Hemp is Cannabis grown for fiber, food, fuel, or other non-drug uses. Historically, the textile uses have been most important.
Cannabis grown as hemp is the same species as that grown for marijuana, although millenia of selective breeding has resulted in strains that look quite different. Hemp is planted closely, resulting in tall, slender plants with long fibres.
Hemp use dates back to the Stone Age, with hemp fiber imprints found in pottery shards in China over 10,000 years old.
Cannabis grown as hemp is the same species as that grown for marijuana, although millenia of selective breeding has resulted in strains that look quite different. Hemp is planted closely, resulting in tall, slender plants with long fibres.
Hemp use dates back to the Stone Age, with hemp fiber imprints found in pottery shards in China over 10,000 years old.
Varieties of Hemp
There are broadly three groups of cannabis varieties being cultivated today:- Varieties primarily cultivated for their fibre, characterized by long stems and little branching, called industrial hemp
- Varieties grown for seed from which hemp oil is extracted
- Varieties grown for medicinal or recreational purposes.
- From the 1950s to the 1980s the Soviet Union (now Russia) was the world's largest producer (3,000 km² in 1970). The main production areas were in Ukraine, the Kursk and Orel regions of Russia, and near the Polish border.
- Other important producing countries were China, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, France and Italy.
- Small holder plots are usually harvested by hand. The plants are cut at 2 to 3 cm above the soil and left on the ground to dry. Mechanical harvesting is now common, using specially adapted cutter-binders or simpler cutters.
- The cut hemp is laid in swathes to dry for up to four days. This was traditionally followed by retting, either water retting whereby the bundled hemp floats in water or dew retting whereby the hemp remains on the ground and is affected by the moisture in dew moisture, and by moulds and bacterial action. Modern processes use steam and machinery to separate the fiber, a process known as thermo-mechanical pulping.
- Hemp Cultivation
- The soils most suited to the culture of this plant are those of the deep, black, putrid vegetable kind, that are low, and rather inclined to moisture, and those of the deep mellow, loamy, or sandy descriptions. The quantity of produce is generally much greater on the former than on the latter; but it is said to be greatly inferior in quality. It may, however, be grown with success on lands of a less rich and fertile kind by proper care and attention in their culture and preparation.
- Future of Hemp
- In the last decade hemp has been widely promoted as a crop for the future. This is in particular stimulated by new technologies which make hemp suitable for industrial paper manufacturing, use as a renewable energy source (biofuel), and the use of hemp derivatives as replacement for petrochemical products.
- The increased demand for health food has stimulated the trade in shelled hemp seed while hemp oil is increasingly being used in the manufacturing of bodycare products.
- Jesse Ventura was a vocal proponent of hemp cultivation while governor of Minnesota, though agricultural policymakers within his administration felt that hemp cultivation could not compete economically with crops such as corn and soybeans.