industry, which would be less expensive for them than drilling for, shipping, and refining petroleum.
If hemp farming were legal in the U.S., the air would be cleaner, the oceans would be less acidic, acid rain would be reduced, and the hemp plants grown for the production of the fuel would remove tons of global warming gasses from the atmosphere, emit oxygen, and improve the soil. If hemp farming were legal in the U.S., farmers would have more stable incomes.
Under the 2005 energy act approved under the George W. Bush administration the petroleum, shale, tar sand, natural gas, and coal industries are given $13.1 billion in tax incentives, loan guarantees, and other benefits at the expense of taxpayers, wildlife, and the environment. This is at a time when the petroleum industry is experiencing record profits amounting to billions of dollars each quarter. The U.S. government also encourages energy gluttony by giving tax breaks to companies that purchase SUVs, and to people who build large houses. People who have second homes (read: The Wealthy) also get tax breaks on their homes, which is another way that government does not support a sustainable future. The government also falters on the great opportunity to build a renewable economy by way of its refusal to require automobile companies to improve their fuel efficiency standards. At this stage it is deplorable that the government would be giving such tax benefits to highly polluting energy industries, especially those that derive fuel from oil sand, which produces more carbon dioxide than is produced by fuels from standard petroleum.
In January 2007 the newly elected Democratic Congressional leaders announced plans to remove some of the tax subsidies from the petroleum industry and put that money to work developing and encouraging renewable energy sources, such as from wind, solar, water, and carbohydrates. They announced plans to double the budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, which was established under the Carter administration. If the Congressional leaders are smart they will make sure that money goes to developing industrial hemp farming inside the U.S. borders.
“In the 2004 and 2006 election cycles, the National Corn Growers Association [a nonprofit that represents more than 300,000 farmers], the Renewable Fuels Association [a trade group], and the handful of companies building ethanol refineries gave a combined $1.2 million to political candidates, according to the Center for Responsible Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political donations. Federal legislators from Illinois and Iowa received the most funds.”
– Shuck and Jive: How industry and politicians are harvesting ethanol for all its worth, by Rebecca Clarren, Utne magazine, May-June 2007, utne.com; written in part with a grant from The Fund for Investigative Journalism, fij.org
Large farming corporations as well as the trade and business associations involved in ethanol production are doing a very good job at getting the government to fund corn ethanol production. They spend millions every year on lobbying firms that work to get politicians to pass bills that benefit the corn industry.
Currently the U.S. government is subsidizing the corn ethanol industry with well over five billion dollars per year in tax credits, exemptions, direct funding, and research grants. Multi-billion-dollar corporations in the farming industry, such as Archer Daniels Midland, often benefit from these tax breaks, grants, and other government corporate welfare while family farmers struggle.
The corn and ethanol industry boasts that the subsidies and so forth create jobs and revive farming communities. But when a large amount of the money is going to large farming and ethanol plant corporations with headquarters in cities, and when the corn is not the best form of fuel that can be created from plants, one has to question who is really benefiting from this government assistance. As ethanol becomes more common, and profits grow, it is likely that large corporations will successfully put more and more effort into owning the industry.
People need to work to get that money flowing into producing more sustainable fuels, including into hemp ethanol, into hemp biodiesel, into cellulosic ethanol made from lawn trimmings, and into solar power.
Government and industry should also work to make the biofuels industry less reliant on fossil fuels for the production of biofuels. While many ethanol distillers use natural gas, which is a major contributor to global warming, currently some ethanol plants burn hundreds of tons of coal per day, which also results in a tremendous amount of air pollution. This is a financial windfall for the coal industry, but horrible for the environment, wildlife, and the health of all life on the planet, including deep in the oceans, where much of the pollution is settling.
In his state of the union address at the beginning of 2007 George W. Bush spoke about funding switchgrass ethanol research and production. We don’t need to be planting thousands of acres of switchgrass for fuel, which would take up even more wild and farm land. We already produce an enormous amount of grass in the form of lawn and landscape clippings, which are typically tossed into the trash and hauled to toxic landfills.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory budget should be more than quadrupled, and a chunk of that budget should be allocated toward intensive development of renewable fuels that have a negative output of greenhouse gasses. Hemp is one that does this because the plant absorbs more pollution than it lets out in fuel use because not all of the plant can be used in energy, and it also grows easily, requiring lower energy output to create than the production and refining of many other types of fuel.
“Hemp could replace most oil and energy needs, and could revolutionize the textile industry and stop foreign dependency on oil imports. And it could significantly reduce or eliminate the negative ecological impacts of these polluting industries.
It is estimated that methane and methanol production alone from hemp grown as bio-mass could replace 90 percent of the world’s energy needs.”
– Hugh Downs, ABC News, 1991
“Hemp oil could be a major player in reducing the fuel crisis. Hemp oil could be a very successful replacement for diesel oil.”
– William C. “Bill” Miller, President, Miller Consulting Group, Jackson, Mississippi; North American Industrial Hemp Council Director, NAIHC.org; 2006
“Methane and methanol fuels produced from hemp emit 50 percent less air pollution than its fossil fuel competitor. Co-fired biomass generating facilities can produce cheaper and cleaner electricity. We as a nation are importing more of our energy needs today than we did in 1974, before the OPEC oil embargo, over 50 percent.”
– Practical Guide to Hemp, HempLobby.org
Hemp does not contain sulfur. Burning hemp fuel does not spew sulfuric acid into the air, and does not cause the acid rain that is the result of burning fossil fuels, such as coal.
“We only have three percent of the world’s oil, and the Middle East has 66 percent. Do the math. We can’t drill our way to energy independence.”
– Chuck Clusen, head of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Alaska Project (NRDC.org), as quoted by syndicated columnist Molly Ivins, February 9, 2006
“Seriously, we have a major addiction to petroleum and it has caused many an environmental catastrophe. The oil from hemp seed can fuel your car. It burns much cleaner than the gas you get at the filling station, and you don’t have to go to the Middle East to get it. Presently you might have to go to Canada to get it, but that’s beside the point. Just think about it… the gas you buy could be grown and processed in your own county!”
– Rob Moseley, Kentucky Hemp Outfitters, KentuckyHemp.com
“The hydrocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources, from fuel pellets to liquid fuels and gas. Development of biofuels could significantly reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and nuclear power.”
– Practical Guide to Hemp, HempLobby.org
Some studies have concluded that cities reliant on ethanol and biodiesel will be dealing with more ground level ozone than if the cities remained dependent on petroleum gasoline. The studies I have read did not take into account some or all of the factors that contribute to the toxicity of relying on fossil fuels. They may not have considered the amount of pollution that growing thousands of acres of plants would remove from the atmosphere and how these plants would improve land and water quality. They also may not have considered the lung-damaging and cancer-causing heavy particulate-laden soot that results from burning fossil fuels, or the benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in petroleum exhaust. They may not have considered the damage done to the land, air, and water of the planet by drilling for, shipping, refining, and then transferring the petroleum gasoline and diesel fuel. At least one of the studies only considered petroleum/ethanol blends as well as petroleum diesel/plant biodiesel blends, and did not consider 100 percent plant-based fuels. The toxic benzene, hexene, touline, and zylene used in making petroleum fuels are not needed when making plant-based ethanol and biodiesel. 100 percent plant-based fuels would decrease many types of environmental damage while growing the plants would improve the environment.
It is important to note that removing all “plant waste matter” or “plant residues” (such as the “stover” that is the corn stock left over after the corn is harvested) from crop farms is not good for the soil, weakens plants, and propagates insect infestation. To maintain healthy soil there needs to be composting that returns plant matter to the soil. This is important in maintaining nutrient base, soil depth, and preventing erosion. Many of the organisms in the soil survive on rotting plant matter, which in turn feeds the plants that filter rainwater, clean the air, produce oxygen, and provide food for wildlife.
One way to improve and build up the soil base of farms is to return more plant matter to the soil in the form of compost. Currently the food scraps from kitchens, restaurants, cafeterias, and food processing plants too often end up as trash that is taken to landfills. This is valuable matter that should not be treated as trash. Instead of taking this compostable and nutrient-rich material to landfills it should be taken to compost plants and then returned to the farms. This would help offset the plant matter nutrients that are being removed from the land when the crops are harvested and used as food, oil, fabric, fiber, and fuel. This is even more important in a society that is increasing its reliance on plant-based fuels.
If a cellulosic ethanol industry is to be created, hemp and landscape clipping have many advantages over other forms of cellulosic materials. Problematic issues include the harvesting, shipment, and storage of materials needed for creating cellulosic ethanol.
No matter what, we are going to have to figure out a way to break from the highly polluting and massively destructive fossil fuels that create problems at every stage of their development and use.
Soy and corn are not the answer. Both corn and soy farming are leading to massive environmental damage, especially from the use of farming chemicals used to grow the crops, and from deforestation. One only has to look to Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil to see the damage being done by the spread of soy and corn farming, which now take up hundreds of millions of acres in South America. Soy and corn farming is largely controlled by transnational corporations, such as Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Du Pont, Monsanto, Pioneer, and Syngenta. Hundreds of thousands of small farmers have lost their land to operations run by these companies. Rivers are being poisoned with chemicals used to grow soy and corn. This has killed off fish and contaminated sources of drinking water. Birth defects are increasing as women of childbearing age are exposed to these toxic chemicals. Cancer rates are also on the rise among the people who live and work on or near the chemically treated corn and soy fields. Millions of acres of rainforest have been destroyed to provide the land for the corn and soy monocropping farms. This has destroyed many forms of wildlife.
When hemp is grown it not only provides oxygen, it also removes C02 from the air. When the oil is burned, some of the C02 is released back into the air. Because only part of the plant is used to create cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel, the plant removes more C02 than is released through burning of the fuel. In this way hemp takes in more CO2 than it lets out, helping to reverse global warming.
“Industrial hemp is a non-drug, earth-friendly, industrial crop that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve a greater level of U.S. energy independence.”
– R. James Woolsey, Shea & Gardner, Washington, D.C.; Legal counsel to the North American Industrial Hemp Council and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1993-1996; as quoted by NAIHC.org; 2006
“Hemp is the world’s champion photosynthesizer. It converts the sun’s energy into biomass more efficiently than any other plant, with at least four times the biomass/cellulose economically as petroleum-based fuels.
Coal and petrochemicals got their energy from the sun, thousands of years ago, storing energy as the plants decayed. When they are burned, they release pollutants into the atmosphere. Biomass fuel releases fewer pollutants, and the fuel source spends the growing season removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis; biomass fuels contain no sulfur.
The environmental impact of hemp, then, has been the use of far more environmentally damaging alternatives. If hemp were legal, it could become an economically viable and low-polluting source of fuel, paints and varnishes, textiles and fabrics, paper, and even food. Hemp might replace trees as raw material for press-board or particleboard construction material. You could even make PVC pipe from hemp.
In 1988, the chief administrative law judge of the Drug Enforcement Administration wrote: ‘There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality… In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.’ The dangers of hemp are far from overwhelming.
Relegalizing hemp could be the single most important environmental reform we could undertake.”
– The Environmental Impact of the Laws Against Marijuana, by Alan W. Bock, The Orange County Register, Thursday, May 3, 1990. For the record, certain types of grasses can produce more biomass per acre than hemp. This is one reason why landscape clippings are an excellent source for making cellulosic ethanol. In combination with hemp, the landscape clippings collected in towns and cities and brought to ethanol plants can greatly improve our domestic fuel production and use, and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, including imported petroleum.
“In July 2005, Cornell University published a study saying that it is not economical to produce ethanol or biodiesel from corn and other crops. The study confirmed what other studies have shown in the past. The vegetable sources that are currently (legally) available are insufficient. Hemp is the only proven source for economical biomass fuels, a biomass source.”
– Hemp4Fuel.com. For the record, hemp is one of several alternative biomass fuels. See above.
“The growing dominance of the petroleum industry had vocal critics at the turn of the century. Scientists Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver, engineer Rudolph Diesel, industrialist Henry Ford, chemist William Hale, and his father-in-law H.H. Dow (founder of Dow Chemical Company) were among those who championed bio-based fuels and plastics.”
– March 2008 Reason Foundation Study on Hemp, Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition. Policy Study 367, by Skaidra Smith-Heisters
“August 13, 1941, Henry Ford first displayed his plastic car at Dearborn Days in Michigan. The car ran on fuels derived from hemp and other agricultural-based sources, and the [fiber and resin] fenders were made of hemp, wheat, straw, and synthetic plastics. Ford said his vision was ‘to grow automobiles from the soil.’”
– The Kentucky Hemp Museum and Library; KentuckyHemp.com. 1998 Historical Hemp Calendar, February. John Roulac. Industrial Hemp Practical Products – Paper to Fabric to Cosmetics, page 11; Hemptech.com
“When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was ‘the fuel of the future’ in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. ‘The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust – almost anything,’ he said. ‘There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.’
… Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.
… Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the car itself was constructed [partially] from hemp. On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel (source: Popular Mechanics, 1941).
… Ethanol has been known as a fuel for many decades. Indeed, when Henry Ford designed the Model T, it was his expectation that ethanol, made from renewable biological materials, would be a major automobile fuel. However, gasoline emerged as the dominant transportation fuel in the early twentieth-century because of the ease of operation of gasoline engines with the materials then available for engine construction, a growing supply of cheaper petroleum from oil field discoveries, and intense lobbying by petroleum companies for the federal government to maintain steep alcohol taxes. Many bills proposing a national energy program that made use of America’s vast agricultural resources (for fuel production) were killed by smear campaigns launched by vested petroleum interests.”
– From Energy Crisis: Ford and Diesel Never Intended Cars to Use Gasoline, Organic Consumers Association, OrganicConsumers.org
So involved was Henry Ford with developing uses for hemp that the Ford Motor Company ran an operation in Iron Mountain, Michigan, that created various forms of fuel from hemp, including hemp ethanol and hemp coal. Ford workers studied hemp-growing techniques on the Alberta, Canada farm of Albert Fraleigh. Ford wanted to make everything from hemp carbohydrates that could also be made from petroleum hydrocarbons, including fuel, plastics, paint, glues, resins, and fiber.
Ford’s company developed enamel out of soy. By the mid-1930s soy was also used to make plastics for the horn button and the knob on the gearshift of Ford vehicles. They also developed fabrics that were about 25 percent soy and used this in the upholstery. A marketing phrase was that Ford cars contained a “bushel of soy,” and that Ford was “growing automobiles from the soil.”
A photo of Ford is in the December 1941 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine. He is shown with a typical-looking car manufactured by his company. But the car wasn’t typical. It was made using various plant materials, including hemp fiber and resin, and its engine ran on ethanol. To show the strength of the material the car is made of, he is hitting the back fender with a sledgehammer. The title of the article is “Auto Body Made of Plastics Resists Denting Under Hard Blows.” The photo is subtitled, “Here is the auto Henry Ford ‘grew from the soil.’ Its plastic panels, with impact strength 10 times greater than steel, were made from flax, wheat, hemp, spruce pulp.”
“After twelve years of research, the Ford Motor Company has completed an experimental automobile with a plastic body. Although its design takes advantage of the properties of plastics, the streamline car does not differ greatly in appearance from its steel counterpart. The only steel in the hand-made body is found in the tubular welded frame on which are mounted 14 plastic panels, 3/16 inch thick. Composed of a mixture of farm crops and synthetic chemicals, the plastic is reported to withstand a blow 10 times as great as steel without denting. Even the windows and windshield are of plastic. The total weight of the plastic car is about 2,000 pounds, compared with 3,000 pounds for a steel automobile of the same size. Although no hint has been given as to when plastic cars may go into production, the experimental model is pictured as a step toward materialization of Henry Ford’s belief that some day he would ‘grow automobiles from the soil.’”
– Popular Mechanics magazine, December 1941
While Ford’s personal history of anti-Semitism defines him as a troubled individual, he could at least be credited with wanting to make his cars into what today we call “green vehicles” with ethanol-run engines and parts made from plant matter. He was not successful in these dreams. If Ford had been successful in his car design, we would have a different world. But he didn’t succeed, and much of that can be attributed to the companies, investors, and politicians who worked against his ideas. Now we have car bodies made of metal with interiors made of petroleum plastics. Engines running on petroleum gasoline became standard – as did roads made out of petroleum asphalt.
Ford was not the only major figure in the automobile industry who had ideas to run cars on plant-based fuel.
When Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine he meant it to be run on plant oils, not on petrofuel, which he considered to be a dirty fuel. At the 1900 World’s Fair, Diesel demonstrated his engine using peanut oil. Hemp oil is a biofuel that can run diesel engines.
The grime and soot spewed from diesel engines would not exist if diesel engines ran on hemp fuel (or other seed fuels) rather than petroleum fuel. Smog would be reduced. Global warming would be slowed. Lung disease rates would drop. The rivers, lakes, and oceans would be cleaner and safer for wildlife. Growing hemp for fuel would create jobs and oxygen as well as improve the air, soil, and water.
“Ethanol – ethyl alcohol, currently produced by fermenting cornstarch from kernels – is gradually replacing toxic Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) in the United States as a high-octane, pollution-reducing gasoline additive. As a source for ethanol, corn kernels are economically viable only because of high federal subsidies [corporate welfare]. In the next two to five years, the energy-efficient production of ethanol from cellulosic biomass such as wheat and rice straw, hemp, flax, and corn stalks will become commercially viable. This process also generates much lower overall emission of greenhouse gas CO2, and because most automobile engines can run on 15:85 ethanol/gasoline blends without modification, ethanol will help nations worldwide meet their greenhouse gas reduction goals. Hemp grown for both seed and biomass has a stalk yield of up to 3.5 tons per acre, which would make it an economical source of cellulose for ethanol production. Farmers in the Midwest could welcome hemp as a profitable addition to their marginally profitable soybean and corn rotations.”
– Hemp Industries Association, TheHIA.org; 2004
Government subsidies of the corn ethanol industry plays a part in presidential politics because politicians continue to suck up to Iowa, which has both a huge corn industry and a strong voter pool. The company called Archer Daniels Midland and a few other multinational grain farming companies are making record profits because of the surge in money going toward building a corn ethanol industry. As mentioned, this corn is largely grown using fertilizers made from fossil fuel in the form of natural gas and is spread using farm equipment that uses more fossil fuel. The massive monocropping of corn and soy for fuel is depleting nutrients from the thin layer of soil that we rely on for life; is damaging the soil organisms that support life; and is polluting the air and land. The nitrogen fertilizers that leach from the farmland lead to eutrophication (nutrient-loading of water bodies), which reduces water oxygen levels, creating dead zones in streams, rivers, lakes, and the oceans. Massive corn and soy operations are damaging the biodiversity of the planet through the destruction of huge swaths of natural landscape. Continual corn cropping, where corn is the only plant grown season after season without a rotation crop, is particularly damaging to the soil.
As the corn prices rise, farmers in the U.S. are increasing the acreage of corn farming, including on fragile Conservation Reserve Program land that has been identified as environmentally sensitive and that farmers have been under USDA contract to keep uncultivated. Also, because millions of acres of farmland in North America have been turned into subdivisions, stores, offices, and roads, the farmers and large multinational farming companies are looking to produce more corn and soybeans on land that is covered with forest. This is one of the key situations leading to the destruction of the South American rain forests.
As mentioned earlier, people need to work to get money and research invested in more sustainable fuels, including hemp ethanol, and hemp biodiesel, and also cellulosic ethanol made from lawn and landscape trimmings.
However, this is not the answer to the world’s problems. The construction of an ethanol industry requires enormous resources in all areas, including land, cement, steel, transportation, delivery, production, and use of machinery to use the end product. Retooling or replacing the 200,000 or so gas stations and the millions of engines that exist in North America alone would be a huge undertaking using multitudes of resources.
I’m not advocating a culture that remains at the same level of relying on the combustion engine and on burning mass quantities of fuels of any kind. An ethanol-based society is not all rosy and perfect. Especially with the way the ethanol is currently being produced. The amount of fossil fuels, such as coal, being burned to produce the corn ethanol produces huge amounts of global warming gasses. Ethanol plants also cause water pollution, which cannot be ignored. Because ethanol requires huge amounts of water, drought can also severely impact the production of ethanol. Relying on the aquifers is not a solution as they have been greatly depleted.
I am for reducing use; for rethinking and remodeling our cultures; for changing the way we lead our daily lives; and for massively improving the way we treat Earth. We should all be involved in doing what we can to restore and protect the environment and all nonhuman forms of life.
To reduce pollution and protect the environment and the soil base that we rely on for survival, people need to rely less on the combustion engine. Living locally, purchasing less, living more frugally, growing some of your own food; composting all food scraps; recycling; reducing electricity use; planting trees and protecting forests; eating a plant-based, organic diet that is mostly raw and locally grown; using cloth shopping bags instead of paper or plastic; and riding a bike or walking instead of using a car are ways that will reduce our use of fuel, and reduce our footprint on Earth more than any advancement that can be made in the alternative fuel industry.
The choices people make in their daily lives that are in tune with “green living” collectively have an impact on what industry is doing. This is because industry reflects culture and/or the demands of the buyers. If you want the world to change, you should change.
“We are desperate to preserve our access to Middle East oil because that is the only way we can keep running our society the way we’re used to running it. Mostly, we don’t want to face the tragic misinvestments we’ve made in the infrastructure of happy motoring, and we don’t want to face the inconvenient truth that there really isn’t any combination of alt fuels that will permit us to keep running all the cars the way we like to run them. Either we keep getting the oil or say goodbye to the American Dream Version 2.K.
… Every time somebody blames the politicians for this predicament, I’m reminded that the politicians are actually doing a fine job of representing what their constituents want. What they want is to not change their behavior. Not even the science and technology folks want to think about changing our behavior. They just want to find new ways to continue the old behavior. They’ve invested in the triumphal effort to come up with a happy motoring rescue remedy.
… It seems to me the answer to all this is clear: the first thing the U.S. has to do is reach a different consensus about our behavior here at home, starting with the proposition that the happy motoring era must end.”
– Jim Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency; Kunstler.com
Stop driving. Walk or bike. Use less plastic. Become a vegetarian. Grow some of your own food. Compost all food scraps. Disconnect from fossil fuels. Work for a more sustainable economy on a local level. It will improve our health.