A lot of big claims have been made for hemp over the years – for fabric, for medicine, or its nutritional properties. I will let you investigate those for yourself later, and just write for now about hemp as a climate solution.
How so?
Hemp grows very fast. It’s one of the fastest growing plants, reaching maturity in a matter of months and hoovering a large amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere to build out that growth. It absorbs twice as much carbon as a woodland of the same size, and in some parts of the world hemp farmers can get two crops a year. You can explore some more detailed calculations here, but in the right circumstances, hemp will be a carbon negative crop, absorbing more carbon than it takes to farm it.
Once it’s in the plant, that carbon can be locked safely away by turning the hemp into something useful. That’s where hemp’s versatility comes into play, as the fibres can be made into all kinds of useful things, from fabric, to plastic, to paper, food, or
— source earthbound.report | Jeremy Williams | Jul 11, 2023