If the COVID-19 pandemic was, as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio António Guterres said, “like an X-ray revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built,” and if climate change is a major cause of the fractures, then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is like the painkillers being removed from this malaise.
All issues of energy dependence, food security, and housing crises were all previously present but in a somewhat distant form, vaguely felt through the haze of rising fuel prices, overstocked supermarkets, and images of strangers on the pavements. As we contemplate the impending serious problems, we urgently need to identify solutions quickly.
So, how do we address these seemingly unconnected issues? They are not at all unconnected, and the solutions could be found in a single plan based on industrial hemp.
Food security
Addressing food security is of paramount importance. Despite the increasing number of stories of farmers protesting unsustainable market prices, we have all gone along with the concept that food should be cheap and endlessly supplied. It is now dawning on us that many of the foods we consider basics, such as bread and the food we feed our other food sources, especially animals for meat products, originate in Russia or Ukraine!
With the flow of both food and fuel supplies disrupted by the horrific invasion of Ukraine, the costs of this unsustainable system are impacting food production everywhere else.
Many people are aware of hemp foods nowadays, but there are still many ways that hemp can be used for the transition to a lower meat diet and provide us with a highly nutritious meal.
The right crops
To address the issues of increased nitrate costs and fertility loss of much agricultural land in the West, we need crops that do not require large amounts of fertilizer and might improve the quality of the land for future crops such as industrial hemp. Hemp could be grown with human waste, which we are flushing down the toilet.
Though this waste would need to be filtered for microplastics and toxic elements that might be present, the processing of animal and human waste with anaerobic digesters can provide not only an utterly safe fertilizer but also energy in the form of much-needed gas.
Hemp also provides an ideal crop to begin the return to tillage farming, which governments are currently promoting as a reaction to the war in Ukraine. It’s hugely fast-growing, smothers competing weeds, reduces herbicide use and improves the land for future harvests, especially of winter wheat, barley, or green cover crops sown immediately after the hemp is harvested.
Healthy housing
Providing housing for our young populations as they attempt to start their studies or careers in our cities or for young families who wish to have a comfortable first home is impossible, as most cities have housing shortages. The fact that so many available premises are also energy inefficient and either expensive or unhealthy is a sad reflection of current building standards.
Materials extracted from the hemp plant can be used as a natural fibre alternative to mineral wool and plastic foam insulation products or as aggregate in hemp concrete. These materials combine positive behaviours, buffering the heat changes inside and outside a building while regulating humidity. This is especially true of hempcrete, which can easily be formed to provide a seamless fire-proof thermal blanket to a structure that resists mould and has no toxic off-gassing.
These breathing, heat-storing and insulating materials are now used to provide healthy upgrades to existing structures or new buildings worldwide. Pre-formed into blocks, particle boards or panels, hemp-based materials are now incorporated into modular housing systems.
Investment needed
Addressing this range of issues with cultivating a single plant might sound ideal, but without the essential primary processing facility, there is no market for the raw material. The process of decortication and material separation, or the breaking of the straw to extract the bast fibres and core particles, known as hurds, in a marketable form, is only possible once there are factories to do the job. This would require a site in the centre of a region’s most suitable tillage area to service a community of farmers growing hemp as part of a sustainable crop rotation system.
It is possible to have a factory where a bale of hemp enters at one end, and bricks or whole houses of modular panels emerge from the other. The factory would need an investment of €3,000,000- €30,000,000 depending on how many additional products were manufactured on the same site. This is nothing if we include in the financial balance the employment of 8-60 people with additional labour created by product delivery and installation.
Add to this both the carbon sequestration and reduction calculated for the materials, and the whole process would then be measured as “net zero” for emissions, much like many of the hemp homes being built internationally.
In an “emergency,” basic requirements such as food and shelter become paramount. And if there are promising new systems for meeting those essential needs, we should do all we can to invest in this vital crop to harvest these opportunities.
Disclaimer: https://hemptoday.net/hemps-promise-to-heal-a-fragile-world-energy-food-housing-environment
Posted by: Times Of Hemp, TOH, #TOH, #TimesOfHemp, https://www.timesofhemp.com
