The Kalamazoo Gazette in Kalamazoo, MI ran a Viewpoint column last week where the writer, Richard Holcomb, wrote about all the benefits of growing hemp to wean ourselves of oil imports for fuel and plastics. Hemp activists have an incredibly hard time convincing people to seriously consider growing hemp because of its connection to marijuana (hemp itself is not psychoactive), but Holcomb does a good job of describing the difference between hemp and marijuana and how hemp could be used to make ethanol much more effectively than corn.
One thing Holcomb mentions that I had never heard is that Henry Ford "hoped to be able to create a car from the soil using hemp as a fuel source. Ford created a car with a composite hemp plastic body that could withstand blows from a sledgehammer without breaking. The composite hemp plastic was 10 times stronger than steel and the overall weight of the automobile was two-thirds the weight of a regular car." Sounds ideal. Wonder how true that is.
[Source: Kalamazoo Gazette]
One thing Holcomb mentions that I had never heard is that Henry Ford "hoped to be able to create a car from the soil using hemp as a fuel source. Ford created a car with a composite hemp plastic body that could withstand blows from a sledgehammer without breaking. The composite hemp plastic was 10 times stronger than steel and the overall weight of the automobile was two-thirds the weight of a regular car." Sounds ideal. Wonder how true that is.
[Source: Kalamazoo Gazette]
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