Hitting a New High – Hemp Industry and Innovations Continue to Grow Like Weeds

It’s been busy lately for the hemp industry. News of the latest biobased hemp car, called Renew, and Vermont’s latest statistics on their state’s hemp industry’s growth made Biofuels Digest wonder what is it about hemp that is so hip? Will we be wearing our hemp shirt and eating our hemp snack bar while driving in our hemp car that runs on hemp biofuel, on our way to our office building built with hemp construction materials?

Apparently, Henry Ford created the first hemp car back in 1941 with a prototype made from soybean, hemp and other agricultural fibers as a way to integrate agriculture with the emerging auto industry and as a way to manage steel shortages during World War II. Ford didn’t get a chance to mass produce the car, however, with the oil industry pressuring government to lower gasoline prices and increase alcohol taxes which helped to quickly shut down Ford’s vision of his biofuel driven biobased car.

So why are we so enamored with the Renew car made by Dietzen? It seems to be one of the greenest cars out there today. Let’s compare hemp to trees: Trees take about 20 years to grow, but hemp only takes about 3 or 4 months and often can be replanted several times throughout the year. The fast-growing feedstock means it can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere quickly and help make it a carbon neutral option.

Another reason is the strength of hemp fibers. Hemp fibers have been used for many years in ropes and textiles because of their strength, making it a perfect material for something that needs to be strong yet lightweight, like a car.

As reported in Biofuels Digest earlier this month, the Nebraska governor has competition for the Republican primary election next year in a young woman who is putting the focus on strengthening agriculture with a platform that heavily supports hemp production for biofuels, aiming to making the state the national leader in hemp-based biofuel manufacturing. She wants to bring young people into farming as well as improve education and healthcare in addition to legalizing marijuana.

Biofuels Digest reported in May that in North Korea, the government is pushing farmers to grow hemp instead of soybeans, not to produce cooking oil as claimed but instead to produce biofuel to power drones. The country relies entirely on fuel imports from China and has recently been exposed to spiking prices in light of a possible fuel embargo as tensions between the two countries increase. Hemp has been grown for cooking fuel in the country since the 1980s.

As reported in Biofuels Digest in February, the South Australian government will back a plan to allow hemp growing for industrial uses including for biofuel. Victoria was the first state to allow hemp production in 1998, followed but all other states except for South Australia and the Northern Territory. Though the industry acknowledged that it will take some time to get it up and running, following in the footsteps of Canada and the U.S., that should the policy be implemented soon, then crop trials could already be started this year. READ MORE