HeadCount Blog

Industrial hemp may see federal legalization soon. States including North Dakota and Montana have been testing its use since the mid-’90s and North Dakota is suing the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) for the right to grow hemp. Farmers in North Dakota and Vermont, along with David Bronner (of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps) and representatives of Vote Hemp were all arrested in October for planting hemp seeds on the DEA’s front lawn.

Maine and Oregon legalized industrial hemp in 2009, and North Dakota has been selling growing licenses since 2007. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) introduced HR1866 – The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2009 – in April. The following month it was referred to the House’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. (Farmers can be dangerous.)

Growing industrial hemp is illegal on the federal level. According to Vote Hemp, 28 states have introduced hemp legislation and 16 have passed legislation. Laws legalizing it in Hawaii, Kentucky, and New Hampshire were shot down last year, but many states continue to push for legalization. Wisconsin’s bill is “active” and Minnesota’s was “carried” to 2010. Montana, New Mexico, and Vermont’s bills were carried to congressional delegation in 2009. North and South Carolina committed to research in 2006 and 2008, respectively. In 2007, Idaho’s requesting permission from the federal government to legalize hemp farming killed its legalization bill. And Governor Schwarzenegger terminated California’s legalization bill with a veto.

Several states have been studying hemp’s agricultural worth since the mid-’90s. Which seems a little odd insofar as the U.S. government actually subsidized hemp cultivation during World War II. Fibers from particular strands of Cannabis sativa can be made into paper and clothing products, while its oils and seeds are useful for body care and food, respectively. The fiber strands of Cannabis sativa are not psychoactive, as they contain less than 3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). It is believed that publisher William Randolph Hearst led the charge to demonize marijuana and hemp during the 1930s because he owned large tracts of timber – hemp’s competition in the paper marketplace.

Industrial hemp grows rapidly and creates a canopy that hinders weeds. It’s relatively resistant to insects and has a long growing period (85-150 days) and broad climatic requirements (it could be grown across many of the United States). It depletes the soil less than cotton, and it demands fewer, or no, pesticides and herbicides, making it better for our waterways. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. Henry Ford made cars out of hemp: cannibus carbohydrates worked at least as well than plastic’s petroleum hydrocarbons to the dismay of the petrochemical industry. The current economy and our renewed environmental responsibilities, on the other hand, suggests that industrial hemp’s time may have returned.

Last week, while on the way to see Phish in Philadelphia, I got an unexpected email from…the White House.

We would like to invite you to join us for a Clean Energy Economy Forum to discuss the important role young leaders have in creating and sharing this opportunity. The event will bring together emerging leaders from non-profits, businesses, and community groups along with experts from federal agencies, members of the Cabinet, and White House officials to engage in a dialogue.

So, I guess some people at the White House heard that nearly 75% of the people we registered voted in the last election. They also probably realize that if they want to get popular support behind initiatives like climate change, the music community is a good place to start.

A few more emails started coming in. The next was from a key environmental group, the Energy Action Coalition, inviting me to a brainstorming and strategy session of youth-oriented leaders attending the White House meeting, which is Wednesday afternoon.

It’s no coincidence that this is all happening now. The U.N. Climate Change Summit is in Copenhagen next week and President Obama has vowed to go there and work toward an international agreement. If he succeeds, and Congress backs him up, we will take the most important steps in history toward averting a climate crises. If he fails, or can’t win popular support at home, many scientists say we’re about to reach the point of no return.

You may say, “HeadCount and climate change. Huh?” Well, actually we’ve been working behind the scenes with JamBase and artists like Dave Matthews Band and Pearl Jam to launch an initiative called “Music for Action” that will encourage fans to speak out on climate change. We also devote a page of our website to Sustainability and Climate Change – one of six issues we’ve tackled in 2009.

It’s exciting to know that people of influence recognize the impact HeadCount and the music community can have on the issues facing our country. We are still strictly nonpartisan and our message remains the same: “Make Your Voice Heard.” What’s changed is that our message is now pertinent 365 days a year, not just on Election Day.

We’re also fostering discussion about health care in the music community, through a poll and an upcoming series of articles on this blog.

We have big plans for the midterm elections next year, directly tying our Get Out the Vote effort to the key issues we’ve been working on.

I will report back from the White House meeting and let you know about our next key steps as an organization. Thank you for all your support, this year and in years past. If you have any thoughts or insights that might be helpful in preparing for the White House meeting, feel free to pass them along. I can be reached at andyb@headcount.org

The meeting will be webcast here at 4 p.m. EST on Wednesday, December 2, if you want to check it out.

Federal agents raided Gibson Guitars‘ Nashville factory yesterday, seizing wood, guitars, computers and files. Sources told the Nashville Post that Gibson is suspected of violating the Lacey Act by helping to illegally import Madagascar rosewood into the U.S. via Germany.

Clearcut logging has destroyed thousands of acres of lemur habitat unique to the island, threatening the animal with extinction. Scott Paul, director of Greenpeace’s forest campaign, defended the company’s record to The Tennessean, saying, “Historically, Gibson has shown an awful lot of leadership; they are one of the manufacturers far ahead of the field.” The raid, he says, “proves that even if you’re very serious about buying only certified, well-managed supplies, it’s still possible to get caught up….There are a lot of middle men between the guitar manufacturer and the company that is logging the ground [and] a lot of people who are not that honest in the timber business worldwide.”

Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa, is home to 47 types of rosewood and a uniquely diverse blend of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. This includes 88 species of lemur, an animal the Malagasy people have traditionally regarded as sacred. Rosewood sells for $5,000 per cubic meter. Despite strong opposition from environmental groups, the new president of the financially strapped nation, Andry Rajoelina, issued an executive order in September legalizing the export of rosewood and ebony. Read the rest of this entry »

“When John and I were sort of talking about world peace and love and all that kind of thing, bed-ins, etc, you know people were just laughing at us,” Yoko Ono told Reuters recently. No one’s laughing anymore, fortunately. Ono is teaming up with Hard Rock International for an Imagine There’s No Hunger campaign, which kicked off November 4. The initiative will be funded with help from SERVE3, a compilation consisting of:

Bruce Springsteen “Remember When The Music”
Joss Stone “Love Has Made You Beautiful”
My Morning Jacket “Look At You”
Avril Lavigne “When You’re Gone”
Robert Randolph & The Family Band “Diane” (Live from Bonnaroo 2006)
The Charlatans “Complete Control”
Ryan Shaw “People Get Ready”
Marc Broussard “Keep Coming Back”
Starsailor “Military Madness”
Micki Free “Mother Earth”
DMC “I Be Rockin’ It”
The Chapin Sisters “I Know It’s Over”
John Lennon “Give Peace A Chance”

Hard Rock locations will also sell Imagine There’s No Hunger merchandise, including a limited-edition bracelet, pin, and holiday ornament. And here is the video.

HeadCount is all about kick-ass grassroots democracy, so we’re delighted to report two legislative victories pushed through by Farm Sanctuary, the nonprofit founded in 1986 to combat the abuses of factory farming.

This month California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill banning dairy-cow tail docking, thereby terminating this painful and unnecessary practice (Learn why tail docking messes up cows so badly here.) Meanwhile, Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm signed a bill phasing out the cruel close confinement of farm animals. It would ban veal crates for calves within three years and then battery cages for laying hens and gestation crates for breeding sows within ten. Michigan is the seventh state to ban gestation crates, the fifth to ban veal crates, and the second to ban hen battery cages.

Farm Sanctuary founder Gene Baur notes, “Cutting off cows’ tails and confining animals so tightly that they cannot even turn around or stretch their limbs is cruel and outside the bounds of acceptable conduct. We are now seeing growing momentum in our collective efforts to end the most egregious abuses of farm animals in this country.”

Farm Sanctuary will celebrate these animal-rights victories at Frankapalooza: Rockin’ Out for Farm Animals II, an NYC benefit concert this Thursday, October 29, at Kenny’s Castaways. Stop by to meet Gene Baur…and say hello to me! I’m playing an acoustic set at 7, followed by HERE at 7:30 and Athena Reich at 8.

There’s an environmentally correct new way to demonize cannabis consumers — and foreigners.

In a post headlined “Marijuana growers worsening California drought,” the Christian Science Monitor’s Bright Green Blog (a stoner name if ever there were one) interviews a Northern California police officer, who explains that large-scale cultivators of California’s largest cash crop are illegally diverting river and creek water to their operations.

According to Bright Green Blog, “Lt. Noe noted that police have seized more than 500,000 pot plants this season in Mendocino County alone. Each plant requires about one gallon of water per day. California is entering the fourth year of a severe drought, with residents in some areas facing the first mandatory water restrictions in two decades and farms laying off thousands of workers.

“’It’s really affecting our water supply,’ said Noe of the illicit growing sites.”

Conservationists are also concerned about the dumping of pesticides and other toxic chemicals into the water supply, and a local hydrologists points also out that two local trout streams have dried up due to water diversion.

Police, environmentalists, and the post’s writer all blame Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) for despoiling the environment. Local growers, a US Forest Service special agent is quoted as saying, do not have the wherewithal to drag their chemicals deep into the woods, where DTOs grow thousands of plants at a time. Or as the agent puts it, “White guys are lazy.”

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project responded put this crazy quilt of jingoism, fear, and name calling in perspective in his comment on the post:

Despite the comments from official sources quoted in this piece, the problem is not marijuana — which, as an agricultural commodity, is pretty unremarkable and not unusually water-intensive. The problem is prohibition, which keeps the state’s immense marijuana industry outside the normal regulations that apply to other farmers and puts it in an entirely unregulated criminal underground.

If we treated marijuana like we treat beer, wine, and liquor, it would be grown by farmers
who — like those who now grow wine grapes or barley and hops for beer — would have to abide by labor, environmental, and water-conservation laws. In California, that includes water allocations that are subject to reduction in drought years. It is a common rhetorical trick for officials to blame the problems caused by prohibition on marijuana, but the real problem is bad policies producing bad (and entirely predictable) results.

Sustainable agriculture is socially just, environmentally enhancing, and economically viable for the communities in which it exists. If we continually demand the cheapest food possible, we’ll continue to get food produced with cheap labor on land bereft of its beautiful resources from a company that most likely does not care about how it’s created, distributed, or consumed.

It’s going to be a long road to a paradigm shift of a place where food and music reignite a beautiful American culture, one in which we can be proud of our simple spot in the world, and every baby step helps. Food is a powerful force of community and development, and now I’ve had the opportunity to see the movement work at home.

During my senior year at Lee University, I wanted to get my hands dirty, get service credit, and meet some consciously minded people. So, I sought out an internship at Crabtree Farms, a twenty-acre urban oasis and organic farm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Little did I know that my internship at Crabtree would inspire a passion and involve me in a movement. I connected the nonprofit with my University to get upper-level biology credit and made friends who will last a lifetime. (The farm’s manager and assistant greatly contributed to my Grateful Dead and reggae collections, respectively.)

Inspired by music, The Greenway Table has came to be over the last year in Cleveland, Tennessee, just north of Chattanooga. After spending a few fun November days in Texas with Matisyahu and crew, I returned to Cleveland and noticed an acre of land on public property, surrounded by trees and near an elementary school, middle school, and university. Over several subsequent months we have grown a half-acre organic garden, sold our produce, donated food, and hosted a camp, classes, and clubs. We recently received a $10,000 grant for educational programming in 2010.

The Greenway Table will empower our community through the power of food. With our demonstration urban farm and educational outreach, we will inspire conscious consumption and influence demand as well as decrease obesity and help our local economy. Yes, I have been working to pay my bills and, yes, community and friends are an integral part of this movement and my life. It’s like we gotta head up the rat race to take the lead and slow down — and nothing keeps us in the race like a nice fresh beat. Or beet.

Other awesome Tennessee farms include Sequatchie Cove Farm, Williams Island Farm, Clover Wreath Farm, and River Ridge Farm.

She makes it sound so easy (and a little dirty, too).

Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning agronomist whose innovations in crop yield forever changed the field of agriculture, died in Dallas, Texas, on September 12. He was 95, humble till the end, and, above all else, a life-long exemplar of the moral rigor behind the so-called Green Revolution.

Although his work saved up to a billion lives, Borlaug’s high-yielding rice and wheat crops have drawn criticism in the last few decades from those who view them as ushering in an era of chemical agriculture. Regardless of how you feel about so-called “genetically modified” crops, the fact remains that Borlaug saw suffering in the form of poverty and hunger and took action to remedy it.

Former President Clinton has introduced a new site devoted to encouraging any and all Americans to volunteer. Visit MyCommitment.Org to pledge time, money, or skills to a variety of causes. Only time will tell what will solve the planet’s seemingly innumerable fails. Be your own Borlaug. Change the world.

We need health-care reform because of predatory insurance companies, right? Well, yes, that’s a big part of it. But maybe it should involve our collective national diet. Perhaps if we ate better foods we wouldn’t be plagued with Type 2 diabetes, heart conditions, and other preventable health disorders that cost billions of public and private dollars to treat.

Why don’t Americans eat better foods? Look at agriculture policies that encourage overproduction of super-processed foods and imported produce that makes junk cheaper than healthy alternatives. Michael Pollan’s recent New York Times editorial addresses the connection between agribusiness and ealth care, connecting the dots between government policy favoring corporate farming and our nation’s current state of (un)health.

Surprisingly, his overall tone is positive. Pollan concludes that if we do pass a health-care bill of some sort, it will indirectly affect how we eat. If insurance companies are forced to accept people regardless of preexisting conditions, wouldn’t it be in these companies’ best interest to prevent such conditions? And as we have seen, that which is in the best interests of insurance companies is difficult to put asunder. Their lobbying power rivals that of the strongest in the nation: agribusiness! What a stand-off that would be…

Slow Food USA is circulating a petition calling for changes in the Child Nutrition Act, which is up for reauthorization this month. These would (slightly) increase the amount of money the government earmarks for public school lunch programs, encourage public school systems to buy more locally grown and healthy foods, and teach children healthy eating habits. You can read Slow Food USA’s proposals here.

Let’s hope whatever reform bill we end up with encourages the insurance industry to reevaluate its stance on government policy affecting food and agriculture. This change, combined with changes in the way we feed our public school students, should indeed lead to a healthier America.