Growing industrial hemp crops has some people fuming, but this smouldering world-wide industry looks set to explode. Even the odd Parliamentarian is wearing it.
Hemp is an industry that goes back 10,000 years to the beginning of pottery, while an 8000 year old piece of hemp fabric is considered by some to be the oldest relic of human industry.
The industrial hemp plant produces three raw materials, bast fibre, the hurd and the seed. Traditionally the valuable and versatile bast fibres are the main product of industrial hemp plants. There are two varieties, primary bast fibre that is long and low in lignin and generally considered to be the strongest natural fibres known to man, and secondary bast fibres which are medium length and higher in lignin which have less value and are generally a result of plants grown less densely. Due to high tensile strength these fibres are ideal for specialised paper products such as industrial filters, currency paper, tea bags and cigarette paper. They are also used in a range of textiles, insulation and even brake and clutch linings.
The hurds comprise 70-80% of the stalk and are the short fibroid inner woody core of the plant. With a lignin content similar to wood they can be used for tissue, newsprint pulp, rayon, biomass fuel, cellophane, food additives, and industrial fabrication materials such as compression moulded parts and fibreboard.
Hemp seeds contain all 8 essential amino acids in the correct proportions humans require and are second only to soya beans as a source of complete vegetable protein. The seeds contain 30-35% oil by weight, oil of which 80% is polyunsaturated essential fatty acid, which while good for you, makes it somewhat unstable and subject to rancidity unless preserved. Hemp seed oil can be used in cooking, or industrial uses such as paints, varnishes, detergents cosmetics and lubrication.
Thirty three countries currently grow industrial hemp. Indeed France, China, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Hungary, Romania, and India have never stopped growing it with the French producing 10,000 tons in 1994, and are currently the main source of viable low-THC hemp seed. The 1990’s has also seen an explosion in research and trialing with Australia starting in 1990, England in 1993, Canada in 1994, and Holland and Germany in 1995.
New Zealand has been comparatively slow to respond to this global renaissance of industrial hemp, but in 1997 the Ministry of Health released a report recommending the lifting of the memoratorium on considering applications to cultivate cannabis, allowing trial plots for research purposes. The Motueka Employment and Small Business Centre received the only New Zealand grant to date to assess the economic and employment opportunities industrial hemp may offer. Peter Smale of Oaklands Nursery in Motueka produced an excellent background and feasibility report for the trial which was published last year.
Mr Smale sees considerable benefits to the region. "The use of low productivity land and the downstream effects for cottage industries as well as for heavy industries such as use in MDF and building materials."
"Because we have such a huge number of small cottage industries and people with those sort of skills in the district, I’m sure we are going to have downstream effects."
The ball is now firmly in the Government’s court as the importation of industrial hemp seed remains illegal. Perhaps the new Labour Government and its coalition partners will begin to see the potential benefits of this ‘new’ crop with its industrial spin-offs.
"It’s got to be a large scale crop to make a processing plant worthwhile. In some places like Dovedale, Tapawera and the Golden Bay where there is big tracks of pastoral land it could certainly be used on that sort of land."
