4 ms·

Hasn't industrial hemp production been legal in most of the world the whole time? And hasn't importation of hemp products (e.g. rope, or tshirts, or whatever)

Hasn't industrial hemp production been legal in most of the world the whole time? And hasn't importation of hemp products (e.g. rope, or tshirts, or whatever) been legal even in America the whole time? Surely if hemp was going to outcompete popular modern fibers, it would have done so by now. What am I missing here?

iamtheworstdev 7y ago
What changes now is that people will be growing hemp in mass for CBD and be left with all of the pulp as byproduct to be sold on the cheap. Which in turn may spur more hemp products. Whereas before your help business model was considerably different and likely not as profitable.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Okay that makes more sense. How far does that stretch though? Will the CBD industry really get so large that their waste product truly competes against cotton or synthetics? I can't help but feel hemp is destined to be a niche material for nearly all applications.
  - Animats 7y ago
    Finding something to do with agricultural waste is useful. There's so much of it already. Doing it profitably is hard. People have been trying hard for a century. Henry Ford was into this. It's possible to make something like particle board from bagasse, the waste from sugar cane. But it's never become big. Corncobs and corn silk are available in huge quantities, but other than animal feed, not much is done with them. The energy input, processing cost, and transportation cost usually defeats this, because what you get out is usually a low-value product.
    - iamtheworstdev 7y ago
      But in that same regard its part of why many foods have cellulose in them. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/10/329767647/from-mcdonalds-to-organic-valley-youre-probably-eating-wood-pulp https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/10/329767647/fr... They get government assistance in the name of reducing waste. Hemp could see the same relief.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
Mostly in Canada and Australia. Cotton is a commodity crop and Big Ag. GMO cotton is powerful and Monsanto had its fingers deep in that pie. Cotton market is pretty gnarly and ruthless. Different market. Very aggressive. Having said that..smaller countries need to focus on local food production than fiber. USA dominates because we have large acreages for commodity crops and can import cheap food from other countries.
Animats 7y ago
That hemp isn't that good a bast fiber. Kenaf, sisal, jute, and manila are more useful. Manila is sometimes called "manila hemp", but it's really abacá, a species of banana. It makes good rope. Jute is used to make heavy cloth, for carpets and such. Sisal is used for twine and light rope. Kenaf has been used to make paper, but that never caught on. "Peak paper" was a while back, and the paper industry is shrinking. All of these are low-value field crops, cheap to farm and harvest. They're mostly farmed in the more backward third-world countries now.

iamtheworstdev 7y ago

What changes now is that people will be growing hemp in mass for CBD and be left with all of the pulp as byproduct to be sold on the cheap. Which in turn may spur more hemp products. Whereas before your help business model was considerably different and likely not as profitable.

darkpuma 7y ago
Okay that makes more sense. How far does that stretch though? Will the CBD industry really get so large that their waste product truly competes against cotton or synthetics? I can't help but feel hemp is destined to be a niche material for nearly all applications.
- Animats 7y ago
  Finding something to do with agricultural waste is useful. There's so much of it already. Doing it profitably is hard. People have been trying hard for a century. Henry Ford was into this. It's possible to make something like particle board from bagasse, the waste from sugar cane. But it's never become big. Corncobs and corn silk are available in huge quantities, but other than animal feed, not much is done with them. The energy input, processing cost, and transportation cost usually defeats this, because what you get out is usually a low-value product.
  - iamtheworstdev 7y ago
    But in that same regard its part of why many foods have cellulose in them. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/10/329767647/from-mcdonalds-to-organic-valley-youre-probably-eating-wood-pulp https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/07/10/329767647/fr... They get government assistance in the name of reducing waste. Hemp could see the same relief.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Mostly in Canada and Australia. Cotton is a commodity crop and Big Ag. GMO cotton is powerful and Monsanto had its fingers deep in that pie. Cotton market is pretty gnarly and ruthless. Different market. Very aggressive. Having said that..smaller countries need to focus on local food production than fiber. USA dominates because we have large acreages for commodity crops and can import cheap food from other countries.

Animats 7y ago

That hemp isn't that good a bast fiber. Kenaf, sisal, jute, and manila are more useful. Manila is sometimes called "manila hemp", but it's really abacá, a species of banana. It makes good rope. Jute is used to make heavy cloth, for carpets and such. Sisal is used for twine and light rope. Kenaf has been used to make paper, but that never caught on. "Peak paper" was a while back, and the paper industry is shrinking. All of these are low-value field crops, cheap to farm and harvest. They're mostly farmed in the more backward third-world countries now.