January 21, 1943

Hemp Offers Many Possibilities Also As Peacetime Crop

Aside from Making Rope and Burlap, It is Also Used for Cloth, Paper and
Explosives

Hemp, aside from being urgently needed by the government for making rope
and burlap for the army and navy, offers many possibilities as a peacetime crop.

To get a better idea of what the proposed processing plant may mean to
Jackson county farmers and businessmen, read the article, "Hemp, the New
Million Dollar Cash Crop for Farmers" which appears on another page of
this week's Pilot.

In addition to being in manufacturing rope and burlap, hemp makes fine
cloth , that can hardly be detected from the finest flax linen. It is also
displacing pulpwood in paper manufacturing and even now is used
extensively in making TNT and other explosives.

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January 21, 1943

The Story of Hemp
New Million Dollar Crop for Minnesota Farmers

American farmers are promised a new cash crop with an annual value of
several hundred million dollars, all because a machine has been invented
which solves a problem more than 6,000 years old. It is hemp, a crop
that will not compete with other American products. Instead, it will
displace imports of raw material and manufactured products produced by
the underpaid coolie and peasant labor and it will provide thousands of
jobs for American workers throughout the land.

The machine which makes this possible is designed for removing the
fibre-bearing cortex from the rest of the stalk, making hemp fiber
available for use without a prohibitive amount of human labor.

Hemp was cultivated in China 4,700 years ago and was probably brought
to Europe before the Christian era, though it was not much cultivated there
until the middle ages and then only for the seed, which was used for
food. It had been cultivated and used by the Pre-Columbus Indians. Most
of the world's crop now comes from eastern Europe, though the finest
quality is produced in Italy. Kentucky, Ohio, and Wisconsin are among
the leading hemp producers in the United States.

Part of the cargo on the Mayflower was hemp seed. And, being the raw
material for making rope and burlap, it was an important crop in this
country all during the sailing-ship era. But about the turn of the century
it was replaced by imports of Manila hemp, sisal, and jute from Africa and
the Orient.

The hemp plant is an annual, growing each year from the seed. It has an
upright stalk which attains a height of from 3 to 16 feet, usually 4 to 6 feet.
This stalk varies in diameter up to 2 inches, the usual conditions of planting
producing stalks of one-half inch or less. They are more or less fluted, or
four-corner ridged, lengthwise with the stem. They may have well marked
nodes or joints at 4 to 20 inch intervals. When planted for fiber production
the stalks are crowded and without foliage except near the top. By contrast
the wild growing plants, or an occasional uncrowded one along the edge of
a field, has numerous branches. The plant has compound palmate leaves
with 5 to 11 leaflets or lobes, usually 7, and almost invariably odd in
number. The leaf is somewhat similar in shape to a hand, with the fingers
represented as leaflets. These leaflets or lobes are pointed at both ends and
vary up to about 6 inches in length, and to about 1 inches in width. Hemp
has two sexes. At maturity its male and female plants can be distinguished.
The female flowers are inconspicuous and are found hidden among the small
leaves at the ends of the stalk and branches. The male flowers are very
prominent. When mature they shed pollen profusely. The fruit or seed is
similar in size to a large wheat kernel but nearly round. When mature they
may be dark in color or distinctly mottled.

There is a great variation in the appearance of the plants. As stated before,
they may, for example, vary from 3 to 16 feet in height at maturity. They
may be quite bushy or almost without branches. The differences are due to
the origin of the seed, local conditions of soil and climate, and proximity
of other plants during growth. The hemp plant is often called a number of
different names, one that we are familiar with around here is Marihuana.
It is the same plant but named by different people as they thought it was
some thing new. Dry climates for example, generally produce shorter
plants than moist climates. Range of temperature and length of growing
season are major factors. When seed produced in one place is planted in
another where different soil and climatic conditions prevail the plants will
resemble those from which the seed was harvested. If, however, such
plants be cultivated in the new locality for several generations the
characteristics of the local variety appear and the plants can no longer be differentiated.

Farmers who have had experience with hemp, like the crop because it
assists in controlling weeds, leaves the soil in excellent condition for
succeeding crops, and is not noticeably hard on the land.

Good, rich silt or clay loam soils are necessary for hemp. This crop
will not make a satisfactory growth on sandy or gravelly(sic) soils or
soils low in fertility. In the fertile soil areas where hemp is grown,
it is the custom to select the best land on the farm for hemp. A dense
stand of tall, slender stalks is needed to produce a good yield of
fiber. This requires a very rich soil and a good supply of moisture
throughout the growing season. The soil must be rich in organic matter,
well supplied with manure, and thoroughly drained.

Hemp has been tried on many types of marsh soils but generally with
unsatisfactory results. Some marshes produce a very rank growth of
stalks but a fiber relatively low in quality. Other marsh soils produce
a growth too short to pay for harvesting. Some marsh soils that are low
in fertility will produce a good yield of very fair hemp fiber when
properly fertilized. On such soils potash is generally necessary, but
both phosphorus and potassium may be required. It is usually best to
avoid marsh soils for growing hemp.

Hemp removes about the same amount of fertility from the soil as does a
good crop of corn. Because it grows rank and luxuriant, it is often
incorrectly contended that it is hard on the land. Hemp requires a fertile
soil for its profitable growth, but this does not mean that it exhausts
fertility. Farmers who have grown hemp for many years, unanimously
agree that it is a very satisfactory crop so far as the soil is concerned,
that it greatly assists in getting rid of weeds, and leaves the soil in an
excellent condition for succeeding crops.

Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great strength and
durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products,
ranging from rope to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after
the fiber has been removed contains more than seventy-seven percent
cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging
from dynamite to cellophane.

>From the farmers point of view, hemp is an easy crop to grow and will
yield from three to six tons per acre on any land that will grow corn,
wheat or oats. It has a short growing season, so that it can be planted
after other crops are in. It can be grown in any state in the union. The
long roots penetrate and break the soil to leave it in perfect condition
for next year's crop. The dense shock of leaves eight to twelve feet
above the ground chokes out weeds. Two successive crops are enough
to reclaim land that has been abandoned because of so much Canadian
thistles or quack grass.

Under old methods, hemp was cut and allowed to lie in the fields for
weeks until it retted enough so the fiber could be pulled off by hand.
Retting is simply rotting as a result of dew, rain and bacterial action.
Machines were developed to separate the fibers mechanically after retting
was complete, but the cost was high, the loss of fiber great, and the
quality of fiber comparatively low. With the new machine known as a
decorticator, hemp is cut with a slightly modified grain binder. It is
delivered to the machine where an automatic chain conveyor feeds it to the
breaking arms at the rate of two or three tons per hour. The hurds are
broken into fine pieces which drop into the hopper, from where they are
delivered by blower to truck or freight car for loose shipment.
The fiber comes from the other end of the machine, ready for baling.

From this point on almost anything can happen. The raw fiber can be used
to produce strong twine or rope, woven into burlap, used for carpet warp
or linoleum backing or it may be bleached and refined with resinous
by-products of high commercial value. It can, in fact be used to replace
the foreign fibers which now flood our markets.

Thousands of tons of hemp hurds are used every year by one large powder
company for the manufacture of dynamite and TNT. A large paper company,
which has been paying more than a million dollars a year in duties in
foreign-made cigarette papers, now is manufacturing these papers from
American hemp grown in Minnesota. A new factory in Illinois is producing
fine bond papers from hemp. The natural materials in hemp make it an
economical source of pulp for any grade of paper manufactured, and the
high percentage of alpha cellulose promises an unlimited supply of raw
material for the thousands of cellulose products our chemists have
developed.

It is generally believed that all linen is produced from flax. Actually
the majority comes from hemp, authorities estimate that more than half
of our imported linen fabrics are manufactured from hemp. Another
product is burlap. Practically all of the burlap we use is woven by
laborers in India who receive only four cents a day. Burlap is the most
common wrapping paper of the wholesale trade. U. S. in normal times
consumes more than 500,000,000 pounds a year. Bulk foods, grains, sugar,
coffee, salt, livestock feeds, cotton, wool and chemical products are a
few that are shipped in them. In war time it is very much needed for
sandbags and camouflage fabrics. The burlap we have been using is made
from jute, a different grade of hemp that cannot be grown here. In no other
part of the world where acceptable jute can be grown has labor been
persuaded to processes it, for jute must soak in stagnant water, be hand
worked, waist deep in the stinking mess. Every war since the Crimean has
created a boom in the jute trade but it is the first time the Western
Hemisphere has had to face jutelessness. Since Pearl Harbor the U.S. has
made Herculean efforts to conserve burlap and to get in as much more as
the thin line of groaning ships can bring. By government orders now
two-thirds of all the burlap is earmarked for military needs and the other
third for the farms. All furniture dealers and carpet makers have been denied
the use of any.

All these products, now imported, can be produced from homegrown hemp.
Fish nets, bow strings, canvas, strong rope, overalls, damask tablecloths,
fine linen garments, towels, bed linen and thousands of other everyday items
can be grown on American farms. Our imports of foreign fabrics and other
fibers average about $200,000,000 per year, in raw fabrics alone we imported
over $50,000,000 in the first six months of 1937. All of this income can be
made available for Americans.

The paper industry offers even greater possibilities. As an industry it amounts
to over $1,000,000,000 a year, and of that eighty per cent is imported. But
hemp will produce every grade of paper, and government figures estimate that
10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres
of average pulp land.

End.

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