This is hardly breaking news, but let's face it: hemp has a pretty big image problem.  The most outspoken supporters of hemp production are more concerned about its THC content (the stuff that gets you stoned) and control by the Illuminati (I'm not kidding) than they are about true environmental benefits.  A bunch of white dudes with dreadlocks are probably not the supporters you want if you're going to champion the acceptance of hemp to the mainstream of society.  The diagram on the right illustrates all of the great uses for hemp without the assistance of Harold and Kumar (or Cheech and Chong for our old readers), and this is what the common consumer needs more education on.

Hemp is grown in the EU, Canada and China and the variety that's grown is a cannabis subspecies that is very high in fibre (great for making stuff out of), but not so great for smoking (sorry, dudes).  The United States imports more industrial hemp than any other nation, but is ironically the only industrialized nation that still bans the cultivation of this wonder crop.

The oil from hemp seeds can be used to make plastics, skin creams and even paint!  In France Hempcrete is commonly used building material that uses hemp as a strengthening agent.  But the real story about hemp is in the fibre.

Way back in 1916 (woo!), the USDA issued a bulletin that reported 1 acre of cannabis hemp produced a comparable amount of fibre suitable for making paper as 4.1 acres of trees while requiring only a small fraction of the chemicals required to turn wood fibre into paper.  And yet here we are nearly a hundred years later and a misguided "War on Drugs" is preventing American farmers from growing this supercrop right in their own backyard.

With a chaotic and unpredicatable future ahead we could be in for some real shake-ups due to global warming and a crazy economy.  More than ever we should be looking at crops like industrial hemp that give us a big return on the resources (water, land, energy) we put into it.

As a consumer, you owe it to yourself to get educated.  Hit the jump and read-through the Wikipedia article on hemp to get started.

» Hemp (Wikipedia)