Why Hemp Should Be The World’s Most Prolific Crop

April 20, 2021

At Essential + Kind we are focused on offering 100% natural fiber baby and children’s clothing pieces and have deliberately chosen to utilize hemp as our fabric offering. Hemp as clothing has many attractive qualities but the primary reason for its selection is the overwhelmingly positive impact it can have on the environment.

Let’s first address the difference between marijuana and hemp before we get into all the benefits of hemp, its history in the U.S., and its industrial uses.

What is the difference between hemp and marijuana?

An article published by North Carolina State University¹ states that marijuana and hemp are essentially different names for the same plant genus (Cannabis) but can be told apart when testing the plant for the psychoactive substance called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). Different countries and locales regulate differently², but in general hemp plants will contain no more than 0.3 percent THC, whereas marijuana will contain between 5 to 20 percent THC. The takeaway: hemp will not get you high.

One of the most extensive and heavily cited resources I have found online regarding hemp’s environmental benefits, it’s history in the U.S., and it’s many industrial uses is Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition written by Skaidra Smith-Heisters and published by Reason Foundation³. I’m summarizing in this post, but for a deeper dive, I highly recommend the 50 page PDF download (linked below).

Environmental Benefits

Hemp is one of the most environmentally friendly natural fibers on earth. Below are a few of the main environmental benefits it can provide.

Less Pesticides Required ^4,5,6,7

Hemp crops are naturally pest-tolerant which means they require very little use of pesticides. Contrast that with conventional cotton, which can be considered the dirtiest crop in the world when it comes to chemical use. Conventional cotton crops use about 16-25% of total pesticides produced worldwide but the cotton crops themselves comprise less than 3% of the world’s total agricultural land.

Less Water Usage ^8,9,10,11

By today’s farming standards ~5,300 gallons of water is needed to produce ~2 lbs of conventional cotton fiber, which is enough fiber to make just one T-shirt and one pair of jeans.

Hemp requires about half of conventional cotton’s water usage which is to make the equivalent ~2lbs of fiber and most of this water comes from rainwater, thus needing very little irrigation. Plus, it requires half the land use of cotton to make one ton of textile and in half the time it takes for cotton to be ready for harvest (hemp is ready for harvest in about 3-4 months). Considering cotton is grown in dry and arid climates suffering from droughts like Arizona, Texas, California, China, and India, switching to hemp crops would help combat water scarcity.

Excellent Rotational Crop that Benefit the Soil and Captures Carbon^12,13,14,15

95% of our food comes from the soil. If soil degradation continues at the current pace, the world’s remaining top soil could be gone within 60 years and that means we may only have ~100 harvests left. To put that into perspective, an article in Scientific American states that due to intensive and heavy chemical farming techniques, deforestation, and global warming, the world is losing “30 soccer fields of soil every minute.” Every time land is further degraded, it feeds into a vicious cycle: less carbon is stored, the world gets hotter, and more soil is degraded.

Hemp is a key crop for Regenerative Agriculture and combats detrimental soil erosion:

by acting as a natural fertilizer returning nutrients and nitrogen to the ground when it’s grown and harvested for fiber and seed
by having a deep tap root that reaches 8 to 9 feet below ground that breaks up compaction and aerates the soil, and
by absorbing more CO2 per hectare than any forest or other commercial crop which means its the ideal crop for carbon sequestration/drawdown.

Can Help Combat Deforestation for Biofuels^16,17

Today, tropical rainforests are primarily deforested for human subsistence, to clear out for croplands and livestock. For example, soybean production and industrial-scale cattle ranching are the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon. Whereas in Indonesia (Borneo and Sumatra), a major cause of deforestation is converting the native tropical forest to commercial palm tree plantations to produce bio-fuels for export.

While we figure out how to more efficiently and effectively feed the growing world population without unnecessarily cutting down large swaths of our carbon sequestering and oxygen emitting forests, investing in technological advancements to make harvesting hemp crops for biofuels an economical option would greatly aid in the combat against deforestation. Hemp can be grown easily and in most climates, without requiring significant use of pesticides or herbicides, meaning most countries would have the ability to grow their own fuel. And because they reach maturity within three to four months, inputs for biofuels can be grown quickly and sustainably.

Now that we’ve reviewed a few reasons why hemp is such a beneficial crop from an environmental perspective, I’ll briefly summarize hemp’s history in the US and why it isn’t a more prolific crop today.

Hemp’s History and Why It Isn’t a Prolific Crop

Because hemp is so closely related to marijuana, its mention and use in the United States may often be considered taboo. However, the historical banning of industrial hemp was not founded on the premise hemp contains a psychoactive substance. Large corporate interests are actually to blame.

Hemp is one of the world’s oldest agricultural crops with evidence of its use dating back to China 10,000 years ago¹⁸. Because of its incredible fiber strength and versatility, hemp was critical to the United States’ early industrial and military success. Between 1840 and 1860, its cultivation reached a peak, but a myriad of events worked against the continued success of industrial hemp:

Hemp is a crop that had intensive labor demands and farm labor became increasingly expensive after the end of the Civil War which improved domestic cotton’s competitive edge

In 1862, to help pay for the Civil War, a federal tax was levied on alcohol. While the tax allegedly targeted beverage alcohol, alcohol fuel (ethanol) and industrial uses of alcohol became prohibitively expensive which lead to the rapid increase in petroleum feedstocks for fuel, then plastics, and then textiles diminishing the use for industrial hemp even further (the first petroleum oil well was drilled in 1859)

Despite there being a renewed interest in industrial hemp crops in the 1930s as a result of technological breakthroughs in the processing of hemp for fiber and the growing market for cellulose for use in paper, explosives, rayon, cellophane, and plastic products, petroleum based synthetic textile companies, lumber barons and big newspapers saw hemp as a huge threat. Mechanical Engineering in 1937 declared hemp to be “the most profitable and desirable crop that can be grown,” and Popular Mechanics called it the “new billion-dollar crop” a year later but that glory didn’t last long³.

This same year, under lobbying influence of synthetic textile companies like DuPont, who had just patented their new plastic fiber, and newspaper tycoon William Randolf Hearst who invested in wood pulp farms for the production of his newspapers, legislation was enacted to stifle the cultivation of Cannabis; the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. While the law specifically excluded industrial hemp from the definition of “marihuana” and Harry Anslinger, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner, convinced farmers that the legislation would not affect them, it became clear it would when a violation of the Act included “any hemp stalks that bore leaves” and heavy taxes and penalties were assessed on these farmers making it a very unattractive crop for farmers and investors alike .^3,18,20

During World War II the Marihuana Tax Act was temporarily suspended as the U.S. Navy needed hemp for a number of applications. The US Government produced a film called “Hemp for Victory” outlining the uses¹⁸. Domestic production spiked. Unfortunately, the resurgence didn’t outlast the war and agricultural industrial feedstocks would continue to lose out against increasingly cheaper synthetic substitutes.

In 1958, the last legal hemp crop was planted in Wisconsin and then in the 1970s, President Nixon’s War on Drugs saw the enactment of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act (CSA). As marijuana was assigned a Schedule 1 controlled substance, no clear exclusions were made for hemp and thus hemp cultivation was prohibited.

Starting in 1994, various states introduced legislation authorizing feasibility studies regarding the cultivation of domestic industrial hemp.

Finally, in December of 2018, the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law and removed hemp from the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)²¹. Though hemp cultivation in the U.S. is now technically legal, it is subject to licenses and regulations pursuant to state plans²².

Now that the United States has legalized the farming of industrial hemp, we should not just expect, but we should demand, a resurgence in the cultivation of the crop and increased investment for technological innovation to leverage this amazing crop for a multitude of industrial uses.

Industrial Uses

Hemp’s fiber strength, versatility, and usability of the entire plant (100% of the hemp plant can be utilized, from root to stalk to leaves to seeds) lend itself to many industrial uses including but not limited to²⁵:

Rope
Textiles & Clothing
Paper Products (because hemp plants grow in just four months, hemp can replace trees, which take decades to grow as the raw material for paper ^26,27)
Food
Medicines
Essential Oils
Beauty and Body Care Products
Nutritional Supplements
Livestock Bedding
Livestock Feed
Plastic Molding (e.g. as the composite material in plastic composites for the auto industry used to “improve physical properties such as stiffness, impact resistance, bending and tensile strength” Purdue )
Construction (e.g. insulation and fiberboard, as a mechanical strengthener of materials such as cement, and as a chemical binding agent for the creation of drywall and plaster)
Bio-fuels such as bio-diesel and ethanol²⁸

So Why Hemp Clothing?

There are not enough options to recycle used textiles. Nor is most of what we wear today biodegradable. It is estimated that 65% of all fibers used in the fashion industry are made from synthetic material AKA from plastic AKA from crude oil and unfortunately it is also estimated the percentage of synthetic fiber use will increase significantly. Essential + Kind wants to help combat this.

Hemp biodegradable fibers are extremely durable, naturally hypo-allergenic, non-irritating, anti-bacterial, and UV resistant. Hemp’s unique fiber structures have the combined effect of incredible breathability in summer while offering excellent insulation in winter. Hemp fiber in woven form has the look and feel of a classic flax linen and gets softer after each wash. Hemp is the natural winner when it comes to fabric choice.

Thank you so much for reading along. I hope you found this post very informative. If you like what you read and want to be notified of new posts, please subscribe to our newsletter (by clicking the Join Our Community sidebar) and make sure you follow along on Instagram @essentialandkindco.

As always, you can shop our biodegradable, 100% hemp baby and children’s clothing items here.

Peace + Love,

LeeAnn

Founder, Essential + Kind