Hemp has a protracted historical past alongside people, however what does its future appear to be? The hemp plant, its seeds, and its oil have been documented all through historical and trendy historical past for myriad makes use of, together with meals, non secular functions, in addition to supplies for paper, material, and constructing (1). In 2024, the US hemp market was estimated to be valued at $11.03 billion and projected to attain $30.24 billion by 2029, supported by elevated world demand for eco-friendly merchandise, favorable rules, and alternatives for innovation (2). One important characteristic of hemp is its sustainability all through its lifecycle, together with its capacity to sequester carbon, its biodegradability, and its resource-efficiency. The useful relationship people have with hemp is poised to proceed to develop, as long as it could overcome numerous challenges to its widespread adoption.
Life Cycle of Hemp, from Plant to Product
Lawrence Serbin, founder of Hemp Traders, explains that there are two differing kinds of hemp fiber: bast, which is the outer bark, used for making twine, yarn, rope, textiles, and paper; and hurd, which is the interior stalk, comparable to balsa wooden. Hemp grown for fiber is planted densely, Serbin says, utilizing anyplace from 75 to 130 kilos of seed per acre. Hemp seeds are far inexpensive than hashish seeds, he notes, and the varieties are tall and skinny with few branches and low concentrations of cannabinoids.
Harvesting is completed in August or September within the US, Serbin says, and infrequently as early as July in Europe, although it’s finished earlier than the plant begins flowering. Traditionally, the crops are harvested and laid within the discipline to ret so the bark separates from the core, which helps the decortication course of. Machinery separates the bast and hurd for post-processing. The subsequent steps rely upon the specified finish product. Textiles would contain eradicating lignans and brushing the fibers to particular lengths, for instance. Different processes would want to be finished to flip the hemp into paper, buildings supplies, animal bedding, and plastic composites, Serbin explains.
The properties of hemp make it a greater choice for sure merchandise together with rolling papers, tea baggage, and occasional filters, Serbin states. As a clothes materials, hemp is comparable in some respects to cotton, in phrases of the fiber it produces. Hemp shouldn’t be going to exchange cotton, Serbin explains, however mixing it with cotton brings one of the best of each worlds. With hemp comes breathability, power, and sturdiness, and with cotton is the stretchiness, dye-ability, and softness.
Hemp Cultivation
Hemp has distinctive cultivation necessities, requiring much less water than cotton, for instance (1). Serbin has carried out a real-world experiment evaluating the cultivation of a discipline of hemp and pima cotton in California’s Central Valley. The two fields have been grown subsequent to one another and planted at comparable occasions. “Since we use the drip irrigation system, we were able to measure the flow of water that we were putting into it,” he explains. “I had always heard that hemp used less water than cotton, but there are some exaggerations made on hemp, and I wasn’t sure if that was really true or not. But we measured it, and we found that hemp used 20% less water than cotton, and then subsequently, we found that we could use even less water and it would still grow the same. So, I’m going to say hemp uses about 20 to 35% less water than cotton.”
Additionally, hemp produces extra fiber per acre in contrast to flax and significantly cotton—roughly 600 occasions extra fiber per acre, Serbin states. “If you can grow corn, you can pretty much grow hemp,” he provides. Though nonetheless vulnerable to fungus and molds, hemp seems pest-resilient, Serbin provides, and he has seen it overshadow weeds rising alongside the hemp. “We were told that this was a problem for cotton, that if you did not take care of the weed, it could outcompete the cotton plants, and then they were having to spray an herbicide on it,” he defined. “However, the hemp got an early start, grows a lot quicker, fans out completely shading the ground, and all the weeds were completely knocked out.”
The crop itself is flexible and advantages the soil as properly, Steve Allin, founding director of the International Hemp Building Association (IHBA), explains. “It’s the sort of crop that can be used to improve the soil and adds to a more sustainable, or even organic system of agriculture by providing a rotation crop to lower the use of herbicides and to maintain some of the mineral balance in the soil, because it does return quite a bit of its uptake in leaf matter and waste left behind in the crop. So, it’s very good for tillage farming and for the health of the soil.”
Hemp as a Building Material
One of the benefits of hemp cultivation is that its quick progress contributes to its capacity to sequester carbon. A 2022 overview of hemp utilized in concrete describes hemp concrete (hemp hurd, water, and lime), or “hempcrete,” as “carbon-negative,” absorbing extra carbon from the environment than it provides off throughout manufacturing (3). “It is indeed one of the few materials that can continue to absorb carbon after being employed in construction, storing more carbon in the atmosphere over the building’s lifetime than was emitted during construction…Hemp concrete is also recyclable at the end of the building’s lifespan,” the overview explains. It additionally notes that hemp may be harvested in 60 days (3).
In 2024, the International Residential Code included hempcrete, defining it as a “nonstructural, biocomposite insulation infill material,” noting the advantages of hemp-lime embody “high thermal performance, low embodied carbon emissions in production, high carbon sequestration in service, healthy living environments and high fire resistance.” (4)
Around the world, Allin provides, buildings have been constructed utilizing hempcrete, from non permanent shelters in Nepal to luxurious houses in Canada, in addition to bigger scale industrial buildings, authorities buildings, and storage buildings. In 2021, he printed the e-book, “Hemp Buildings: 50 International Case Studies,” a group of the chances of hemp structure in a number of environments (5). One of the principle varieties of hemp buildings is modular housing, Allin explains. “Basically, there are a few forms of it,” he states. “There are forms where you have modular framework and then you apply the infill on site, either on the floor or lifting up into position or standing up, spraying into an application like that, or they are all made in a factory.”
Hemp stalk has noteworthy benefits as a constructing insulation as properly, Allin explains, because it doesn’t require extreme chemical compounds within the manufacturing. “You’re insulating or encasing or building with material that has these abilities to provide great levels of comfort while working at very low energy consumption rates, and they’re nontoxic and nonflammable.” It can be moth-proof and doesn’t degrade to an amazing diploma, he provides.
A research printed in 2024 notes some of the advantages of hemp, but additionally a problem to its widespread use: “Hemp’s porous structure contributes to improved thermal insulation, soundproofing, and biological resistance, making it suitable for in-fill materials, plastering, and insulation applications. However, its low compressive and flexural strength remains challenging, limiting mainstream use.” (6)
Hemp as a constructing materials nonetheless has damaging associations with “natural building,” making them more durable to market and fewer standard than typical supplies, Allin explains. Large-scale funding in hempcrete will take time, he provides, as it will likely be a long time from now earlier than we are able to display the time-tested sturdiness of hemp buildings.
Allin additionally factors out that the advantages of hempcrete buildings, such because the decrease vitality prices over time, for instance, are usually not measured in ways in which the trendy building trade understands. “Those are things that aren’t factored in, so the disadvantage is that we have to address that, and that is quite an uphill struggle, but it’s really a question of gathering enough evidence to be able to present to the people that regulate building codes in Europe, so they have to adjust those kind of measurements.”
“Nothing good is cheap,” Allin states about hemp constructing supplies. “But with that said, the cost of hemp has hardly gone up at all in the 20 years that I’ve been building with hemp.”
Hemp and Consumers
Consumer information of hemp merchandise appears to have grown lately, particularly as curiosity in eco-friendly merchandise has risen. Some main corporations have additionally been incorporating hemp and explaining its advantages for customers and the planet. In 2020, Levi Strauss and Company launched a sustainability report, highlighting how hemp makes use of much less water, chemical compounds, pesticides, and land to domesticate (7). “One of our key fiber innovations, cottonized hemp, is much less water-intensive than conventional cotton production and has the added benefit of relying on rainwater instead of irrigated water that could be used for other productive purposes,” the report states. Cottonized hemp is coarse, and does require a softening course of that leads to a texture comparable to cotton, it provides.
Additionally, outside clothes firm Patagonia additionally options hemp in its clothes line. “Hemp is durable, comfortable and breathable, and its cultivation has a low impact on the environment,” it states. “It needs little to no irrigation and uses less fertilizer than other crops (and does not require synthetic fertilizer). Hemp’s deep center taproot replenishes vital nutrients in the soil and prevents erosion.” According to a devoted hemp data web page on its web site, the corporate started a workwear hemp denim line in 2021 (8).
This is critical progress, as a result of when Serbin was first beginning hemp training, the crop was stigmatized. “Early on in the 90s, when I was working on this, we were always getting the joke, ‘hey, can I smoke your fabric?’ That was a big joke all the time. People say, ‘Oh, you’re just working on hemp because you want to legalize marijuana.’” Nowadays, although, the typical shopper might be accustomed to hemp merchandise comparable to hemp paper, clothes, and hemp seed oil, he says.
As Serbin suggests, shopper ignorance shouldn’t be the principle barrier to widespread adoption of hemp, however slightly the economics. “Hemp was outlawed for 80 – 85 years in America. It missed the entire dawn of modern agriculture and modern technology in order to be able to utilize it and make it cheaper.” Consumers are nonetheless targeted extra on the worth of an merchandise than the supplies it’s made out of, he explains, and there isn’t but a big sufficient marketplace for hemp to provide aggressive costs. More expertise in hemp manufacturing to cut back the labor intensiveness of hemp manufacturing may permit the worth of hemp to grow to be comparable to cotton or flax, for instance.
Challenges and Regulations
Hemp as a crop and product has loads to make amends for to grow to be used on a big scale. It was not till the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (9) that the manufacturing of hemp was approved and hemp seeds have been eliminated from the listing of Controlled Substances. Still, hemp shouldn’t be handled the identical as different crops, and the farmers have distinctive procedures to observe. “If you want to grow it, you have to get a background check,” Serbin explains. “You’re treated like you’re a criminal, you still have to get a registration or a license, depending on which state you live in, and that’s extra money. Then once you grow it, you’re required to have somebody from the government come to your field and test it and make sure that it’s not marijuana.”
The growth of common hempcrete requirements has been referred to as for so as to assure high quality and regulatory compliance in addition to promote wider utilization in building (6). Allin explains that supplies in Europe are measured by how they carry out, whereas in America, supplies are measured by how they’re put in. The International Hemp Building Association is growing a information to be used for rules and measuring the supplies. “What we’re trying to do is describe a best practice guide, so there are guidelines internationally that can then be adapted or adopted by the local institutions, and then to also develop standardized training modules that, again, can be authenticated by people and associations around the world and can be used by our members to train people.”
Serbin argues that the expansion of hemp as a constructing materials requires fewer restrictions. “All we need is the government off our back, allow the farmers to do what we do, and we’re going to see the participation in the innovation that’s going to allow hemp to very soon be cheaper than cotton.”
Technology
One of the trendy agricultural applied sciences Serbin has employed together with his hemp crops is a drip irrigation system with added nitrogen as a fertilizer, leading to 50% greater yield.
In 2023, he started a extra substantial mission so as to innovate the harvesting and decortication of hemp. After seeing the capabilities of a machine in China eradicating fiber from jute, Serbin examined the machine in his personal hemp fields, and noticed favorable outcomes. The course of of harvesting the hemp and feeding it into the machine by hand was nonetheless labor intensive, so he labored with farm tools producers in Pennsylvania to create a form of “Frankenstein machine” that efficiently harvests and decorticates concurrently whereas additionally gathering the hurd in a separate bin.
Advancements in hemp expertise haven’t been developed earlier as a result of there was little marketplace for it due to prohibition, Serbin explains, predicting that his new machine could have a big influence in that space. “The amount of money the farmer will earn from growing hemp will double or triple, and the cost of the fiber will be lowered by half to two-thirds,” Serbin explains. “This machine will be to hemp what the cotton gin was to cotton.”
Allin has additionally not too long ago began an organization growing small-scale decortication items that allow processing of the hemp fiber to create distinctive composite supplies which can be UV-resistant and water resistant.
Hemp’s Future within the Global Market
If hemp is to have a big nationwide or worldwide influence, a number of elements will want to come into play. Markets for hemp will want to be created shut to the cultivation of the supplies, Allin explains, although one problem is that it takes a number of years for farmers to grow to be hemp farmers. “We’re really looking at developing all the things at once, because that’s the only way: to develop the markets and the products as quickly as you can, as you produce the things,” he states. “And now there’s lots of products out there that need to be made more locally, and the more local they are, the more likely they are to be used on retrofit projects, even without any kind of regulation or grant funding or whatever else.”
Encouraging youthful generations to grow to be concerned about growing this sustainable constructing trade is essential, Allin provides, particularly for offering them hope within the face of local weather change.
Collaboration and continued efforts for innovation may even be essential. Allin talked about the upcoming International Hemp Building Symposium in Minnesota on the Lower Sioux Indian Community, highlighting the educational displays, analysis and product growth, demonstrations of fiber processing and spray expertise (10). Building with hempcrete has occurred within the Lower Sioux Indian Community since 2016 (11).
“Fiber forms the invisible part of many of the things in our modern world,” Serbin states. “So, the idea is, can we make the hemp more competitive?” He explains that hemp fiber should be competitively priced with fibers that come from petroleum, comparable to polyester fiber, nylon, rayon, and different artificial fibers, which don’t biodegrade properly. Hemp as an environmentally pleasant and cheaper different would encourage extra demand, provide, and enchancment in expertise. The area for alternative can be big, Serbin predicts.
References
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- Markets and Markets. Industrial Hemp Market value $30.24 billion by 2029 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/industrial-hemp.asp
- Barbhuiya, S.; Das, BB. A complete overview on the use of hemp in concrete, Construction and Building Materials, 2022, 341, DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2022.127857.
- International Code Council Digital Codes. Appendix BL Hemp-Lime (Hempcrete) Construction https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IRC2024P2/appendix-bl-hemp-lime-hempcrete-construction
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- Levi Strauss & Co. 2020 Sustainability Report https://www.levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/LSCo.-2020-Sustainability-Report.pdf
- Patagonia. Hemp https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/hemp.html
- US Department of Agriculture. Hemp https://www.usda.gov/farming-and-ranching/plants-and-crops/plant-breeding/hemp
- International Hemp Building Association. thirteenth International Hemp Building Symposium https://internationalhempbuilding.org/events/
- McEvoy, E. Hemp Increasingly Becoming a Building Material within the US. Cannabis Science and Technology. April 16, 2024. https://www.cannabissciencetech.com/view/hemp-increasingly-becoming-a-building-material-in-the-us (accessed 2025-08-19)
How to Cite This Article
McEvoy, E. From the Ground Up: The Sustainability of Hemp from Seed to Solution, Cannabis Science and Technology, 8(4), 20-23