Wonderful book about the comeback of hemp

The American author Doug Fine, known for the brilliant ‘Too High To Fail', has written a new book about our favourite plant. Hemp Bound, published in April, is about hemp as a raw material. Not just for clothing, paper, cosmetics and other products that have been made from the plant for centuries, but also for bioplastics and biofuels. A great book, with the humour, momentum and expertise that are characteristic of the work of the likable author.

The American author Doug Fine, known for the brilliant ‘Too High To Fail', has written a new book about our favourite plant. Hemp Bound, published in April, is about hemp as a raw material. Not just for clothing, paper, cosmetics and other products that have been made from the plant for centuries, but also for bioplastics and biofuels. A great book, with the humour, momentum and expertise that are characteristic of the work of the likable author.

Last year the Belgian Mambo Social Club and the VOC (Dutch Association for Abolition of the Cannabis Prohibition) brought Doug Fine to Europe for a lecture tour of, among others, Canna Fest in Prague, London University, Cannabis College in Amsterdam and the Mambo Social Club in Hasselt. Fine’s message was clear: the drug war is over, and the green avalanche is unstoppable. At that point he had already spent some time working on the sequel to Too High To Fail and told me that this book would be solely about non-smokable cannabis, i.e.: hemp. One of the oldest cultivated plants in our history. 

Industrial hemp is on the verge of a comeback on a scale that is difficult to comprehend: that’s the central message of Hemp Bound. On the first page, Doug writes:

“Hemp cultivation is on the verge of becoming legal (and shortly thereafter, huge) in the United States. This started happening when I was about halfway through writing this book. I’m not used to completely winning huge, important social battles. It is an astonishing no-brainer. And it has a direct impact on my life. To give an example: On the day hemp becomes legal I’m planning to begin the cultivation of four acres, so that my sweetheart no longer has to import from China the fabric she already uses to make the shirts I wear during interviews about the economic value of hemp.

2013 was the year of the breakthrough. In fact: last year was the most important in the already 8,000-year relationship between humankind and the hemp plant “since the first Palaeolithic hunter with a blister on his foot discovered that hemp fibre made stronger sandals than those worn by everyone else”. The state of Kentucky legalised the cultivation of industrial hemp, like Colorado, the state that also legalised smokable cannabis. At present, a total of ten U.S. states have legalised hemp to some extent. And the U.S. Congress is working on an amendment that allows all states to legalise hemp without federal permission.

In Canada, the hemp industry already has a turnover of half a billion dollars per year. The Canadian government already moved in a different direction back in the mid-nineties, with subsidised research into the most suitable varieties of hemp for the different regions of Canada. The United States therefore has some serious catching up to do. But developments are taking place quickly and Fine has mapped them out brilliantly. His thorough research and engaging writing style betray his background as a journalist. The length of the book gives him the space to tell a much more personal story around the startling facts. That combination previously produced the hilarious ‘Farewell my Subaru’, in which he recounts his metamorphosis from typical city boy from New York to solar energy-using goat farmer in New Mexico. The book was published in 2009 and was Doug’s breakthrough as a nonfiction author.

During the Too High To Fail Tour last year and during his visit to the United Nations in Vienna at the invitation of Encoding, I got to know Doug as a cross between an optimistic American cowboy and an environmentally conscious European intellectual. With a cowboy hat, but without the excessively loud voice of many of his countrymen. Doug has a fine sense of irony and a dislike of cynicism. Certainly not a hard-core cannabis adept, rather someone who realised much faster than his colleagues that a revolution was coming: the end of the war on drugs, “the worst U.S. policy since slavery”, and the comeback of cannabis as medicine, stimulant and raw material. Until recently that comeback was unthinkable, writes Fine. Congress laughed off hemp-friendly legislation: “For three-quarters of a century, my father’s entire life, the truth was irrelevant, until last June. Hemp broke free again from our genetic memory.”

Hemp Bound shows us at a whirlwind pace how hemp can and will change our lives. Chapter titles include: “Grow Your Next House (or Factory or High-Rise or School)”, “Heck, Grow Your Whole Tractor Out of Hemp”, “Fill ‘Er up with Hemp”, “Don’t Just Legalize It - Subsidize It”. Doug conducted the bulk of his research and most of the interviews in the US, but he used his time in the Netherlands in November last year to visit HempFlax in Oude Pekela. Michel Degens of the Mambo Social Club and I accompanied him to the far North. It was a memorable day, which receives extensive attention in the book. 

Hemp Bound is a must for anyone who wants to know more about the history and especially the future of hemp. A wealth of information, which you’ll likely only see in the mass media in a few years. In the words of country legend Willie Nelson and hemp activist: “Hemp Bound tells us, with an eye for detail and humour, how we can achieve the sustainable Promised Land. Doug has created a blueprint for America’s future.” 

Doug Fine
Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the front lines of the next agricultural revolution
Chelsea Green Publishing Co
192 pages, €13.49

Order online:
http://dougfine.com/books/hemp-bound/