Hemp can be used to create, paper, clothing, rope, and it grows a lot faster than trees.
Hemp wouldn’t take up as much land to grow, and it would help stop mass deforestation.
On that note, why did we ever stop using Hemp to make these products when we used to use it in the past?
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Hemp got caught up in the war on drugs back in the 70s by obvious association (even if you can’t get high off it). That’s when it’s use declined.
Lumber industry was/is a massive power all over the world and used racism to stay in power. Oversimplified? Maybe. But true.
We have to use farm land for hemp. It can grow on some land that is not as suitable for other crops, but it’s still farmland.
Then it is using water. We don’t water forestry trees except at the very beginning (and only if those are replanted or transplanted for trees)
And lastly until the last few years were still using centuries old methods for harvesting the fiber from the stalks. So that part only became economically viable on large scales recently.
We will be seeing more hemp. It’s just behind the times thanks to decades of prohibition even of non-thc varieties.
It’s still commonly used in many products, and there’s even a company that is using hemp to make synthetic wood products.
The biggest challenge is regulation and the stigma against the plant. Legally in the USA, the difference between hemp and marijuana is if the plant contains less than or greater than 0.3% THC, so there is still a very critical eye towards hemp farmers.
We need hemp just to make use of the lumber. Wink wink. Ask any framer.
Industrial hemp (for ropes) was too similar to Medicinal hemp for average people to discern between them when trying to rile up support to ban Medicinal hemp products. no data, but also seems to be a bit of oil-industry (Rockefeller) desire to control medicine to push oil-based chemical medicines…. the oil in “snake oil salesmen”.
Hemp for lumber requires significant adhesives which are less environmentally friendly than wood lumber.
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You’ve been sold a false bill of goods if you think that the wood used for paper, clothing, rope and other commercial uses comes from deforestation.
Most of the lumber and wood used for commercial goods (90% or more) is sourced from sustainably grown lumber. Companies invest in land, plant trees on it, allow the trees to grow, and then harvest the trees at a later date.
The reason that we use wood instead of hemp for those products is that it’s a superior material that’s cheaper and more sustainable to make. In many cases, wood waste is used to make those other items rather than growing the wood specifically for those applications. Plywood, for example, is mostly made from sawdust and wood shavings created when milling lumber down to construction and woodworking sizes.
Deforestation is largely driven by people who want to use that land for other purposes. Plantations, factories, urban development, or other such uses. Companies that are harvesting trees for the sake of harvesting trees would rather regrow the trees and harvest them again.
‘Yeah, I know that guy. He’s that farmer that grows really crappy weed.’
The first patent in the USA was a more efficient way to make potash from trees for fertilizer and gunpowder. Lumber is probably the least profitable byproduct from trees. You can just burn trees and make money, it doesn’t get any easier than that.
Hemp requires more labor to be profitable. It’s always about money, not versatility.