Was Henry Ford ahead of his time in renewable energy and sustainable design? In 1941 he recognized the utility of the hemp plant, and constructed a car of resin stiffened hemp fiber. He even ran the car on ethanol made from hemp! Ford knew that hemp could produce vast economic resources if widely cultivated.
When he told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."
Take a look at this interesting and entertaining video on Hemp - I didn't know all that!
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