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| Fiber Spotlight: Hemp |
Industrial hemp is a fiber with an image problem here in the United States. Until the 1930's, the hemp plant served for centuries as one of the world's most valuable sources of fiber.
Hemp was used for thousands of products, from marine rigging and sails to fine laces. Adventurous settlers traveled west on Conestoga wagons covered with hemp canvas, and worked in jeans made from hemp cloth. For more than two centuries, hemp was a valuable cash crop for American farmers.
But industrial hemp, tarred by the reputation of it's cousin, was effectively banned in the United States in the 1930s, even though it contains insignificant amounts of THC, the drug found in marijuana.
Hemp, however, was to be recognized once again for its importance in America. In 1942, with the United States facing disastrous shortages of war-time fiber, the government called upon all patriotic farmers to "Grow Hemp for Victory." Hundreds of thousands of acres of this versatile plant were grown to supply our armed forces with the raw material for shoelaces, parachutes and marine rigging. Despite its obvious value to our farmers and to our nation's defense, once hostilities ceased, industrial hemp again was banned.
But interest in this plant as a producer of high-quality, sustainable fiber has resurfaced worldwide with concern about the paper industry's voracious appetite for trees. With Canada having joined most of the industrialized countries in the world as a grower of industrial hemp in 1998, increasing pressure is being brought to bear on the U.S. government to lift its prohibition.
Once called the "Billion Dollar Crop" by Popular Mechanics magazine, hemp may soon prove to be a major source of paper fiber and a new profitable crop for American farmers. Crane's hemp paper is pulped and milled right here in the U.S., with fibers imported, for the moment, from European farms.
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