by _sabotage_ on Fri Feb 22, 2013 2:29 pm
I'm going to grow and work with hemp. I would like to show my son how we can make the environment work for us.
It will be at least three years before I will see my first crop, due to the aspects of the application.
Nova Scotia has a lot of lime and a simple mix makes breathable, craft-able, energy friendly building material. Ten acres can make enough for seven houses. Plus you have the seeds and fibre. Since you can craft the material, you can design it towards thermal gains, rain collection systems, prevailing winds, snowdrifts, thermal coupling. With a rocket stove fueled by hemp your energy needs are basic electronics.
A years utilities brought to zero, with a slight investment in solar or wind or hydro, you could power several of these houses at the energy used by a single conventional one. Several in an area, designed to meet the needs. 14 acres could then feed clothe and house 7 families for free, while providing them access to economic opportunities working with hemp, or letting them work in their normal job. Since hemp is legislated as a single use crop, it would be convenient for local farmers to trade, and form research and development teams to market the products. But hemp developments could also be openly traded on the market to developers worldwide. This would provide means for economic green development across the globe on a localized scale.
Hemp can be used as a paint base, waterproofing material, floor material, roofing material, cloth material, can be used for any fibre glass, can make 6,000 litres of fuel per acre, or 6.8 tonnes of coal, car body, carseat, but we haven't even begun to develop the science around the plant.
Hemp can be grown on marginal land to improve it. Not only would growing hemp improve air quality, provide a high quality of life from its products, but be a competitor in a more destructive economy. It could absorb some economic stress back to the center of a physical environment rather than one dependent on who's in power in Iraq and how much someone was fucked on the stock exchange.
Now just three years of bureaucracy to go to get started, but that will give me plenty of time to buy up land, do research, take workshops, attract partners.
In a place like Nova Scotia, a corridor of activity could mean the life of the province, and most places are like Nova Scotia. It could pump resources into activities that will provide us with a competitive advantage as the stress on resources escalates and the ability to use them efficiently is a necessity. Just three years if I don't check any boxes that say automatically denied.
But I don't know, I don't get much love from boxes. Maybe I should try another country with fewer restrictions, or just hit Alberta and work from the hemp already being grown. But I don't see why I shouldn't have the freedom to pursue a healthy project in a grave economy. Healthy competition empowering the local population is welcome, right?