The Emperor Wears No Clothes

by Jack Herer

Land and Soil Reclamation

Land reclamation is another compelling economic and ecological argument for hemp cultivation.

Until this century, our pioneers and ordinary American farmers used cannabis to clear fields for planting, as a fallow year crop, and after forest fires to prevent mud slides and loss of watershed.

Hemp seeds put down a 10 to 12-inch root in only 30 days, compared to the one-inch root put down by the rye or barley grass presently used by the U.S. Government.

Southern California, Utah and other states used cannabis routinely in this manner until about 1915. It also breaks up compacted, overworked soil.

In the formerly lush Himalayan region of Bangladesh, Nepal and Tibet there is now only a light moss covering left as flash floods wash thousands of tons of topsoil away. Independent Bangladesh, (formerly East Bengal, India) which literally means “canna-bisland-people” (it was formerly called East Bengal province, a name derived from bhangcannabis, la-land), signed an “anti-drug” agreement with the U.S., promising not to grow hemp in the 1970s. Since that time, it has suffered disease, starvation and decimation, due to unrestrained flooding.

Hempseeds broadcast over eroding soil could reclaim land the world over. The farmed out desert regions can be brought back year after year, not only slowing the genocide of starvation, but easing threats of war and violent revolution.