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ARTICLE
HEMP
High and Dry: Can Cannabis Solve
the Omnivore’s Dilemma
in Times of Drought?
Article by: Jeremy Daw -The 2014 harvest, according to my sources in California’s Emerald Triangle, promises to be a bumper crop — if there is any harvest at all. While
production has swelled, both in plant count and
size, the sheer magnitude of the cannabis harvest appears poised to worsen what was already
a potentially existential threat: California’s recordbreaking drought.
Trees of this size, according to Chris Van Hook,
author of the Clean Green Certified standard for
environmentally responsible cannabis cultivation,
can each require up to 15 gallons of water every
day. Van Hook, who conducted the first real-world
study of water consumption on Emerald Triangle
cannabis farms, estimated that the late-season
water draw of all cannabis farms in Mendocino
County is close to 32 million gallons — daily. As
one who prefers sun-grown cannabis to indoor
primarily on the basis of its lighter carbon footprint, the revelation that outdoor-produced pot
can exacerbate an already distressing drought
provoked a cognitive dissonance in me not unlike
that of the omnivore’s dilemma, in which journalist Michael Pollan becomes temporarily paralyzed
by the realization that his food choices have massive environmental impacts — seemingly no matter what he chooses to eat for dinner.
The dissonance was resolved for me, perhaps unsurprisingly, by Ed Rosenthal. As we passed an Ed
Rosenthal back and forth around his veranda coffee table, I brought up the water issue which had
been bothering me.
“It’s a problem, especially in Northern California,”
Ed acknowledged. “But after legalization, when
outdoor farmers will be able to grow in the Central Valley, the effect will be relatively minimal.”
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I was skeptical. 32 million gallons per day sounded like an awful lot of water for just one county.
But Ed directed me to look at the state’s official
statistics on water use, which reveal that California agriculture diverts a mind-boggling 34 million
acre-feet of water per year — or about 30 billion
gallons every day. He had a point — as massive as
the water drain of Mendocino cannabis seemed
to be, it was a mere drop in the bucket compared
to the Central Valley’s irrigation agriculture.
“When it comes to wasteful water use,” Ed said
while puffing at the Ed, “you should really look at
almonds.”
He’s right, of course. California almonds, by comparison to cannabis, use up to 3 billion of those
30 billion daily gallons flooding the Central Valley.
Almond “milk,” as Ed pointed out, was even worse
— after all of that water poured into the thirsty
ground to get the almonds, food processors then
dissolve the machine-masticated nuts into even
more water, which is then shipped to Whole
Foods to cream the coffees of vegan consumers.
This is where I bristled. While I don’t adopt the label ‘vegan’ (when it comes to cheese I, l ike Oscar
Wilde, can resist anything except temptation), I
had still decided to change the milk in my daily
coffee, based partly on the fact that dairy products require much more water than plant-based
crops. Suddenly my switch to almond milk, made
in a mood of such self-righteousness, brought the
cognitive dissonance right back.
So that’s why if you happen across me at my
morning coffee these days, you’ll smell the nutty
wafting of hemp milk. Among the crop’s many environmental benefits, hemp requires significantly
less water than most of its competitors; in fact, in
many climates, the water requirement of a typical hemp crop is less than the average rainfall, so
hempseed production doesn’t necessarily have to
affect water reserves at all. Even in the relatively dry Central Valley, its average seasonal water
requirements of 500-700 millimeters will hardly
break the water bank.
That is not to say my fears have all been allayed;
the state of Mendocino watersheds is still close to
disastrous. But ever since I asked Ed, I’ve become
more confident that the problem of the water
footprint of my cannabis is just one more issue
that legalization can nip right in the bud.