"Yep, we grew it." How hemp may have saved
the South from erosion.
Will
"Right here!", he looked back at me and then
pointed ahead. With an old grandfatherly
smile and a wave, he directs my attention to the valley in front of us. I
looked, right before me was a beautiful stretch of Appalachian mountain forest
in full bloom. One could hardly imagine that a hundred years before, the
land had been so scarred from over logging.
Originally, I was seeking an answer to a family question that had been posed to
me a few years before. After my family had bought a small feed and tack
shop, my great aunt found a bag marked CCC and it had a USDA stamp on the
side. The bag was later found to contain
50 pounds of hemp seed (an amazing amount of seed even back then), casually
left in the back room of the feed shed. A strange little find
for that time back in the 80's.
A local teacher estimated that the bag was from the 40's and probably had been
in stock at the old store for cordage crops. She could only speculate
what the initials CCC meant, she thought it might have been the Civilian
Conservation Corps, but that wouldn't make sense. Why would this bag be
in a normal feed and tack shop? Also, wasn't live hemp seed
illegal? But, clearly marked on the bag were the initials of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. The stamp plainly showed it was government
seed and property of Uncle Sam.
Years later, a chance run in with an old
By the time I was older, my family had changed their perspective from one of
disgust to that of a level of tolerance for the plant we call
marijuana. They were farmers, it was obvious to them it had some
uses. What exactly, they didn't know, but it gave me a chance to tell them
about it without worrying that they were going to call D.A.R.E down to the
ranch to 'school me proper' on the subject. They were receptive to what I
had to say, and they mostly agreed it should be grown, but almost everyone was
too proper to try it. (Well, save for my Uncle Tommy who had been in
Vietnam, he had no problem at all vouching that he wouldn't mind using it
'again', one day.)
Years later, when I left my family to move to the
Old Dutch, as his friends call him, has an amazing story of how the Civilian
Conservation Corps used hemp to reclaim forests once destroyed by careless
logging. He claims that the United States Department of Agriculture had
commissioned counties in
I met Dutch through my work in forestry conservation. I was working in
the mountains that summer and he had offered his home to me as a place to live
so I wouldn't have to keep going back into town. His family treated me
like on of their own and they are truly a credit to the great people that make
up our Appalachian Mountain and Southern cultures.
In the evening Dutch would take a walk down a country road that wound back into
the hills. At the end of the road was a spring that feed a small well he
had used for years. The family received
most of their drinking water from the well, since valley water contained so
much sulfur. I always offered to help him carry back the water, more out
of respect than anything. He'd gladly accept my proposal because he
liked the company. It was during one of these walks that he told me about
his father and his history of growing hemp for the ‘man’.
"I don't see why it's illegal." I chanced to say while we were
talking about the Drug War at one point. He agreed and we talked about the
ramifications of giving law enforcement everything they wanted. It wasn’t helping. Dutch is a man who
loves his privacy and was concerned about all the planes that flew over.
He wasn’t a grower, no he was a church going man, but still, he liked his
space. He knew why they were there, and
so did I. ( I’m pretty sure Steve Earle wrote a
song about it too.)
"Well, son, I don't either, my dad grew it while he was one of
If Dutch's story is accurate, then the very country that is at the heart of the
Drug War, truly has a little skeleton in the
closet. As late as 1943 (a), the USDA sanctioned several crops of sweet
leaf to be grown in the U. S. Hemp
farmers were given precedence, as hemp is considered a crop that has a
cornucopia's range of uses, regardless of who is planting the seed. But
the story I want to tell is of one where the forests and mountains we love so
much, were healed by this very special plant.
His claim was simple: The CCC used hemp to control erosion from over logging in
some areas and on sites that the Corps set up parks, roads, buildings and
structures. He says that his father was a member of the CCC and worked on
several projects that the organization was pursuing at the time. One of
those projects was to help control the massive erosion that was damaging
rivers, lakes and streams throughout the mountains and other areas that went
deep into the Southland. Hemp was used to control this erosion because of
its ability to grow anywhere, the plants replenishing nutrient qualities and it’s roots grow deep to help anchor the soil against
erosion. Hemp is a weed that grows fast and it spreads easily. By
the early 30's, with the depression pushing us to seek less costly solutions,
the USDA knew exactly what hemp did and how it can be used effectively. They set out to study the plant more fully (*)
As a credit to the CCC, as it is stated by their Alumni Association and
research center **:
"Through the efforts of the CCC soil erosion was ultimately arrested on
over 20 million acres. They stocked over one billion fish and spent 4,827,426
man days surveying and mapping millions of acres and hundreds on lakes. They
built 46,854 bridges and 4,622 fish rearing ponds. The CCC installed
approximately 5,000 miles of water supply. They improved 3,462 beaches,
transplanted 45 million trees and shrubs for landscaping and planted over 3
billion trees where forests were logged and burnt off. The CCC spent
202,739 man days fighting coal fires which had been burning since earliest
history. The CCC spent 6,000,258 man days in the operation of tree nurseries, they built 7,622 impounding and large diversion
dams. They erected 405,037 signs, markers and monuments. They collected 1
3,632,415 pounds of hardwood tree seeds and 875,970 bushels of cones.
They developed 6,966 miles of wildlife steams and built 28,087 miles of foot
and horse trails, and 8,304 foot and horse bridges. They built 32,1 49 wildlife
shelters, 1,865 drinking fountains and 204 lodges and museums. They also built
3,116 lookout towers."
You can clearly see that they worked very hard to make
The USDA knew as far back as 1933 what exactly hemp did. (b) In their own
documents and reports, one can find out the history of hemp at their agency’s
archives and with sources from the
I was a little disheartened by this, since I had visions of
government conservation workers fly high in the sky throwing out seed with
their emblem firmly scorched to the side of the bag, but still I was seeking
the truth and I would take it in any form that it came in.
Eric Pollitt of the Global Hemp organization (www.globalhemp.org) set me straight on the
origins of the CCC stamp. Eric's organization helps to promote hemp facts
and to assist the American hemp industry with projects and legislation. He
believes that the initials on the bag stand for the Commodity Credit
Corporation, which is more likely to be the case. (The USDA Charter
information for the company can be found at the National Archives (http://www.nara.gov/guide/rg161.html
) The company was set up by the government
purely for the purposes of growing hemp for the war effort. In World War
II, hemp was used by the Navy for ropes and by the Army/Air Corp for
parachutes, tents and cloth. Unlike cotton, which is prone to rotting at
sea, hemp is resistant to salt water and holds up well under pressure.
The very fact that the
that surplus seed was given to the Corps, in an effort to help out with their
erosion projects. For at least 15 years and during the current cycle of
prohibition, the USDA grew hemp, but mainly to support the war effort.
Pollitt later explained that his great uncle was one of the early
“Regardless if they were planting hemp for the war or using
it for erosion, in any case, the USDA had to be involved” he believes. Why such a change of heart? This was a massive effort on the part of our
government, since supplies to hemp had been cut off by the war back then;
"But now with Philippine and East Indian sources of hemp in the hands of
the Japanese, and shipment of jute from India curtailed, American hemp must
meet the needs of our Army and Navy as well as of our Industry. In 1942,
patriotic farmers at the government's request planted 36,000 acres of seed
hemp, an increase of several thousand percent. The goal for 1943 is 50,000
acres of seed hemp." - USDA, "Hemp for Victory." (c)
Finding this a little funny? I did too. Let’s look at some
more history.
During World War II, George Bush, Sr. had to jump from a plane in order to save
his life. Ironically, the very parachute he used was made from hemp
fiber. He owes his life to the plant that he, and his son, chooses to persecute
so readily. Even the US Constitution is written on hemp paper, and it's
old news by now that most of our early presidents grew hemp as their cash
crop. Henry Ford even made cars and fuel out of it. (d) Also,
according to what I am finding out, the plant literally helped save millions of
acres in the South and Mid West, from erosion.
(Once again, this condition was of erosion caused by our abuse of the land, I
want to add.).
So where is this feral mountain hemp now? Sadly, like the bag of hemp
seeds we once owned, a good deal of it has been eradicated or confiscated by
various government agencies. Ditch Weed can still be found through out
(http://www.nps.gov/fora/plants.htm).
"We are given choices in this world, some people chose reason, some people
chose fear. But, times change, people change and usually wisdom prevails
in then end, so maybe just maybe."
He smiled at me at that point, shouldered his water jug and
headed up the road. I was never able to find a government official or
document that would prove the claims of Dutch and Mr. Collins were solid. Hemp organizations like Global Hemp can
prove the government grew and used hemp, but to this date, few documents have
surfaced about the
use of hemp by the Civilian Conservation Corps.*
We started walking back up the road and the world seemed full of possibilities.
Maybe Dutch was right,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*As far as the Civilian Conservation Corps goes, I'm still searching for the
official government documents on the use of hemp by this organization. I would more than
welcome any other first hand reports you may have, but I would love to have documented proof of it's
use by the CCC to control erosion from
the
http://www.thehia.org/history/history.htm
(c) The actual "Hemp for Victory" document images can be found here,
along
with pictures of feral hemp maps where it is growing throughout the
Hempology has a great site that is very informative.
(http://www.hempology.org/IMAGEINDEXPAGE.html )
A very nice piece on why we should use hemp can be found
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/hemp4v.htm
, "Hemp for Victory" was
written by none other than the USDA in 1942.
Hemp as food and cordage.
http://www.hempfood.com/IHA/iha01114.html
The
http://www.globalhemp.com/Archives/University_Research/hemp_an_il_war_crop.shtml
Also, Nazi’s used to farm hemp (who for some reason hated
the labor and the plant) and other history of hemp in
http://www.globalhemp.com/Archives/History/polo_il_hemp_mill.shtml
Hemp News
http://www.crrh.org/hempnews/hn_22.html
Hemp and trade
http://ecofields.com/hmphistory.htm
Records of the Commodity Credit Company, it’s charter and outlines.
http://www.nara.gov/guide/rg161.html
The Cohutta
Wilderness. Another possible site
of hemp erosion control was
pointed out to me in
http://sherpaguides.com/georgia/mountains/blue_ridge/western/cohutta_wilderness.html
Sunn Hemp – Seed for the Southern States.
http://www.statlab.iastate.edu/survey/SQI/pdf/10d3.pdf
..