The great environmental benefits of hemp cultivation are well known.
It is easy to grow, absorbs carbon, enriches the soil and has many uses, from rope, protein-rich foods to car boards and hemp concrete.
Hemp is part of the cannabis family and was a common crop in the UK before the 18th century industrial revolution, but has been abandoned, in part due to prohibitive legislation designed to stamp out its psychoactive cousin. illicit and due to a disarticulated infrastructure to harvest. process and transport the crop.
Right now, farmers are struggling to see why they should negotiate all costly barriers to including the crop in their rotation.
But the trend of herbal diets has seen a renaissance in the market worth billions worldwide.
Good Hemp, based in Collabear Farm, near Barnstaple in North Devon, is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of hemp products, selling its hemp milk, hemp seed powder and snacks to large supermarkets and for to world export.
Dave Shaw, CEO of Good Hemp, said: “We are quite large in the world of hemp, but we are still a small company in the grand scheme of things. Our business consumes about 1,500 metric tons of hemp seeds in the world. year, but we grow less than 10% on our site. We will need a much larger area to cover our needs. “
He said the rest comes from France and Canada, but that he would rather get the seeds nationally, if only more people would grow them.
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It began in the 1990s as a passion project for film photographer Henry Braham, who has worked on Hollywood box office hits such as The Golden Compass, Evil and the Guardians of the Galaxy series, Good Hemp employs a team of eight people from the farm headquarters, producing hemp. food products such as hemp milk, snacks with hemp seed protein and CBD oil.
Hemp is becoming more popular, but its adoption has deteriorated due to the association with its illicit cousin, marijuana, despite not being grown for THC, the psychoactive element of cannabis.
Cannabis plants used for hemp production must have less than 2% THC according to UK government licensing restrictions.
And it restricts the use of leaves and flowers to repress any cultivation for illegal drug use.
Dave Shaw, general manager of Good Hemp near Barnstaple in Devon
Dave said, “I have friends who, when I tell them what I do, they say,‘ Let’s all go to Dave’s house and get on. ’I know they’re kidding, but that’s precisely the image problem hemp faces. .
“One of the issues is the association with marijuana and it’s about educating the consumer.
“It is also treated as if it were a dangerous crop when in fact it has so many environmental benefits.
“We have to have a license and get a visit once a year to make sure we drop the leaves on the ground to make sure we don’t use them for anything else.”
It is currently illegal in the UK to process the leaves and flowers of plants to extract both THC, the psychoactive element, and CBD, which is widely sold for its potential health benefits.
The legislation means that while CBD cannot be mined nationally, it can be imported and sold here in CBD products.
If the rules were relaxed, farmers could use the entire plant and take advantage of the lucrative CBD market.
But even without this added incentive, hemp cultivation could still be the answer to the UK’s zero ambitions.
Among the many benefits of crops, hemp absorbs more carbon than it needs to produce: it absorbs four times the amount of CO2 trees make. One of the most sustainable food sources available in the UK: it actually absorbs CO2 as it grows, making it a carbon-negative crop. In fact, just one acre of hemp offsets the one-year carbon of two cars.
It is a valuable source of fiber and protein, vital for a meatless diet.
And if used in building materials like hemp concrete or hemp concrete, it will absorb carbon during its useful life.
Better yet: it can grow in any soil, needs no pesticides and is sown as part of crop rotation, so it doesn’t need any dedicated land.
And it’s nothing new. It is a crop that would have been grown on a large scale before being overtaken by cotton that could be processed at low cost during the industrial revolution. Its cultivation gives rise to place names such as Broadhempston and Hemel Hempstead.
“You couldn’t have gone anywhere without the smell of hemp growing in the fields,” Dave said.
But to increase its production in the UK, it needs investment in infrastructure so that it can be harvested, transported and processed efficiently as is the case in France and the Netherlands.
Dave explained: “From our perspective, shipping hemp from the south to be processed in the north of England adds from £ 500 to £ 800 in logistics costs.
“For farmers, it’s not that they don’t want to cultivate it, but that they have to take into account this additional‘ taking ’of their profit margins.
“In places like France, they have established cooperatives that have shared the cost of investing in this infrastructure.
“What we want to see is a government policy, supported by subsidies that can establish the same here.
“When we talk to people about hemp, they know it’s good for the environment, and based on the emphasis on plant-based diets, there’s a lot of interest and appetite for hemp.
“There are so many reasons to grow hemp, and the potential is immense: we just need the support to help more and more people take advantage of it.”
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