NORTHERN primary producers are lining up to add industrial hemp – with its fast-growing and lucrative markets as fibre, food and building material – to summer cropping schedules, as new State Government legislation allows commercial cultivation.
Gross margins could be as much as $600 a hectare (dryland) or $1700/ha (irrigated), with minimal water, herbicide or pesticide needs.
A lack of seeds is all that’s stopping mass plantings this year, but plans are underway for several hundred hectares of seed crops in the North West.
Lisomre-based agricultural scientist and environmental engineer, Dr Keith Bolton, has grown trial industrial hemp crops for research on the North Coast since 2000 and said the plant could play a huge role in the future provision of sustainable food and fibre.
Dr Bolton, who works with Ecotechnology Australia, which constructs sewage treatment systems using wetland technology, first grew hemp as a “mop-crop” to take effluent irrigation.
Extract from The Land, Thursday, May 22.