The cannabis plant is not only nutritious, but versatile. The seeds can be made into cooking oil; added to foods such as pastas, rice, soups, and salads; ground into flour; or eaten straight, hulled and perhaps lightly toasted. The seeds can even be made into vitamin rich, easily digestible hemp milk and ice cream products.
Cannabis leaves and buds are also edible, and the plant can be bred to either minimize or maximize THC content. The leaves and buds from plants grown to minimize THC can be used fresh or cooked like other vegetables, offering a ready source of vitamin A that won’t get you high, while food cooked with cannabis grown to maximize THC offers an herbal relief for many ailments. In impoverished areas where pharmaceuticals are often hard to come by, marijuana offers promise as a medicine that could be locally grown and obtained at little or no cost.
Cannabis grows quickly in nearly any climate and any soil, and it’s one of the healthiest foods on the planet. Producing a foot-long taproot in only thirty days, the plant prevents topsoil erosion and actually leaves the soil in better condition, making it useful in helping restore over-grazed areas and depleted farmlands. Self-sufficient, renewable cannabis farms could provide many impoverished communities with a reliable, renewable source of complete nutrition. If there is really such a thing as a single loaf that can feed the multitudes, that loaf is most certainly made of miraculous cannabis.
Keep the Trees, Use the Hemp
Trees provide beauty, shade, oxygen, and wildlife habitat, often growing for hundreds of years before being chopped down in seconds to be processed into paper, furniture, and other necessities. As witches, it’s important to us to protect and conserve what’s left of the world’s forests, and hemp offers a way to do just that. Whereas an average acre of forest yields less than two tons of fiber and takes years to grow, an acre of hemp can yield up to eight tons of fiber and matures in only four months, quickly leaving the land ready and in good condition for the next planting. This fiber can be made into a pulp that outperforms wood-based paper while being more environmentally sound and less costly to produce. Hemp-based paper lasts longer and is much stronger than paper made from tree pulp. In fact, the oldest surviving piece of paper is a Chinese relic made of hemp and mulberry dating from around 100 bce. Because of its natural brightness, hemp paper can be bleached using hydrogen peroxide. This is a simpler, cheaper, more environmentally sound method than bleaching with the toxic chemicals required in tree-based paper manufacturing, so it saves costs while reducing pollution.
Hemp is a highly viable, renewable, and recyclable paper source, growing much more quickly and able to withstand many more trips through the recycling process than wood paper. As current paper-manufacturing equipment can make paper from hemp pulp just as well as from tree pulp, reducing deforestation in favor of hemp cultivation would be a smooth and cost-effective transition. Why waste irreplaceable trees to satisfy our paper needs when hemp can do the job better? Hemp paper was good enough to record the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—isn’t it good enough to take into the bathroom or host the morning news?
Putting King Cotton’s Pollution In Its Place
Put simply, cotton is not very ecologically (or economically) sensible. Heavily taxing to the land on which it grows, this “King of Crops” causes erosion, mineral depletion, and toxicity. Cannabis, however, leaves the dirt aerated, in place, chemical-free, and stocked with nutrients. Unlike cannabis, which is naturally resistant to pests, weeds, and disease, cotton is highly prone to such menaces and requires a large quantity of costly, often toxic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in order to thrive. Although it comprises only 2.5 percent of the world’s farmland, cotton crops use 16 percent of the world’s insecticides.* These toxins seep into soil and contaminate waterways. Cotton is also more susceptible to drought than is the hardy hemp plant, with a single dry season capable of wiping out entire cotton crops.
With just one acre of hemp producing as much viable fiber for textiles as two to three acres of cotton, farmers could get greater value from less land, maximizing profits. As for quality, cotton just doesn’t cut it. Cannabis is three times stronger and is more durable, breathable, and flame retardant; from a magickal perspective, the mystical energies inherent in hemp cloth make it ideal for ritual wear. Instead of letting pesticides pollute the planet and allowing cotton to devastate the land, we could be making our clothing and other textiles in a much greener fashion and healing the land at the same time with good, green hemp.
Biodegradable Pot Plastics
It’s true: the mighty herb can even be used to fashion high-quality, non-toxic, biodegradable plastic products of virtually any shape. Most plastic is made from cellulose, typically derived from petroleum through a difficult and highly polluting process. Such petroleum-based plastic does not degrade easily and can stay in our landfills for years. But petroleum isn’t the only source of cellulose; the substance is also found in plants, and cannabis produces more of it than any other botanical. Hemp can be made into toys, dishes, soda
