Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  I can get, at minimum, two crops from the 
> 90-110 day crop in the area I live now.  For starters, it is a crop you 
> start indoors/greenhouse and that means it needs a mere 60 to 75 days in 
> the 
> ground.
> 

For a hobby stand of hemp perhaps. On a large scale it's not feasible.  Corn 
takes 90 days or so to produce dry seed and it can be started in the 
greenhouse as well.  Try it sometime (here admitting that neither of us is 
going to try 
this with hemp until things change) and you will see that the production cost 
soars.


> 
> And you do have the added advantage that this is one of those crops that 
> doesn't deplete the soil but rather is a soil builder.
> 

This falls into the TANFL category as well.  If you pressed the oil and 
returned all the press cake to the field, you would not deplete the soil 
much.  But 
that isn't feasible on a commercial scale either.  If you managed the labor 
and expense to grow three crops of hemp on ground, got anywhere near an 
agribusiness sustainable production level per crop, and the seed (which is 
high in 
protein) is carted off for processing, you'd be depleting the soil in very 
quick 
order.   In fact you'd have to have chemical nitrogen fertilizer to get the 
high yields to begin with.


When all is said and done, be it soybeans, corn, hemp, switchgrass, ... it is 
idiotic to grow something as an agricultural crop and burn it as liquid motor 
fuel.  It is a function of our having made an addiction out of personal, on 
demand transportation based on fossil oil and when we have tapped that 
resource 
to the limit (as we now have done), like any other desperate and mindless 
addict, we pitch about for a fix.  Serious alcoholics will swill mouthwash 
and 
shoe polish when denied the usual sources.   We are seeing the same effect 
with 
car addicts.   </HTML>