Pubdate: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Copyright: 2007 The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456 Author: Russell Barth HEMP SHOULD BE HIGH ON THE FUEL AGENDA Re: The needle and the damage done The cure to our oil addiction is industrial hemp, but no one wants to talk about it because it looks like marijuana. In fact, everything that we make with crude oil can be made better, cheaper and cleaner with hemp. Hemp doesn't require chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow tall and strong; it grows in even marginal soil. And while it provides food from the top of the plant, it provides fibre and fuel from the stalk. One acre of hemp can produce up to 1,000 gallons of methanol in four months. In the southern U.S., that could mean 3,000 gallons per acre per year. If the U.S. would sow just 10 per cent of its farmland with industrial hemp instead of corn, enough methanol fuel could be produced to almost completely end the use of gasoline. But the oil barons don't want anyone to know that. Small ethanol-producing plants in every small community on the planet would have to loosen their stranglehold on all of us, so it looks like we are stuck with crude oil, and the wildly cost-prohibitive alternatives, for at least another generation. Russell Barth, Ottawa - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart