Oh, the Things Hemp Can Do!

By Kevin Campbell

The 2018 Farm Bill opened up the hemp industry to all new possibilities. At this point, it’s likely that most people know CBD can be derived from hemp; however, hemp has a lot of benefits that people might not be aware of. For instance, hemp can easily be manufactured into paper, making a more sustainable alternative to tree-based paper products. That’s just one example. Here are three other things that this versatile crop can do that you might not expect.

1. Save the Bees

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Firstly, bees love hemp. A 2019 study published in Biomass & Bioenergy, titled “Bee diversity and abundance on flowers of industrial hemp,” set out to see if hemp, during flowering season, might be a valuable source of pollen for foraging bees. To test this, researchers set up almost a dozen traps around industrial hemp fields during peak flowering season and collected bees over the course of several days. In the end, researchers found nearly 2,000 bees from 23 different bee genera. They concluded that “industrial hemp can play an important role in providing sustained nutritional options for bees during the cropping season.”

Industrial hemp, then, could act as a potential solution for a steadily declining bee population. According to a report from Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit associated with the University of Maryland, between October 1, 2018, and April 1, 2019, 37.7 percent of honey bee colonies kept by commercial beekeepers experienced decline. If hemp provides a tasty treat for these important pollinators, we may see their populations bounce back as more hemp is planted.

2. Build Homes

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You may know that hemp can create paper products, but it’s capable of so much more. Hempergy is an indigenous-owned and operated company that is turning hemp into construction materials. As Zaffia LaPlante, the founder of Hempergy, explained, “Hempergy is focused on improving the supply chain of waste management in the cannabis and hemp industries. Our goal is to use hemp as a sustainable feedstock for construction, cosmetic, and textile purposes.”

Hempcrete, a hemp-based substitute for concrete, is mold-proof, nontoxic, fire-resistant, biodegradable, and doesn’t use chemicals or toxins. As the hemp industry continues to put their heads together, more innovations like this will emerge, and it may not be long until all of our homes are built from hemp.

3. Fuel the World

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Bioenergy is one of the fastest growing forms of renewable energy in the world. Recently living organic materials, known as biomass, are used to produce fuel, heat, and electricity. However, not all biofuel crops are sustainable. Some use too much water, displace people, and create more emissions than they save.

This is where hemp comes in. Biogas production from hemp could compete with biogas production from corn, especially in colder climates. Additionally, ethanol production is possible from the whole hemp plant, and biodiesel can be produced from the oil pressed from hemp seeds.

Since hemp requires limited amounts of pesticides, it could potentially begin to rival other biofuel crops on the market. As hemp spreads across the world and more money and time is invested in research, there will only be more discoveries related to what people are already calling the “Swiss Army knife” of plants. ❖