ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A NICE PAIR OF HEMP BOXERS

You know how it is some mornings. You read something in the newspaper
that sticks in your neural craw and you masticate on it the rest of
the day, trying to digest the full import of the material in
question. That very thing happened to me just last week. Only it
wasn't the newspaper. It was my underwear.

"Maggie, look at this," I said to my wife, "these Stanfields say
they're made in Canada." Her finely tuned diatribe detector kicking
in, she backed towards the door, mumbling something about a forgotten
root canal appointment.

Too late. "How can they say they're made in Canada? I've travelled
across this great land of ours and never once have I seen cotton
fields swaying in the breeze!"

Not being one to go off on a rant with out being a least partially
burdened with some facts, I began my research with an e-mail to the
company's head office in Truro, Nova Scotia. Its media liaison person
e-mailed back promptly and told me they assembled the products in
their factories and that most of their raw materials were sourced
from Canadian sources.

But where does the cotton in my underwear come from? Well, the full
story of that requires the lights to dim, the cellos to growl
ominously and a clash of cymbals.

Cotton is a great natural fiber. Soft, pliable and strong, it would
be hard to think about dressing without it. But growing cotton is one
of the most harmful farming activities in the world today and its
growing has destroyed millions of acres of farmland, poisoned
thousands of miles of streams and rivers, and been directly
responsible for tens of thousand of farm worker illnesses and deaths.

Obviously cotton itself is not the direct problem, rather it is the
use of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers and water
that are used in the intensive growing of the plant.

Approximately three per cent of the world's working land base is
dedicated to cotton. That three per cent of land receives 25 per cent
of the total agricultural pesticide load. To put that into
perspective, to produce one standard cotton T-shirt requires one cup
of pesticides.

In the relatively well regulated United States, over 55 million
pounds of carcinogen-containing pesticides were sprayed on cotton.
These drift through the air, and migrate through the soil to ground
water, leaching into waterways. They are absorbed by aquatic species
and either kill the animal or accumulate in the system to be passed
onto fish, and ultimately humans.

In an EPA analysis report, it was shown that seven of the 15 most
used cotton farming chemicals were probable cancer-causing
pesticides; eight caused tumors and five caused mutations. Twelve of
the top 15 cotton pesticides caused birth defects, 10 caused multiple
birth defects, and 13 were toxic or very toxic to fish or birds or
both. Just imagine what happens in countries without basic pesticide
education and regulations.

So here is the conundrum. Knowing that buying cotton clothing is
directly contributing to the destruction of the environment, what is
a conscious consumer to do? My first suggestion to Maggie was that we
should become nudists, thus avoiding the problem altogether. It's
amazing what a single look can covey between a husband and wife. My
next suggestion was to look for an alternative to cotton.

Fortunately, I didn't have to look far. We were walking around
Granville Island and came across Granville Island Organix
(www.granvilleislandorganix.com), a store selling chemical and
pesticide free clothing made from bamboo, hemp, organic cotton, soy,
coconut fibers and, oddly enough, dandelion root fibers.

In conversation with the clerk, I found out that through a National
Research Council program, Naturally Advanced Technology
(www.naturallyadvanced.com and hemptown.com) of Vancouver is growing
test plots of hemp in Saskatchewan and Alberta, with a goal of
becoming a "dirt to shirt" company.

This was news to me. I thought, from listening to the U.S. dominated
news, that hemp in all of its forms was illegal. In the United States
it still is. Hemp, because of its association with marijuana, has
been demonized, and was made illegal to grow in North America.

In the United States it was doomed by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937,
and then the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of
1970 made it illegal to grow all varieties of hemp. In Canada, the
prohibition against growing industrial hemp was removed in 1997, but
it is still regulated.

If the industrial growing of cotton is bad, how does growing hemp
fare? Cotton requires 100 gallons of irrigated water to grow one
pound of cotton. Hemp doesn't require irrigation at all, only rain
water. Cotton requires a massive input of toxic pesticides and
herbicides. Hemp grows best organically. An acre of cotton produces
1,000 T-shirts while an acre of hemp produces 4,000 T-shirts.

So, let me get this straight: Hemp requires no poisons or irrigation
and produces four times the useable fiber, and it can be grown
sustainably in Saskatchewan by Canadians.

The only real question is: Where can I buy some hemp boxers?