Ancient Fibre, New Hope – The rebirth of the hemp industry

In ages past hemp was the material from which superior rope and canvas were produced, strong and durable. In recent years we learned hemp fibre makes excellent clothing and furnishing fabrics, and more recently still, that it’s a source of quality foods. All this makes hemp useful, but Dave and Anne Jordan who run Hemp Farm near Whatawhata in the Waikato, have introduced hemp as both a wonder plant and a panacea for world problems.

Massive market and multiple uses

“We can’t grow enough for the market,” says Dave Jordan.  “If we covered every square inch of New Zealand with hemp, it would be insufficient.  America, where hemp is the fastest growing natural food industry, is gearing up for a monster market. Hemp seed oil tops the superfoods list, producing enhanced energy levels, healthier skin, optimally functioning organs (especially the brain), menopausal relief, and many other health benefits.”

Young Hemp Seed (Six weeks)

Hemp goods go well beyond food.  They include fabrics, medicines, animal feed, animal bedding, mulch, industrial textiles, paper, construction materials (hempcrete), plastics, paints, varnishes, fuel, glues, and more. All parts of hemp are usable – seed, leaf, and stalk. The stalk is made up of a fibrous outer casing, and hurd (the softer core).

Dried Hemp Stalk

Growing Hemp

Hemp’s growing season is from early October to late March.  An interim harvest can be taken for fibre only, at the end of January (90 days after sowing seed), allowing a second harvest at the end of March when the plant rushes to seed.  Seed properly matures at the end of March (126 days), only once per season. The fibre is best in late January and by March has begun to dry out. In New Zealand the leaf must be stripped from the stalk to rot on the ground.

The Jordans run 10 acres at Whatawhata but also lease blocks in other North Island regions. Now in their sixth year of hemp production they have so far been driven by Dave’s determination to see a worldwide greening, and to that purpose, the development of seed stock, and the technical enablement of a New Zealand industry.

“Historically, hemp was harvested then retted,” he says. “Retting is a process by which the cut hemp lies in the field for between three to six months (depending on air and ground moisture content), while the fibrous outer breaks down sufficiently to separate from the hurd. The harvest then had to be picked up and taken to a hammer mill for processing. The disadvantages of this system included fields which couldn’t be used while the hemp was retted, and the compromise of fibre quality by almost 80% due to the retting process.”

Revolutionising the Harvest

There was no dedicated hemp harvesting equipment in New Zealand, although a static decorticator which separated fibre and hurd was available. The decorticator necessitated a harvest to be brought in and fed through it, but crucial to Hemp Farm’s original plan was the engineering of a decorticator as part of a combine harvester. They contracted a mechanical engineer to re-design a harvester, and the prototype successfully completed its first harvest ready for the drying process last March.

“This changes everything for hemp farming,” says Jordan. “The fields are immediately available for sowing winter grasses and rotation cropping, and large harvests are much more viable. We can think in terms of cropping thousands of acres at a time.”

Dave Jordan checking the hemp crop at around six weeks

Greening New Zealand

Entrepreneurial pursuits are de rigeur for Dave Jordan who spent 30 years in the adventure tourism industry. Initially running white-water guiding companies in New Zealand and overseas, he eventually set up the Franz Josef Glacier heli-hiking and guiding company. Having sold the Franz Josef business, Jordan was struck by the clean green image being used to promote New Zealand internationally.  Our country wasn’t clean or green and he realised that visitors would eventually recognise this. Looking for a way to combat the denaturing of New Zealand, he considered hemp, well-known in the northern hemisphere where it’s been grown and utilised since ancient times.  With a handful of seed and a Ministry of Health licence ($511.11) he planted his first plot in Hawkes Bay.

Hemp Farm yields per hectare are roughly three tonnes of fibre from a 2.5m tall crop, six tonnes of hurd, and half to one tonne of seed, depending on the harvesting process. A tonne of seed produces approximately 350 litres of oil.

Ladybug on Young Hemp Plant – pleasing proof of the lack of pests

Hemp attracts few pests, partly because of its fast growth, but also because it has in-built repellant methods, so all of the Jordans’ trial plots have been grown pesticide-free.

Tensile strength tests carried out at Waikato University on the Hemp Farm crop proved 25% greater than harakeke flax and 25% stronger than English hemp, a direct result of being harvested green.

Product innovation

Samples of the crop offered to various industries here and overseas have met with positive response. One composite industry customer has ordered 180 tonnes from the 2015 harvest. The edible paper plate industry, which produces plates from imported potato starch and tree cellulose, has taken a great interest, while initial discussions with the wool industry have generated excitement about a wool-hemp blend.

“The harvesting decorticator makes hemp farming in New Zealand a viable industry,” says Jordan, “and one in which the market is growing exponentially. The last few years have involved costly trial and error for us and for contractors experimenting with harvesting and planting, but we’re getting there now.”

“This is an emerging industry with benefits as basic as locking carbon into products instead of floating loose in the atmosphere, remediating soils, cleaning up waterways, the environment, and the atmosphere. Hemp has four times the biomass of pines grown over the same period and creates an industry in which everyone can get involved.”

“There’s no threat to existing industries. Instead hemp product development provides new avenues for collaboration and mutual growth. For hemp growers, the future is rosy.”

“Growing is the easy part, and we now have the harvesting methods ticked off,” says Jordan. “What remains in the final development stage of a vibrant industry capable of supporting an entirely new economy, is the continued identification of value-adding processing facilities, and that’s where our efforts are currently concentrated.”

www.hempfarm.co.nz

Young Hemp flowering (six weeks)

First published in Organic NZ – May/Jun 2015 Edition – www.organicnz.org.nz