Aussie Hemp Farmer

Global commodity prices rise are on the rise, driving up the price of all staples, from food to coffee to cotton. These increases have been severe enough that they even have some G20 leaders worried about food security.

On the cotton front, hemp fibers could help consumers save on their clothing purchases. But if hemp farming was legal in the US, the crop could also preempt further environmental devastation as farmers rush to cash-in on the cotton rush.

Short Supply, Growing Demand

The main causes behind poor cotton yields has been severe weather caused by global warming. Indeed, crops in Pakistan, India, China, and Australia all fell short of expectations in 2010.

As CTV reports, this shortage and increasing demands in India and China may push the price of cotton up as much as 80%. And because of rising price, farmers are rushing to plant more cotton. Both Australia and Brazil have increased their production, and some US states are expected to even double theirs. As Business Week reports:

[...] California farmers are expected to plant 400,000 acres of cotton this year. That’s up from a low of 200,000 acres planted two years ago.

In the short-term, increased cotton production and export will help the US manage its trade deficit. In the medium- to long-term, however, increasing cotton production is bound to only exacerbate one of the causes behind the world’s cotton shortage.

Hemp vs Cotton: Crops & The Climate

The problem with ramping up cotton production, though, is that will only contribute to climate change further. Hemp, on the other hand, represent a much more sustainable, less resource intensive alternative.

First, cotton is thirsty crop, requiring considerable irrigation, which disturbs both marine and terrestrial habitats. Indeed, it can take up to 100 gallons of water to produce one pound of cotton. Hemp can subsist off of rainfall in most climates.

Second, cotton is notorious for depleting soil — leading to soil erosion and desertification. Hemp, by contrast, has a deep root system that helps to prevent soil erosion and aerates the soil — to the benefit of other, future crops.

Third, because cotton depletes soil so extensively, it requires considerable fertilization, leading to eutrophication — poisoning the water table and destroying marine ecosystems. Hemp, however, rarely require fertilization.

Finally, while cotton crops constitute on 3% of cultivated land globally, it account for 25% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of the world’s pesticides. Hemp does require the use of such toxic chemicals.

Holding Hemp Back

So while cotton farming not only requires a lot of water, but also uses a lot fertilizer and pesticides (furthering our dependency on petroleum), hemp represents an alternative that is (1) cheaper to produce and (2) much more sustainable as a crop. So what’s holding hemp back as a cash-crop? Well, a number of things.

For starters, there are legal hurdles in many countries. While Canada, Australia, China, and many European countries grow and export industrial hemp, it remains illegal in the US and India because legislation doesn’t distinguish between hemp and its psychoactive counterpart – marijuana. Both the US and India, however, are major cotton producers, so legislative change could bring about considerable agricultural (and ecological) reform.

Hanes Logo

Then, there is the facts that hemp is not as easily spun into a soft fabric as cotton is. Of course, companies such as Hanes and NAT are working on a solution to this, but the technology to spin hemp into a complete substitute for cotton is still a couple years off.

Finally, there are market issues. Simply put, hemp is still not a mainstream fiber, meaning that farmers just do not have the incentive to grow hemp as they do cotton — i.e. they can’t sell it as easily. This, of course, will change as technology makes hemp fabrics more suitable for consumer needs.

As hemp fiber technology gets better, market demand will go up, farmers will have more of an incentive to cultivate it, and markets forces will apply more pressure on governments to accommodate the crop. Perhaps recent change in commodity prices will lend force to such market forces.

Chances are, though, that cotton lobbyists will work against the crop for at least 5-10 years to come. But let’s hope not.

Credit: Granville Online

Came across this interesting article on Hemp vs Cotton. It’s just another reminder of how the plant is not only extrememly versatile, but can how, once again, it’s an extremely eco-friendlier alternative to a very environmentally damaging crop. Here were some key points:

• It takes about 1,400 gallons of water to produce just 1 pound of cotton
• Cotton require only half that
• One acre of land can produce 250% more hemp fiber than cotton fiber
• A field of hemp can also yield two crops a year
• Cotton consumes 25% of the world’s insecticides and 10% of the world’s pesticides
• Most hemp is grown without pesticides/insecticides
• Hemp doesn’t require herbicide because it over-shades weeds
• Hemp is a tremendous carbon trap

The environmental advantage of hemp, I think, are strikingly clear. But the article also goes on to explore how hemp and cotton compare in terms of industrial applications and market potential, and hemp still comes out on top.

It makes you wonder how hemp every got outlawed as a fiber crop. Oh yeah, I remember: William Randolf Hearst printed his news on cotton paper and owned a bunch of interests in cotton farming, so he used marijuana to launch a smear campaign again the cotton’s biggest (non-psychoactive) rival, hemp.

It’s outright tragic and injust that 70 years later, us and the planet are still bearing the burden of Hearst’s corrupt corporate interests.

Just the other day, we were speculating about NAT’s growth rates, and left it up to how the company’s bulk commercial hemp trials worked out. Well, some of the results are already in, and it’s looking pretty good for both Naturally Advance Technologies and the hemp industry writ large.

You see, part of hemp’s biggest potential is also one of its largest obstacle: as a fabric. Now, while cotton needs an immense amount of water (i.e. heavy irrigation), hemp can often subsist on rain water. Furthermore, while cotton is a destructive crop that quickly depletes the soil, hemp makes a great rotation crop while the soil is being left to recover.

The problem with hemp as an alternative to cotton, however, is twofold: (1) it does not make as soft of a fabric as cotton does, and as a result (2) it cannot be as easily spun by machines as cotton can. All this seriously drives up the cost of using hemp as a fabric, which in turn reduces demand for hemp fibres, which in turn discourages the kind of investment required to find a solution to all. It’s all a vicious cycle.

Well, NAT may have solved this problem with its Crailar organic fiber. Crailar is a traditionally spun yarn, but using bast fibers (like those found in plants like hemp), as is consequently a replacement for cotton. Incidentally, Crailar was part of the aforementioned bulk commercial hemp trials. These trials, moreover, were conducted in conjunction with Hanesbrands Inc. (the maker of Hanes t-shirts), and they have not only yielded a way to mass process hemp into a viable cotton substitute, but NAT has already secured a distribution deal with Costco. As Ecotextile reports:

PORTLAND – [17.11.08] An industrial hemp blended yarn has been successfully spun on conventional cotton ring-spinning equipment without modification and then knitted into jersey fabrics in trials sponsored by Hanesbrands Inc.

The hemp yarns were spun at North Carolina State University using fibres made with the ‘Crailar’ enzyme process from Naturally Advanced Technology, which uses enzyme technology to produce soft, comfortable textiles made from hemp and bast fibres that can better compete with cotton.

Tim Pleasants, Spun Yarn Lab Manager, NC State University, said, “[...] This is the first time in my 23-year yarn spinning career that I have seen hemp processed on conventional cotton spinning equipment.”

Earlier this summer, British Colombia-based Naturally Advanced Technologies (NAT) raised nearly US$2 million through a private placement of its shares and more recently signed a new promotional deal with Costco’s US stores.

Overall, NAT’s achievement with their Crailar fiber is a business accomplishment par excellence. Not only have they found a way to replace one of the most destructive textile crops with one of the most sustainable ones, but they’ve secured distribution deal for their go-to-market strategy. This kind of innovation and entrepreneurship is just the kind of proactive approach that the hemp industry needs to overcome the economies-of-scale that its less eco-friendly alternatives have held over it for so long.

Today has been a slow day in terms of hemp related news, so I thought I’d post this video on one man’s effort to replace cotton farms in Whales with industrial hemp farms. Hemp has a number of advantages over cotton:

• it can produce 250% the amount of fibre
• it requires little to no pesticides
• and it requires much less water to grow

Overall, hemp is a much more sustainable crop than cotton. The only thing really holding back the hemp fiber industry is the technology required to spin it into fiber — which could easily catch up if enough interest was stirred up in the marketplace. The need to incite such interest, moreover, couldn’t be more pressing because cotton is one of the most destructive crops there is. Consider the following:

• half the pesticides used in the US go to cotton alone
• cotton takes up 3% of the world’s most arable land, but is responsible for about 25% of the pesticides used
• one pound of cotton require 100 gallons of water, and hemp can subsist off of rainfall in most climates

Add these environmental tidbits to the reality that hemp makes for a more durable, insulating, and absorbent fiber than cotton, and the choice seems obvious. The only drawback is that hemp can’t be used to make fibers as light, fluffy, and soft as cotton can.

Researchers in the Netherlands have developed a new variety of hemp that they hope will challenge cotton’s stronghold over textiles. What’s interesting about this strain is that is supposedly contains absolutely no THC (the psycho-active compound in marijuana). Generally, industrial hemp contains less than 0.3% THC — not nearly enough to produce the psycho-active effects experiencde with marijuana, which contains about 5-15% THC or more.

These researchers, moreover, aren’t financially motivated. Rather, they’re out to help the environment. As Radio Netherlands reports:

[...] investigators from Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) are extremely pleased with [their new] crop, as this new hemp variety may be able to break cotton’s monopoly position as the textile crop of choice.
[...]
The plant is doesn’t contain a single milligram of THC, the main psychoactive substance found in hashish and marijuana.

According to the WUR researchers, the disadvantages of cotton production should mean that farmers the world over will be more than eager to seize on the hemp variety they have created. Dr Den Nijs explains:

“It takes an enormous amount of water to produce a cotton crop. Farmers have to use vast amounts of pesticides and herbicides to grow it. Basically, huge amounts of chemicals are necessary in order to produce a decent cotton crop. Hemp is entirely different; it can be grown in more marginal areas and needs very little in the way of pesticides or herbicides in order to produce a decent crop. Furthermore, it needs far, far less water than cotton”.

Dr Den Nijs’s comment is a prime example of scientific understatement: an acre of cotton needs 25 times more water than an acre of hemp.

These developments underscore the environmental potential of cultivating industrial hemp: it’s easier on the soil, and requires less water and not toxic chemicals. Hopefully a completely THC-free strain will help erode one more rhetorical point of contention that big industry has with switching crop.

In fact, in terms of some other practical advantages that hemp has over cotton, HempFarm.org claims:

• 1 acre of hemp will produce as much as 2-3 acres of cotton.
• Hemp is 4 times warmer than cotton, 4 times more water absorbent, has 3 times the tensile strength of cotton. It is also many times more durable and is flame retardant.
• Hemp breathes well and wicks moisture away from the body better than cotton.