I Explode Things.
How we grow and consume food in a manner that respects growers, consumers and the earth.
You might have heard it by now, but cotton is the devil. I know, I know. I am one of cotton’s evil minions. I am wearing the touch and feel of cotton right now! It is the fabric of our lives. I know.
But that doesn’t make it right. I am in the process of trying to cut my steady dependance on the stuff even thought I come from a family of cotton farmers (on the one side. But don’t worry, we’ve moved on to petroleum products for our fortune. Oh crap! That’s tomorrow’s blog.)
Farmers have had a rough row to hoe for a while now, and unfortunately the economic downturn is not helping them. Another 90,000 farmers are expected to sell the farm during the next decade at a time when we need to be producing more food than ever. Many are promoting new genetically altered and engineered crops and larger industrialized farm conglomerates as the answer to step up the world’s food supplies. Pardon my lack of French, but this seems like a dumbass solution to me. Past attempts to step up industrialized farming without appropriate wisdom and sense has lead to such smash hits as “Welcome to the Dust Bowl.”
So what makes hemp just so wonderful on the one hand and feared on the other? The magic number for hemp is its percentage of cellulose, which is as high as 77%. This makes it the number one producer of biomass on earth. Wood from most trees registers around 60% cellulose and obviously takes much longer to mature. Hemp can grow from germination to maturity in 3 to 4 months and produces around 5 tons of dry fiber stalk and 10 tons of biomass per acre. The last smoking gun is that hemp can be grown over vast portions of the earth’s land surfaces. It can grow anywhere from China’s temperate forested mountains to Mexico’s arid deserts to Canada’s cool farmland. (It grows best in warm, humid areas with over 25 inches of rain but only requires a bare minimum of 10 inches and a temperate climate.)