by HempingtonPost | Aug 2, 2019
Industrial hemp is paramount to anyone supporting radical environmentally-tied economic measures like the Green New Deal in America to overhaul our energy sector. In fact, hemp can do most of the greenering work in terms of both addressing climate change realities and economic inequality. No, not female hemp which is being used for CBD flower extracts, but male hemp.
Introduction
Unlike the Green New Deal, recent developments with industrial hemp don’t get the PR despite the American hemp farming industry being capable of bringing us to a 100% clean, renewable energy sector by 2030…and we don’t need much government stimulus to pull this off…
Just let farmers farm hemp.
If anything, the government should be incentivizing and helping farmers plants millions of acres (like they did during the war in 1942, although at a much smaller scale for those days — 400’ish thousand acres). I know that’s what the 2018 Farm Bill was about, but should something similar to the Green New Deal be adopted, how much is going to hemp farmers, processors, and hemp biolfuel companies?
Let’s talk hemp biofuel.
While sifting through currently available info on hemp biofuel at the beginning of 2019, you continuously run into a collective ‘if only’ statement in pre-2018 Farm Bill articles:
“Industrial hemp is perfectly capable of fueling the modern world without displacing food or adding to the greenhouse effect, if only it were embraced…”
Pertaining to America, where tons of the world’s most ardent hempsters reside,
“We could easily fuel America with completely green carbon-neutral plant energy if only we had a domestic supply of hemp and it were federally legal to farm…”
The fact America could fuel herself through plants was demonstrated decades ago, hemp being the wisest of choices for a wide variety of economic, agronomic, and ecological reasons. After passage of the 2018 Farm Bill and the reclassification of industrial hemp as an agricultural crop, this if-only statement’s no longer relevant with respect to prohibition. Not only is the industrial hemp plant legal to farm on U.S. soil (now defined as a Cannabis Sativa L. plant with equal or less than 0.3% THC), but the plant’s natural compounds are also federally legal as well — which includes up to 0.3% THC with no restrictions on other naturally-occurring elements like CBD, CBN, CBG, terpenes, etc.
If you’re wondering why the recent law’s so wide open, well, the USDA said one of their goals with the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018 in regards to hemp was to give states as much room as possible to come up with their own sets of regulations regarding the crop and its compounds.
So… now what?
Going back to Henry Ford’s original Model T partly made of and and run on hemp, not to mention the original diesel engine being designed for biofuel, a mind-blowing fact remains:
“Dried biomass has a heating value of 5000–8000 Btu/lb. with virtually no ash or sulfur produced during combustion. About 6% [to now 10%] of contiguous United States land area put into cultivation for biomass could supply all current demands for oil and gas. And this production would not add any net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.” [1]
Do you know how tempted I am to go off on how hemp fiber could turn the fashion industry completely green? Ugh…and today I was shown an article freaking out about the fact the fashion industry (apparel & footwear) accounts for closing in on 10% of human-caused global climate impacts…
Here’s a quote from an April 2019 CBS News article, “Fashion industry’s carbon impact bigger than airline industry’s”,
“Total greenhouse gas emissions related to textiles production are equal to 1.2 billion tons annually — more than those of all international flights and maritime shipping trips combined, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.”
But let’s get back to the biofuel angle which would inevitably mesh with the fashion industry in countless ways.
A biofuel-based infrastructure would create a completely decentralize power grid and no more ultra-mega power companies. Each county and state could provide its own energy using easily renewable plants. Let that seed sink into the garden of your mind…
Example: In Colorado a company called Vega Biofuels offer bio-coal — which is renewable, comparable in price to conventional coal and produced using terrefaction technology — and biochar which can sequester carbon in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years without the negative impacts. Imagine this happening on a wider scale across 5, 10, or 20 states.
Yep, biofuel’s a reality and hemp’s the ticket, backed by scientific research from multiple countries who’ve experimented with a variety of biofuels alongside hemp like Canada, Nigeria [2], across Northern Europe [3], Latvia [4], and so on.
According to some, industrial hemp biofuel performs second only to algae.
- While it can vary depending on cultivar used and where it’s growing, male hemp-cannabis yields an average of nine dry tons per acre. [5]
- This means if allowed to flourish, hemp would quickly reach a point where it’s producing greater biomass tonnage per acre annually in more regions of America than either pulpwood or kenaf.
- Hemp is 80% cellulose: both a low-moisture herbaceous and woody plant.
- Industrial hemp, in comparison to corn’s 34% energy gain because of its high cellulose content, has an estimated 540% energy gain! [6]
- According to our very own USDA (who the 2018 Farm Bill designates as the overseer of the U.S. Hemp industry along with the U.S. Attorney General), one acre planted in hemp produces as much pulp as 4.1 acres of trees. But you can harvest hemp at least 3 times a year…
That last one comes from a 1916 report where they predicted by the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and no more trees would need be cut down. But here we go again, none of this is novel information (except to a good percentage of the younger generations supporting Green New Deal-style initiatives)…it’s included in every ‘Hemp 101’ handbook.
Colorado’s also been producing hemp paper for a couple years now. I bought a few pages just to see how it smelled and it smelled like environmental salvation…
Interested? Yeah, hemp paper posters, postcards, envelopes, flyers and much more all made from Colorado-grown male hemp stalk. Check out Tree Free Hemp. Expect to see similar options coming from many different states within a matter of years…hopefully!
The End of Hemp Farming Prohibition in America
Guess what, this means the reinforced double-sided industrial hemp door just opened after being nailed shut for nearly a century. Thankfully, today we have a MASSIVE resources ready to be transitioned into leveraging hemp as a multi-purpose crop where we can create ample (protein and fatty acid-rich) food AND biofuel. All we can hope is ‘the people’ getting behind efforts like the Green New Deal rally and really surf this 21st century agricultural revolution.
Again, the hemp farming industry by itself can accomplish most of what the Green New Deal is setting its sights on by itself if supported and allowed to flourish outside the confines of Big Ag — although we need them on board as well.
How America Will Produce Hemp Biofuel
Hemp biofuel comes from hemp seed oil — the same seed oil you can drizzle on salads, add to a smoothie or feed to livestock — and the rest of the plant can be made into either ethanol or methanol.
North America has absolutely no problem extracting oil from seed we can then use to make biofuel. Furthermore, most of the ethanol added to gasoline we currently put into our cars comes from less efficient and environmentally-friendly food crops like wheat and corn. We can use hemp to efficiently make both — ethanol/methanol and biofuel/biodiesel. University of Connecticut’s research shows hemp seed oil provides a 97% conversion rate into biodiesel [7]. America and Canada both have the infrastructure to switch to industrial hemp-based supply chains within a decade — far less with enough public and corporate involvement.
And well, according to a relatively small survey conducted early April 2019 by Morning Consult (they talked to just shy of 2,000 voters across age, education and political spectrums),
“Voters say 100% renewable electricity by 2030 is more important than other steps to fight climate change.”
For more info-nuggets we can turn to statistics from Health Canada who regulates their industrial hemp industry, showing Canadian hemp farmers planted 138,000 acres in 2017. Most of this Canadian hemp seed is processed into seed oil (as well as hemp seed protein and hearts), which oddly enough was/is sold to Americans where we already have a robust food processing infrastructure.
I hope this is coming across.
What I’m saying here is America and Canada have everything we need already in place in terms of land and plant processing equipment to create a completely human/environmentally-friendly energy system. That’s the truth. Soon, both countries will have more hemp than we’ll know what to do with and all the astounding wonders hempsters have been preaching for decades can manifest. Watch YouTube videos of ordinary people making vegetable oil-based biofuel in their backyard to drive their vehicles right this moment if you want. It’s no secret.
What’ll shock the American populace will be the tremendous amount of industrial hemp seed flowing across the country by the mid-2020s. I love the stuff and try to eat a cup of raw whole hemp seed a day.
“When cold-pressed, 8,000 pounds of hemp seed yields over 300 gallons of hemp seed oil and a byproduct of 6,000 pounds of high protein hemp flour.”[8]
A healthy, irrigated acre of seed-based hemp in Colorado in late 2018, as an example, produced 1,100–2000 pounds of seed. [9]
Let’s not even mention what Kentucky could produce on a larger scale…or Oregon…North Dakota and North Carolina…Montana, and so on. We could EASILY spread out hemp farms to collectively 6–10% of the U.S. and cover our energy needs — completely eradicating the need for fossil fuels. Idealistic sure, but what if by 2025, thanks to hemp America became 50% less dependent on conventional dirty fuels — across allsectors of our country?
When I sit back and begin to fathom the overall impacts of what that would mean worldwide…
Reclamation into Fuel Efforts
One of the core uses of planting industrial hemp across greater America between I’d say 2019–2022 could be for use in farmland reclamation — bioremediation — efforts. This is going to clean up the soil, restoring American farms to their glory with dramatically less heavy metals, petrol-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, along with anything else poisoning our land. Another note in every Hemp 101 handbook is how the plant’s been used around toxic waste dumps and even radioactive events like Chernobyl to effectively absorb cadmium from the soil, etc…wow! Obviously none of this reclamation hemp should go to human or livestock consumption…but what to do?
We most definitely shouldn’t just burn or toss it. Let’s transform it into energy!
I’m no chemist, but my bet’s that the plant can successfully be used as energy without causing more of a mess. Hemp’s astounding ability in this respect will finally be able to be heavily studied. Because myself and many others would like to know what happens within the plant to these toxins. Are they still there when the plant’s harvested? Or, does it somehow convert a good percentage to clean energy within itself? Can it be successfully transformed into hemp biofuel? If so, let’s use all that reclamation hemp while cleaning up our toxic soil.
A Note on Pyrolysis
From my own amateur research, it seems like Pyrolysis is going to be the most efficient process for hemp biomass conversion — capable of competing against initially, and then potentially becoming a replacement for fossil fuels.
“Pyrolysis is the thermochemical process that converts organic materials into usable fuels. Pyrolysis produces energy fuels with high fuel-to-feed ratios, making it the most efficient process for biomass conversion…the technique of applying high heat to organic matter (lignocellulosic materials) in the absence of air or in reduced air. The process can produce charcoal, condensable organic liquids (pyrolytic fuel oil), non-condensable gasses, acetic acid, acetone, and methanol. The process can be adjusted to favor charcoal, pyrolytic oil, gas, or methanol production with a 95.5% fuel-to-feed efficiency” [10]
The people of this world need our Hemp Billionaires and Zillionaires to step up. We need people with capital and the government to get behind and support these types of industrial hemp farming initiatives. We need to fund research and do things by the book. We need farmers to start hemp growing for biofuel along with the ultra-lucrative hemp-derived CBD concentrates/extracts. And textiles!
We need energy companies to start converting from using other less efficient sources of biofuel to hemp. It’s going to be a wild ride…but I’m alive so I have a ticket.
Originally published on www.DarbyHemp.com
References
[1] Environmental Chemistry, Stanley E. Manahan. Willard Grant Press, 1984.
[2] “Biomass resources and biolfuels potential for the production of transportation fuels in Nigeria” Juliet Ben-Iwo, Vasilije Manovic, PhilipLonghurst, ScienceDirect.
[3] “Biomass and energy yield of industrial hemp grown for biogas and solid fuel” ThomasPrade, Sven-ErikSvensson, et al, ScienceDirect.
[4] “Industrial hemp for biomass production” Rudite Sausserde, Aleksandris Adamovics, ResearchGate, 09/2013.
[5]Lyster H. Dewey, Jason L. Merrill, Hemp Hurds As Papermaking Material, U.S.D.A. Bulletin №404, 1916.
[6]“The Legalization of Industrial Hemp and What It Could Mean for Indiana’s Biofuel Industry”, Nicole M. Keller, Indiana University — Purdue University Indianapolis, pg. 24.
[7] “Hemp Produces Viable Biodiesel, UConn Study Finds” Christine Buckley, UConn Today, 10/06/2010.
[8] “Hemp is the ultimate cash crop, producing more fiber, food and oil than any other plant on the planet” Wm. Conde, Fiber Alternatives PDF.
[9] “Myth-Busting: Hemp Needs More Water than Many Think”, Hemp Industry Daily, May 7, 2018.
[10] “Biomass Resources for Energy and Industry” Lynn and Judy Osburn, 1993.
[7] “Hemp Biodiesel: When the Smoke Clears”, Biodiesel Magazine, Holly Jessen, January 24, 2007.
by HempingtonPost | Jul 24, 2019
It slipped under the radar on Thursday, but the United States Department of Agriculture just descheduled tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The USDA issued a bulletin on May 28 as a legal opinion for hemp production. It basically authorizes interstate delivery of hemp and legalized THC derived from hemp.
First, let’s address the interstate transportation or shipment of hemp.
Up until December 2018, hemp was considered illegal like cannabis, but the 2018 Farm Bill legalized it. However, it still couldn’t cross state lines. So, farmers in states where all forms of marijuana were illegal could grow hemp but then had few options to sell their crops. Farmers such as the ones in Kentucky who had pushed Senator Mitch McConnell to get the Farm Bill signed in the first place.
Now they can sell those crops to producers in other states or at least extract the hemp oil and sell that derivative product.
This solves the farmer problem for McConnell who was getting backed into a corner to figure out how to help these individuals sells their hemp crops. Happy Kentucky farmers means reelection.
The second item within this USDA bulletin is the subject of THC, which is the part of the cannabis plant that produces a psychoactive response in the brain or the feeling of getting high. The bulletin was in response to the 2018 Farm Bill and it read, “By amending the definition of marijuana to exclude hemp as defined in AMA 297A, Congress has removed hemp from schedule I and removed it entirely from the CSA (Controlled Substances Act). In other words, hemp is no longer a controlled substance. Also, by amending schedule I to exclude THC in hemp, Congress has likewise removed THC in hemp from the CSA.”
Typically, cannabis plants can produce buds or flowers that have a high level of THC. Hemp plants tend to have very little THC in them. However, that doesn’t mean there is no THC or that the hemp plants couldn’t be modified to contain more THC.
Mark Singleton, the owner of Singleton Investments said, “This removes the argument of .3% THC.” He is referring to the designation that hemp-derived CBD is legal as long as there is less than .3% THC. If hemp THC is legal then it doesn’t matter whether it is .3% or not.
Let’s step back for a moment and review this .3% line in the sand for cannabis.
The .3% level is a designation for which there is little information as to how that number was determined. It is often referred to but there is little documentation as to how regulators arrived at that level.
One historian said that at one time a study was done to determine at which point people got high when consuming cannabis and that .3% was the midrange and thus it stuck. Some people needed less and some didn’t get buzzed until it was more than .3%, so the scientists just picked the middle point and called it a day. Random and possibly no longer true.
Anyway, there is some debate now over this USDA bulletin and whether the words “in hemp” mean THC can’t be extracted from hemp because then it would no longer be in the plant. Several people have suggested that the phrase hemp-derived products covers hemp extractions even if it includes THC. It’s a new bulletin and is sure to be tested very quickly.
Singleton believes that THC derived from hemp will quickly become popular and farmers will set up extraction facilities within their states and begin shipping across state lines. “It solves McConnell’s problem. He’s got the largest plant extraction facility in the entire country. Located in Kentucky,” said Singleton, who says he’s on McConnell’s speed dial.
If hemp-derived THC is now legal and can cross state lines, it will be close to impossible for law enforcement to determine the difference between cannabis-derived THC and hemp-derived THC. This USDA bulletin could have effectively descheduled cannabis. Singleton believes Congress will be forced to act quickly to legalize cannabis since the USDA has jumped the gun.
In May, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer introduced a bill, HR2843, in both Houses removing cannabis from the CSA and it included a social justice component. “I believe this bill will have at least 100 co-sponsors by June 15 and has the best chance to get passed,” said Singleton. “If the Safe Banking Act doesn’t get passed first, then I think this one will. I know the cannabis industry wants the States Rights Act passed, but it’s going nowhere. These have the most support.”
Indeed, no one in the cannabis industry expected the USDA to be the ones to legalize THC and it looks as if this is the next domino to fall.
This story first appeared at Real Money
by HempingtonPost | Jul 23, 2019
- A provision in the 2018 Farm Bill makes hemp, marijuana’s no-buzz cousin, no longer a federally illegal substance.
- It allows farmers and other cultivators to grow the leafy, lanky plant and sell its harvest to processors so they can make hemp-based products ranging from foods, beverages and cosmetics to paper, clothing and building materials.
- Twenty-four states have hemp farming.
- CareerBuilder, Indeed, ZipRecruiter and other mainstream job websites list hemp openings.
It won’t get you high, but lots of people are high on hemp. Thanks to the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill last December, hemp — marijuana’s no-buzz cousin — is no longer a federally illegal controlled substance. A provision in the bill allows farmers and other cultivators to grow the leafy, lanky plant, cannabis sativa L, and sell its harvest to processors, who in turn extract and market raw materials to producers of hemp-based products, everything from foods, beverages and cosmetics to paper, clothing and building materials.
Another by-product of legal hemp will be tens of thousands of new jobs across multiple sectors in the very near future. Besides hiring workers in agriculture, processing and manufacturing, the still-budding industry — with $1.1 billion in revenues 2018, estimated to more than double by 2022 to $2.6 billion, according to New Frontier Data — will need accountants, lawyers, compliance officers, government regulators, IT specialists, financial and insurance experts, transporters, researchers and lab technicians, marketers, CFOs, CEOs and various retail employees.
Some of those workers will be hired by existing companies, such as banks, truckers, farm equipment makers and drugstore chains, while others will employed by opportunistic start-ups.
“Job creation is going to happen in every economic bracket,” said Erica McBride Stark, executive director of the DC-based National Hemp Association. She had just returned from the 6th annual NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver, twice the size of last year’s, drawing more than 225 exhibitors and 10,000 attendees. “The hemp industry will create high-skilled management jobs, labor-type jobs and everything in between,” Stark said. “It’s going to touch all of society.”
The foundations are in place for tremendous job growth in the coming months. Indeed reported a spike in hemp-related job openings early this year, and HempStaff has seen its hemp jobs double from a year ago, now representing 16% of its recruiting business. Still, it will take at least a year to gather hard data from government and independent sources. “I expect job growth will more dramatically move in the second half of this year as more processors come online and as we approach harvest of hemp plants,” Stark said.
The marijuana economy
Of course, there’s already a separate and thriving industry for legal marijuana, to date approved for medicinal use in 34 states and recreational adult use in 10 states and D.C. Retail sales at regulated marijuana dispensaries reached around $9 billion last year, according to Marijuana Business Daily. Note, though, that pot remains a federally illegal Schedule I controlled substance, so factor in the nebulous black market and that sales figure may be as high as $52.5 billion.
It should be noted, too, that despite hemp’s new federal status, the Farm Bill stipulates that individual states can choose to establish their own agriculture and commerce programs, or not. As of February, 41 states allowed cultivation of hemp for commercial, research or pilot programs, although only 24 states had farmers actually growing hemp last year. Total hemp acreage in the U.S. was at 78,176 acres, up from 25,713 in 2017, the advocacy group Vote Hemp estimates, and the acreage should be considerably higher in the coming years.
Advocates have for years fought to liberate hemp from its taboo status, dating back to 1937 when it was lumped in with pot in the Marihuana Tax Act. Not only does today’s commercially approved industrial hemp contain a scant .03 percent of THC — the chemical in marijuana that induces its high — but the entire hemp plant has myriad everyday applications.
The overwhelming focus is on cannabidiol, or CBD, derived mostly from the flowers, or buds, and seeds of the hemp plant. (It’s stalks produce fiber for making textiles and building materials.) Non-intoxicating CBD has become a trendy ingredient, touted for a plethora of health benefits — from pain relief to sleep aid — though many are scientifically unproved.
Currently, the only CBD product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is a prescription oil called Epidiolex, developed by London-based GW Pharmaceuticals, to treat two types of epilepsy. While over-the-counter CBD products are already widely available — Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Aid have joined scores of independent retailers — their legal status, as laid out in the Farm Bill, remains in flux while the FDA finalizes regulations. A public hearing is scheduled for May 31 in Washington.
Among the hundreds of CBD products on the market are dietary supplements, ingestible oils, vape cartridges, beer, candy and body lotions. “My email inbox is bombarded with pitches for everything from CBD coffee to CBD-infused toothpicks,” said Bruce Barcott, deputy editor at Leafly, a Seattle-based information resource for everything cannabis. In 2018, products containing CBD generated $390 million in U.S. sales, a figure predicted to reach $1.3 billion by 2022, per New Frontier Data.
In March, Leafly released a jobs report for the legal marijuana industry, stating that it now employs 211,000 full-time workers, 64,389 of them hired in 2018 alone. The data were compiled prior to the Farm Bill passage, however, too soon to quantify hemp-specific jobs, Barcott explained. Yet many jobs in both industries should be comparable, as should pay scales. A compliance manager that must abide by government regulations, for instance, makes between $45,000 and $149,000, according to Leafly, while a bud trimmer who manicures harvested flower for retail gets up to $14.50 an hour.
“Hemp is going to dwarf marijuana for jobs, ” predicted Joy Beckerman, president of the Hemp Industries Association, headquartered in Summerland, California. “There are so many companies looking for people right now with industry experience and talent.”
CareerBuilder, Indeed, ZipRecruiter and other mainstream job websites list hemp openings, and specialty recruiters have cropped up, too, including CannabizTeam, Viridian Staffing and HempStaff. “Ever since the Farm Bill passed, we have seen a huge increase in hemp clients coming forward, saying they need staff now or in the next few months,” said HempStaff CEO James Yagielo.
Yagielo said 80% of HempStaff’s current openings are for upper-level jobs, such as CFOs and accounting managers, but “once hemp factories get up and running to create products, they’re going to need factory line people, machinists and other types of workers.”
Whereas legal marijuana is expansively regulated — from seed to sale, as they say in the cannabis world — hemp will enjoy less stringent oversight, since its no longer classified as a drug, potentially attracting a much wider variety of established and start-up companies. Canopy Growth, a publicly traded cannabis company in Canada, which legalized recreational pot last year, wasted no time after President Donald Trump signed the Farm Bill just before last Christmas.
In January, Canopy was granted a license by New York State to process and produce hemp, the first step in the company’s plan to invest $100 million–$150 million in the state’s economically distressed Southern Tier region.
“Wow, do they need work,” remarked Bruce Linton, co-CEO and chairman of Canopy, adding that 200 people will initially be hired primarily in farming and processing. Hemp is going to create jobs where they’re needed, he opined, because growing, processing and making hemp products will be more cost-effective in depressed areas versus cities with higher real estate prices and labor costs.
That strategy was likely on the mind of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as he championed the Farm Bill’s hemp legalization provision, seen as a job-creating boon among the Bluegrass State’s dwindling tobacco farmers and coal workers. A major producer before hemp was outlawed in 1937, Kentucky has been cultivating hemp under a pilot program in the 2014 Farm Bill.
This year its department of agriculture approved more than 42,000 acres for hemp, based on applications from 1,035 farmers and 130 processors, with expectations that 20,000 acres will ultimately be planted this spring and summer for fall harvest. That compares to 6,700 planted acres in 2018, comprising 210 farmers and 72 processors. “It’s not uncommon to see a lot of former tobacco farmers looking at industrial hemp as an opportunity,” said Ryan Quarles, the department’s commissioner.
One of them is Joe Sisk, 45, who last planted tobacco on his farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1998 and is now dedicating about 40 acres to hemp, alongside traditional crops. “Hemp is here to stay,” he said, adding that he hears talk of other tobacco farmers switching to hemp. “This is not some fad. Kentucky will have a very substantial hemp industry.”
This story first appeared at CNBC
by HempingtonPost | Jul 17, 2019
We’ve heard a lot lately about hemp-based CBD and its alleged medical benefits.
But hemp also has a long history in textiles and fabric, and it is currently receiving another look due to the growing interest in all things cannabis – along with loosening laws that allow for its cultivation.
Hemp fabric is antimicrobial, antibacterial, hypo-allergenic, thermo-regulating, naturally pest-resistant and UV-resistant, leading some to call it the hero of natural fabrics.
It’s believed to be one of the first plants to be spun into usable fabric 10,000 years ago in China. It also was planted at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, in the hopes that it would naturally remove toxins and pollutants from soil and groundwater.
Within 100 days a typical hemp crop can produce enough fiber or seed to manufacture up to 50,000 products. Not only does hemp grow well in different climates and soils, but plants can grow closely together, allowing for 250 percent more fiber to be produced than conventional cotton.
It also doesn’t need much water; it usually takes 20,000 liters of water to grow 1 kilogram of cotton, equivalent to a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Hemp needs less than half that amount or the same outcome.
Hemp is quite durable and does not need herbicides or pesticides to grow, so creates an ultra-safe fabric. As hemp grows, it replenishes the soil with nitrogen and other nutrients, while removing toxic chemicals using a process called phytol-remediation.
With the removal of restrictions on cultivating and processing of hemp fabric, we’re seeing the emergence of several American hemp designer brands, like Northern California’s Rawganique and Los Angeles-based Seeker. Internationally, brands like Italy’s Opera Campi and Australia’s The Hemp Temple.
One brand, Hempest, has been producing clothing for 20 years, and another brand, Nomads Hemp Wear refers to itself as “the pioneer of hemp and organic eco-clothing evolution” and focuses on urban design.
Canada’s Canopy Growth has taken a major interest into hemp research, and is building a hemp industrial park in New York. Construction is planned this summer of a 308,000 square foot facility that will focus on hemp extraction and hemp manufacturing.
Has hemp reached Eastern Washington yet? Kind of.
Spokane residents Liorah Wichser and Sarah Lorraine Edwards opened and later closed Nayeli Clothing. They created chic hoodies and other apparel made of hemp, wool, cotton, plus a little Lycra or Dintex thrown in. These items were sold at outdoor festivals and online.
Wichser and Edwards were interested in keeping production local instead of outsourcing internationally. They also found a way to use organic plant matter marked as waste from area cannabis growers in their fabric. Unfortunately the expenses were just too great to complete a planned production shop without a profitable investor so the company shut down.
“I put every penny I had into this business, even got to grant awards, but it still wasn’t enough,” Wichser said. “I am hoping there is still a way to bring it to life in the future.”
According to a report from data analytics firm New Frontier Data, global hemp retail sales totaled $3.7 billion in 2018 and are estimated to grow to $5.7 billion by 2020.
Hemp also has the opportunity to improve environmental conditions as well as practices in the fashion and textile manufacturing world. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this sector is considered one of the most polluting industries in the world.
The UNFCCC estimates that the fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of global carbon emissions and could rise by more than 60 per cent by 2030, a definite contrast to traditional polluters like coal that are looking for ways to reduce their footprint.
Taryn Mickelson is originally from New Mexico and now works in Washington’s cannabis industry. She enjoys writing about the positive changes in this rapidly-growing business. This story originally appeared on The Spokesman Review.
by HempingtonPost | Jul 15, 2019
According to biofuel expert Tim Castleman, hemp ethanol could be produced for 1.37 per gallon plus the cost of the feedstock, with technological improvements and tax credits reducing the price another dollar or so per gallon!
