I just figured I'd put this out there.
Every time I see a documentary, or pro-cannabis movie/tv show one thing you will no doubt hear about is the uses of hemp. People will say how many uses there are, the uses of the past, how cheap it would be, that other industries are frightened it'll put them out of business, etc, etc.
Supporters imply if they could grow it things would be so much different but the law gets in their way.
Well growing hemp is legal in NSW Australia (as it would be elsewhere, but I am familiar with NSW seeing as I live here). So how come these people don't invest in it being grown here? Is it because they are ignorant to the fact hemp can be legally grown elsewhere? Are they to scared to put their money where their mouth is? Perhaps they don't have the money to do that...Either way you don't hear about major foreign (or local for that matter) investment in hemp in the state of New South Wales in Australia.
One thing hemp is reportedly good for is paper. However most paper for years and years has been made from wood pulp, the industry has been built up around wood pulp from trees. Can that industry process hemp instead or would the whole industry have to be redesigned to work with hemp fiber?
I'm all for hemp, I just question how easy it really would be to gear the world towards using it.
What are your thoughts?
I don't know specifics, but even cotton wood takes several years to grow to harvest, hemp can achieve harvest growth in less than a year. From a simple how fast to grow perspective I think it is easy to see that a plant will grow faster than a tree, so I hope that isn't what you doubting. As far as processing? I don't know I imagine that you don't need big chainsaws and really impressive semi-trucks to move the harvested hemp from where you grow it, so the processing should be faster (plant matter vs big heavy trees again). I don't know about the pulping and bleaching ect, which use a lot of power and water as it is, and produce a awful stink. I imagine that that process isn't well refined, and in a low margin industry like paper production, I doubt there is much available capital for investing in the infrastructure to research the hemp pulp to parchment market. Couple all of this with the rather limited perception of NSW as an area for innovation means that there probably aren't a lot of entrepreneurs in the area willing to pursue a legal feed stock to produce to a limited market that already has a low(ish) cost low margin provider established. How's that for some market analysis?
ReplyDeleteMost people lump Industrial Help together with its more known cousin Cannabis Sativa. and unlike Cannabis, Hemp doesnt contain the psychoactive ingredient THC.
ReplyDeleteThere is no reason why there shouldn't be more growth and production of Industrial Help in Australia
I agree with scorcher, people just hear hemp and think pot. They don't know the difference between the types.
ReplyDeleteAs for using hemp, go for it.
Most people want to smoke it, I'm not sure people are willing to move, nor would a country let them move, just to smoke weed lol. Plus there is a chance that they just don't realise it's legal elsewhere. There was an uproar when in Amsterdam it was changed so that tourists couldn't smoke pot there, but with how many locals are doing it, just hang around and you should get high off the fumes I think.
ReplyDeleteTalking about the non-psychoactive hemp plant, you can't get high off it, and you can't grow it unless you can prove the THC concentration meets government regulation surrounding it's cultivation.
ReplyDeleteConvictus I too am interested in this plant and my issue isn't with the plant, it's with how society was built around the illegality of the plant. Cotton/Building Supplies/Paper/etc have been established for years WITHOUT hemp...if we want to use hemp we are basically starting from square one, the other raw ingredients have a large head start and the money that was generated without the added competition of hemp.
The thing I don't understand is there are all these activists in places like America scoffing that "hemp is so much better than cotton...but we can't grow it...LOGICAL!", however if they really wanted to be involved in a hemp revolution they could support the industry in places where it is legal.