HEMP PRODUCTION

Australia is geographically well suited to the commercial production of industrial hemp. Additionally, some states, such as Queensland and Flinders Island have made the necessary legislative changes that allow commercial industrial hemp farming.

Worldwide demand for hemp food and fibre products is growing daily. We are developing the distribution networks that will be needed to meet demand. Unfortunately, most hemp fibre products are still imported due to the fledgling size of the Australian hemp farming community. We have the ability to process and produce a variety of hemp fibre and cellulose based products but lack the supply of raw materials to justify investment in local manufacturing facilities to value add.

Australia, Eucalyptus & Hemp

In 1934, Henry Ford said “why use up the forests which were centuries in the making, the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?” Why indeed? Henry Ford went on to build a car made from hemp plastic and run on hemp bio-fuel. Click on the link to you tube to see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rgDyEO_8cI

In many countries around the world, the impact of decades of neglect and thoughtless exploitation of the natural environment is beginning to show. Australia is one such country. Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, it remains that our country continues to suffer severe degradation of the land, air and water due to thoughtless agricultural, forest and water management policies.


Australia enjoyed unparalleled prosperity for decades, based on the production of wool and wheat. The agricultural base has broadened to include sugar cane, many fruits and cotton for domestic consumption and export. The fragile soils of the Australian continent were not suitable for chemical methods of farming, neither were they able to withstand the impact of imported domestic cattle and sheep. Intensive herbicide and pesticide dependent cultivation methods lead to high costs and decreasing returns.

One of the most profound problems has been that of water management. Even though Australia has lush tropical rain forests in the north-east, it is the driest continent on earth. Large scale damming of rivers and sinking bores for irrigation have led to severe salination due to evaporation, concentrating trace amounts of salt present in artesian water. This has been compounded by clearing of tree cover. The most shameful aspect of policy here is to allow the clear-felling of old growth forest to be chipped for Kraft paper.

The roots of Eucalyptus trees reach deep into the subsoil to extract water. After clearing of trees, the water table rises, bringing buried salt to the surface. In some parts of the inland river system thousands of hectares have been permanently lost to a smothering layer of salt. Excess phosphates from chemical fertilizers have entered the waterways. With flow rates seriously reduced by irrigation, the protective flushing effect is lost and there have been several outbreaks of toxic blue green algae.

Fortunately, there have been small improvements. Forward thinking people have formed a "land care" organization to plant trees and practice more sustainable farming. There is a growing movement in Australia to introduce fibre hemp for the production of fabric and paper, as well as developing a ligno-cellulosic ethanol fuel industry. Despite recent developments in Europe and England, where fibre hemp cultivation under licence is in progress, little cultivation is taking place. The legislative power to regulate hemp is held by each state government. Modest progress has been made in Tasmania by the "Hemp for Paper" Consortium. In New South Wales, the most populous state with the most suitable agricultural land and climate, there has been a complete refusal by the authorities to allow fibre hemp trials, despite the support of Universities, agricultural firms and farmers. Economic projections have indicated that hemp will be a highly profitable crop, provided we can convince the government to follow the United Nations policy on fibre hemp and permit industrial scale trials.