Australian Farmer
Almost a year and a half after Australian farmers were encouraged to grow hemp in the province of New South Wales, it looks like their counterparts in Queensland are sufficiently interested in the crop that they’re considering building a hemp mill to process the fibres of their future cash-crop. As ABC.net.au reports:
A hemp fibre processing mill is being proposed for the Hunter Valley after a strong response from farmers interested in growing the product.
Queensland company Ecofibre undertook a series of crop trials across the Lower and Upper Hunter during last summer which achieved better than expected results.
The fibre would replace imported hemp used by an Australian company in the manufacture of flotation products.
Ecofibre managing director Phil Warner says interest in growing the crop this year would allow a local processing facility to be established.
In 2008, the Australian government passed legislation that allows the plant to be cultivated for use in products ranging from bio-fuel to dog food.These aren’t the first Australian hemp trials to go better than expected. And since then, these aren’t the only hemp trials to produce encouraging results. In November of that same year, another Australian company, Hemp Resources, reported that their initial hemp trials had gone better than expected.
It’s not surprising that Australia has moved forward so quickly with adopting hemp as an industrial crop while US law continues to make no distinction between hemp and its psychoactive counterpart. While the US can import much of its hemp from its northern neighbour, Canada, Australia is sufficiently isolated that the costs associated with having to import all its hemp would be extraneous to say the least. Now that Australia can cultivate and process its own hemp, not only will farmers have another cash-crop, but consumers will also benefit from cheaper hemp products.