The Hemp Alternative - More Hype than Substance

The Hemp Alternative - more hype than substance

by Heike Von Der Lancken

Forest Protection Society

Opponents to Australia's native forest industry often raise the issue of growing hemp as a replacement for wood to produce paper and other wood products. Recently, the debate has resurfaced in the media, with the Victorian Government planning to set up a multi-million dollar industrial hemp processing industry in north-eastern Victoria.

The South Australian Government has come under fire for not taking the initiative in setting up a hemp industry first, already having run a trial program. The problem, it seems, is that the trials failed, leaving the SA Government a bit nervous about the viability of this industry. And not without good reason, either, it seems.

A conference on the potential of an industrial hemp industry in Australia (convened jointly by the Institute of Agricultural Science and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation at the end of 1995) concluded that at present it was not economically feasible, nor was the right technology available to establish a broad area hemp industry in Australia. The best that proponents of a hemp industry could hope for was a small regional or cottage industry.

Research and evaluations of hemp by scientists at North Forest Products have found these and a significant number of other reasons why hemp is not as viable an alternative to eucalypt as is oftentimes claimed by those opposed to logging:

• Hemp is very demanding on the environment
  • Any crop requires a period of establishment, during which time the site is cultivated and weedicide added, until the crop takes hold of the site. For hemp this site disturbance will happen at least once a year; for eucalypts only once per rotation; which, in the case of eucalypt tree farms, may vary from 10-25 years
  • hemp would require large areas of fertile, well-drained land, and probably irrigation, even in Tasmania. This would be expensive and compete for land and other resources with other intensive crops, dairying, etc.
• Hemp is much less productive than eucalypts, in terms of useable pulp
  • Eucalypts and hemp have similar growth rates measured as dry material per year. However, for quality papers, only the outer (bast) fibre of hemp can be used. This grows at one to three tonnes of useable pulp per hectare per year; whereas eucalypt grows at four to seven tonnes per year.
• The fibre is unsuitable for the large majority of market requirements
  • A wide range of non-wood plant material can be used to make paper, including sugar cane, straw, corn stalks and grass. However, the quality and cost of pulp will determine which grades of paper are viable from any given species.
  • The properties of hemp are such that it cannot be marketed as equivalent to eucalypt kraft pulp, which represents the major market opportunity;
  • The extreme length of hemp fibres means that they require special handling and pulping equipment and cannot be used as feedstock to mills designed to use woodchips.
  • Hemp would need to be used in a small new mill, to produce a filler pulp for speciality papers.
• Growing and harvesting of hemp presents a number of logistical problems.
  • Harvesting for eucalypts is a year round activity, but for hemp would be very seasonal. This presents a number of labour and financing problems and would compete with other crops for the availability of machinery.
  • Eucalypts can be ``stored'' on the stump after growth has occurred. Hemp would require large volumes of material to be stored under weatherproof conditions, for long periods, to cover the period between harvests and to smooth variation in availability due to differences between seasons.
  • Compared with eucalypts, hemp is a very bulky crop and would be correspondingly expensive to transport. Transport cost, particularly in Australia, is always a major portion of the total cost of fibre supplied to a paper mill. There would be associated pressures to have an estate concentrated in the vicinity of the mill. This may generate problems in reducing the diversity of the landscape.

A few other interesting facts about hemp and hemp production are:

• Hemp pulp costs $US 2,500 per tonne compared to $US 400 per tonne for typical bleached wood pulp;
• hemp grown in Europe is subsidised by the EU at $US 900/ha;
• Trial plantings of hemp in Australia appear to yield between 1 and 12 tonnes/ha dry stem (per year). This is dependent on rainfall/irrigation. Depending on the processing model used, the gross margin to the grower after some farm processing ranged between a loss of $59.75 to a profit of $1,100 per ha. Cash crops generally yield $4,000 to $10,000 per ha gross margin.

All of which is worth making a mental note of for when next someone asks the question ``Why can't we grow hemp instead of chopping down trees?''.