Jordan Palmer


13 November 2017

Community Engagement 2 Summary

I decided on what my creative response was one day walking home from ASU. I passed a few pieces of scrap, but good quality, lumber that must have fell out of someone's work truck. Instead of letting this sit and rot or be thrown away, I decided I would save a piece and reuse it for my project. I have decided to do a work of art on this reclaimed lumber which is related to SD by way of Deforestation and Climate Change. It will try and symbolize both the issue and a potential solution. Hemp can replace most tree derived products like paper, and construction materials. This can help lighten the load on the forests and negate some of the damage caused by deforestation, which is the second single largest source for GHG (Panwar et al 2017). Deforestation has been mostly caused by humans moving up the food chain and consuming more beef. To support the influx of beef, more land is cleared, the new cattle then must be fed, which brings us to our second culprit, the soy industry, which is used for feed (Panwar et al 2017). Hemp can help solve this in multiple ways, hemp seeds are some of the most protein rich seed of any on earth. This can easily be made into animal feed which can help halt the environmentally destructive soy industry. With the increase of destroyed forests and soy production, soil degradation and soil erosion have come (Redd-monitor 2015). Hemp can also combat these issues, Hemps leaves are 50% nitrogen which enables it to increase soil fertility rather than deplete it, this along with its other qualities like being able to be grown pesticide free, it’s short 120 day grow cycle, and its ability to be implemented in crop rotation systems will ensure hemp a spot on many farms in the future (Johnson 2017). By disregarding the normalcy that is opposing hemp we can create a new economy with sustainability incorporated into the foundation (Princen 2010). I will be presenting my project by bringing it in to be displayed and may fill in the gaps on how it relates to SD verbally if needed but no verbal presentation is planned.