3) In your experience, what are key best-practices and lessons-learned in fostering cross-sectoral linkages to protect and improve nutrition while preventing, adapting to climate change and reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions in projects?
My experience includes having traveled through France, Switzerland and The Netherlands from 1996 to 2006, filming towering green stalks and flowers, bearing abundant, essential seed nutrition. Such organic resource abundance was and continues to be prohibited by “drug laws” in the country of my birth, in the California Republic of the USA.
The first time I ate fresh, raw, organic, hemp seed, in 1997, I was camped out in a tent, with my cameras, in a chanvriere's field, overlooking Lake Zurich. (Please see photos below)
I was warmly hosted at in Zurich by Martin & friends at Hanf Hause, directed to the Swiss Federal Research Station near Bern, where I was welcomed like family for several days, learning from Vito Medillavilla of terpenes and the many properties of hemp essential oils. Backpacking through the Swiss alps, I was invited to help with the harvest at several organic and biodynamic (a.k.a. “Demeter”) farms. I watched families harvest their shared wealth with gratitude to the Creator for that which is truly valuable.
Experiencing Cannabis science, culture and freedom on such deep levels, solidly confirmed previous investigations, thought and theory. It is clear that the "cross-sectoral linkage" most urgently needed, is to link food security & nutrition to the impact of counter-productive “drugs” policy, inducing essential resource scarcity.
It requires political courage, founded in strict objectivity. A closing “window of opportunity,” and our responsibility to future generations, demands that all possible biogenic solutions be applied immediately and proportionately, to the complex equation of survival we all face.
Presently, exclusive, limited-spectrum thinking is based in past lies, bigotry and confusion, determining a polar misvaluation, from essential to “illegal.” This misdirection in value continues to warp governance, dominating U.S.-style global drug policy through bureaucratic influence and economic inertia. Inadequate, or in some cases, counter-productive strategies continue to dominate decision making, squelching an open discussion of all possible courses of immediate, effective action.
The cross-sectoral disconnect between food security, nutrition, climate change and global "drugs" policy is a critical break in mankind's collective reasoning necessary for navigating toward a livable future. An uniquely essential, "strategic food resource" identified in seven U.S. Presidential Executive Orders as “hemp”; Also sequesters 9 tons of carbon per acre per growing season; As it produces sustainable biofuels; And copious amounts of atmospheric terpenes providing a “solar shield” against increasing UV-B radiation. Banned through "drugs" legislation, it seems obvious that the so-called "laws" prohibiting hemp agriculture are, at best, "void for vagueness"; and at worst, treason against God, country and planet.
Drugs don't make seeds. Herbs make seeds. As the result of this fundamental, illogical oversight, wrongful jurisdiction over a god-given "green herb" has been applied, under color of law. It seems such an obvious and important distinction to make, yet we continue to allow a disingenuous, counter-productive "drugs" policy to suppress hemp agriculture, ecology and industry in many parts of the world.
The most effective solution to climate imbalances and their increasing impact on food security & nutrition begins with recognizing the true, essential value of Cannabis. Redirection of military and civilian resources toward global distribution and cultivation to harvest and plant ancient strains of Cannabis seed is the ultimate strategy for addressing systemic collapse of environment, economics and the human social order. If our species fails to recognize why Cannabis is essential to our sustainable existence, then we will perish in a sickly and violent extinction, before the end of the 21st Century.
There are seven properties of Cannabis that make it an essential agricultural resource:
1. Our freedom to farm "every herb bearing seed" is the first test of religious freedom. Cannabis has served as spiritual sacrament and entheogen for many religions and cultures throughout human history. For example, Biblical scholars have determined that "qaneh-bosm," referred to throughout the Bible, is most certainly Cannabis -- a major ingredient needed for making the Holy Anointing Oil used by Jesus (Exodus 30:23). Without Cannabis there is zero religious freedom.
2. Complete, essential nutrition. Hemp seed contains all three essential fatty acids (EFAs); is the most available source of edestin protein; produces an abundance of terpenes, flavonoids, tocopherals, chlorophyll, vitamins, enzymes, minerals, and living, plant energy. Essential nutrition received with thanksgiving has always been celebrated as a sacrament through gratitude for Nature's grace.
3. Complete nutrition and sustainable biofuels from the same harvest.
Cannabis is unique in that food security and nutrition are increased at the same time zero-net-carbon biofuels energy is grown from the sun & soil. The Cannabis leaf is the most efficient, globally available and recyclable ‘solar panel’ on Earth.
4. Cannabis is the only crop capable of producing the quantity of atmospheric monoterpenes needed to replenish what has been lost with the death of 50% of the boreal forests and 40% of the marine phytoplankton that used to emit the terpenes that shield the Earth from deadly solar UV-B and UV-C radiation, while sequestering carbon and producing oxygen. The anti-viral, anti-fungal, and antibiotic properties of terpenes probably also play a key role in purifying Earth’s hydrologic systems.
5. Uniquely safe and effective herbal therapeutics: Cancer, severe head trauma, glaucoma, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy, chronic pain, rheumatism, muscle spasticity, multiple sclerosis, insomnia, PTSD, ADD, Tourette’s syndrome, nerve disorders, emesis and eczema are just some of the ailments that have been effectively prevented, treated and cured by Cannabis.
6. Cannabis is the safest, most ancient, and globally popular herbal alternative to alcohol and hard drugs.
7. Cannabis is unique and essential for its exceptional agronomic properties. A non-invasive pioneer crop, Cannabis is essential for regenerating depleted and contaminated soils, stopping soil erosion, expanding the Earth’s arable base, while producing biodegradable "Gaiatherapeutic" industrial products, food, fuel, cloth, paper, etc.
Cannabis is mankind's functional interface with the Natural Order. Time is running-out on our ability to heal the planet.
"Essential civilian demand" is the most time-efficient, emergency preparedness protocol for accessing hemp in time to plant globally this Spring. Accelerating a proportionate, global, biogenic response is warranted by the extreme, unprecedented conditions we're facing.
Substantiated climate science, our respect for Nature must guide our collective common sense and courage. Mankind must transcend irrational “Gaiacidal” social values, in favor of mutually sustaining, coordinated and purposeful “Gaiatherapeutic” evolution.
Mr. Paul von Hartmann