No Hemp Today

Today, I cycled to Hemmen, the garden of the experimental hemp and flax cultivation in the center of the Netherlands. Yesterday I had a Civil Dialogue Group organised by the European Commission and the Presidency of the EU, and coordinated by EIHA, the European Industrial Hemp Association. I attended as member of the Fibre Expert Group of EIHA and of the Scientific Committee of EIHA.

The Hemp production covers around 300.000 hectares worldwide, almost equally split over USA, Canada, China and Europe (each 20%). My interest is only in fibres, and a hectare produces around 1,5 Tons of fibre. Hence the global hemp fibre production is 450.000 Tons, but most of it goes into speciality papers. Insulation materials use one third of fibre output, the remainder being used in textiles and plastics. However the production of hemp is erratic. In the USA production was close to 60.000 Tons in 2018, and dropped to 18.000 Tons in 2019. The trend is on the increase but with major fluctuations over the years.

Hemp is a very interesting crop from an agricultural perspective if all parts of the plant are valorised. If seeds, leaves and flowers are used for alimentary, cosmetic and medicinal purposes; the fibres are a waste material to valorise. If the fibres are the main output, the woody parts can be used as construction material, the leaves are feedstock for animals. However the main potential is economically in the first model, as the substances derived from hemp derive the highest value. However aligning a value chain around hemp is a major challenge, especially for extracting more complex materials such as textiles. Now the costs of shredding the hemp-stem into building materials or litter are low, but so are the revenue.

In order to breakthrough hemp needs first to be seen from an agricultural perspective. Farmers are not married to a value chain (except in fruits and wine), hence a rotational crop most be worthwhile to grow and easily tradeable. The first is more or less the case if the THC content is kept under 0,2 mg/kg and controls are well done. A wider derogation would certainly help (to cope with deviations in measurement and in weather conditions. The second is far from being the case. Hemp is mainly a contract crop: a farmer cultivates it if their is a client at the end of the season. Therefore there is an oligopoly in suppliers of seeds, and in buyers of straw (often the same parties).

From an industrial point of view the value chain is poorly developed. Two essential stages of production require special equipment and skills. The first one is the decortication of the stem, to extract the fibre. This can be done partly in field retting, partly in basin retting (no longer done in Europe because of the stench), but then in a proces of mechanical extraction or less common chemical extraction. The extraction produces a long fine fibre (50cm or longer) that is valuable, a shorter coarser fibre (tow below 10 cm). The long fibre can be spun in a linen proces (less than 10 spinners in the EU). Tow can be spun in a cotton system, but most yarns made from tow are too coarse to be used in modern fashion, it is rather a technical material. If cottonized the long fibre can be "cutted" to a cotton length of 3-5 cm. The material becomes then usable in all short staple spinners, however the value of coarse and short fibre is also low (cotton is around 1,5 euro/kg in comparable quality. I have more expectation of using hemp in a wool system with a length of 5-8 cm and to process it for menswear and furniture fabrics.

Technically hemp is a niche fibre. If it gets the position of wool, or special synthetic fibres its potential is around 500.000 to 1 Million Tons. That is already a tremendous challenge, to replace cotton a major transition in the economics and technology of hemp should happen. One of those transitions is to transform hemp to viscose. That widens its use, but for a farmer this is not very attractive, since wood pulp for viscose trades at around 0,70 Euro/kg. But to reach even 500.000 Tons a massive expansion in farming and processing is needed. I believe that this can happen if hemp fibre is a side stream of the food/cosmetic/pharma nexus. In sofar hemp is the best example of a fibre that is no longer a side stream of petrol, but of the agrofood sector. This is a philosophy Wageningen University and research adheres to. Textiles have to become a side product of food production (we eat 30x more than we consume textiles), instead of a side product of petrol (we burn 40x more than we wear).

I hope that we at WUR can help to support a road map linking the plant to the pant, and so to make a plan for the planet (and the required policies).