By Jim Wylie, Pennsylvania Chapter Conservation Co-Chair, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group Conservation Chair, Clean Energy Team member
In June the Sierra Club of Pennsylvania’s Food & Agriculture Team hosted a webinar by Judy Wicks from All Together Now PA titled Localization and Hemp: Strategies for the Climate Crises. Judy shared a lot of good info about the challenges that hemp farmers face in Pennsylvania and some ideas about how supporting hemp farming and products made from hemp (a long list) can help support a localized economy and be a path for bringing together our very polarized state.
Here is the YouTube recording of the June 23rd webinar. Feel free to share it with your friends.
Find more hemp info at All Together Now PA!
Please read on for more resources that the Food & Agriculture team has compiled.
HEMP RESOURCES
1. View archive footage of Henry Ford's 1941 Hemp Car.
2. See Porsche's race car made of hemp in Porsche’s media release.
3. Learn more about the first Hemp House in the U.S., built by former mayor of Asheville, North Carolina, Ross Martin. Scroll to the bottom for a CNN video profile of the house.
4. See Pennsylvania’s first home retrofit using hemp, completed by Disability Options Network (DON) of New Castle, PA.
5. Here’s an example of a WWII poster by the USDA encouraging people to grow hemp for the war, and the government PSA Hemp for Victory.
6. Learn more about industrial biofiber and the Hemp Circular Economy from Just BioFiber of Canada.
7. Learn more about building with hempcrete and Pennsylvania's leading hempcrete experts:
- Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre Cast-Hemp - used spray-in application of Hempcrete at DON’s hemp retrofit house.
- Ana Konopatskaya (architect) and Drew Oberholtzer of Coexist - created the first Hempcrete House on Wheels and the first US hempcrete factory block. They were also the first to receive a USDA grant for research in hemp in Pennsylvania, and have received over $350,000 in federal and state grants towards their work. Listen to their story here.
8. Contact Dr. Alyssa Collins, Penn State Extension's main hemp researcher.
9. Pennsylvania's Erica Stark is the Executive Director at the National Hemp Association. Learn about this organization here.
10. The Rodale Institute shares Year 3 Results of Industrial Hemp Trials.
11. Learn more about All Together Now PA.
12. Listen to Lancaster Farming’s Industrial Hemp Podcast.
13. Check out HempBuild Magazine on Pennsylvania and national innovations in hemp products.
14. HempToday, based in Poland, provides daily hemp news regarding world legislation, products, and interviews with hemp specialists.
15. Decarbonization is currently a focus of the US Department of Energy, and the DOE is supporting research into carbon-capture building materials, to the tune of $45 million.
16. Dr. Darshil Shah, a Senior Researcher at Cambridge’s Center for Natural Material Innovation, works on developing hemp and other biomaterials for use as wind turbine blades, cladding panels, and many other consumer uses. Read a fascinating interview on Dezeen with him here.
This blog was included as part of the July 2022 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!