17
Hemp in Australia
The Tasmanian Hemp Company
In the beginning
"What happens to those beautiful native forests in
Tasmania?" was the question posed in a Dutch living-room in 1988 when we were sharing
photographs and experiences. After explaining that a good proportion ended up as
woodchips for Japan which we then bought back as paper, a friend said that he had seen
something on Dutch TV about hemp for paper. I was brought up as a logger's daughter
in Tasmania, and began to feel very angry with myself for not having seen beyond trees for
paper.
So began our long search to track down this
curious phenomenon. Our lives are now totally dominated by hemp, despite the
warnings of a visiting Dutch Hemp Project leader not to let it do so.
Frits' niece helped us to locate the Dutch
university students researching hemp and our knowledge (and Frits' translation skills)
began to improve dramatically. Since then, we have visited the Dutch Hemp Project's
pulp researchers and the research farm and hosted two of the top researchers for a
whirlwind tour here in 1993.
The Tasmanian hemp story
Our achievements, apart from notoriety and positive
public education throughout Australia, include three annual licensed trials of low-THC
hemp supervised by the University of Tasmania. Frits harvested our 1994 trial
between a morning rehearsal and evening orchestral concert with the Tasmanian Symphony
Orchestra at the end of March. Our bureaucrats are nervous about the venture, but
have not yet put a stop to our endeavours, although they suggest that we should walk
before we run. In our opininon we have walked for too long: the world can't wait for
sensible solutions and our campaign has broadened from hemp for paper to hemp for just
about everything! Tasmanian farmers are most interested and the general public is
supportive. The only abusive phone call we ever had was from an elderly ex-employee
of one of Australia's pulp and paper manufacturers who claimed the Dutch were
"decadent"!
We set up the Tasmanian Hemp Company to help
our negotiations with government and business. We had already founded the Hemp for
Paper Consortium Incorporated, a small non-profit community association aiming to spread
information on the agricultural, industrial and environmental benefits of a hemp industry.
I began by submitting a plan to the Tasmanian Government in February 1991 for an
environmentally sound pulp mill based on hemp. This was in answer to a call for
expressons of interest in a Northern Tasmanian Pulp and Paper Mill. Frits'
translations of Dutch research as well as information gathering since 1988 provided the
basis for the submission.
The later establishment of the company was seen
as a practical example of promoting an industrial approach to hemp, a lead which the
consortium had hoped would be taken up by business people in Tasmania. This did not
happen, however, mainly through lack of government interest. Considering the
enormous obstacles placed in the way of the Hemp for Paper Consortium Incorporated when
lobbying for licences to grow hemp, it is little wonder that others have not wanted to
venture in.
Our company is the first importer of hemp
fabric to Tasmania. We are sewing this into clothes which we sell, to promote
products that could be produced from fibre grown here. Our biggest step will be
achieving a commercial licence to grow hemp here in Tasmania, for which we began
negotiations with the Tasmanian government officials recently.
It is interesting to note that our licence
applications now need to go through the Poppy Advisory Board of Tasmania. Tasmania
is the only Australian state which grows opium poppies. The poppy officials are
nervous of Tasmania's "clean" image being ruined by the media painting Tasmania
as the drug state of Australia, were we also to grow hemp. They insist that the low
THC content of our crop will not get in the way of a good story.
Our objectives
Long-term:
to develop hemp as a new crop and a sustainable industry which will help overcome
Australia's problems of soil degradation, pollution from agricultural chemicals, and
controversy over the use of native forests.
Short-term:
a) to provide organically grown hemp for
export to existing markets,
b) to set up separating machinery in
Tasmania as a first step to down-streaming, so that companies in Tasmania interested in
either the bast or core fibre can be supplied (e.g. to replace expensive, imported Kraft
pulp; to provide horse bedding),
c) to set up a small integrated
pulp/paper/textile/fluff mill in Tasmania.
Patsy & Frits Harmsen, Directors, Tasmanian Hemp Company, 430 Tinderbox Road, Tinderbox, 7054 Tasmania, Australia.
Tasmanian trials
During the 1992/93 growing
season, the University of Tasmania at Hobart, carried out field trials together with the
Tasmanian Hemp Company to investigate the production potential of fibre hemp in Tasmania.
The dioecious Hungarian cultivar Kompolti was
sown in a replicated field experiment at a rate of 50 kg/ha of seed. Sowing dates
were November 2, 16 and 30 and the experimental plots were harvested about 4 months later.
All crops emerged rapidly within a week of
sowing, and full ground cover was reached soon. Weeds were effectively smothered, so
no extra control methods were required. No significant pest or disease damage was
observed.
Irrespective of sowing time, plants started to
form inflorescences in the middle of January, which slowed down vegetative growth in
favour of reproductive development. Yields were 8.0, 8.4 and 6.1 ton/ha of stem dry
matter. Delta-9-THC content was measured in young leaves and female
inflorescences several times during the growing season, and it was always well below the
legal limit of 0.3 %.
If better adapted (i.e. later flowering)
varieties were used, yields of 10 to 12 ton/ha of stem dry matter could probably be
obtained in Tasmania.
Wolfgang Spielmeyer, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
Australia, Eucalypts and Hemp
In many countries around the
world, the impact of decades of neglect and thoughtless exploitation of the natural
environment is beginning to show. Australia is one such country. Despite much
rhetoric to the contrary, it remains that our country continues to suffer severe
degradation of the land, air and water due to thoughtless agricultural, forest and water
management policies.
Australia enjoyed unparalleled prosperity for
decades, based on the production of wool and wheat. The agricultural base has
broadened to include sugar cane, many fruits and cotton for domestic consumption and
export. The fragile soils of the Australian continent were not suitable for chemical
methods of farming, neither were they able to withstand the impact of imported domestic
cattle and sheep. Intensive herbicide and pesticide dependent cultivation methods
lead to high costs and decreasing returns.
One of the most profound problems has been that
of water management. Even though Australia has lush tropical rain forests in the
north-east, it is the driest continent on earth. Large scale damming of rivers and
sinking bores for irrigation have led to severe salination due to evaporation,
concentrating trace amounts of salt present in artesian water. This has been
compounded by clearing of tree cover. The most shameful aspect of policy here is to
allow the clear-felling of old growth forest to be chipped for Kraft paper.
The roots of Eucalyptus trees reach deep into
the subsoil to extract water. After clearing of trees, the water table rises,
bringing buried salt to the surface. In some parts of the inland river system
thousands of hectares have been permanently lost to a smothering layer of salt.
Excess phosphates from chemical fertilizers have entered the waterways. With flow
rates seriously reduced by irrigation, the protective flushing effect is lost and there
have been several outbreaks of toxic blue green algae.
Fortunately, there have been small
improvements. Forward thinking people have formed a "land care"
organization to plant trees and practice more sustainable farming. There is a
growing movement in Australia to introduce fibre hemp for the production of fabric and
paper, as well as developing a ligno-cellulosic ethanol fuel industry. Despite
recent developments in Europe and England, where fibre hemp cultivation under licence is
in progress, little cultivation is taking place. The legislative power to regulate
hemp is held by each state government. Modest progress has been made in Tasmania by
the "Hemp for Paper" Consortium. In New South Wales, the most populous
state with the most suitable agricultural land and climate, there has been a complete
refusal by the authorities to allow fibre hemp trials, despite the support of
Universities, agricultural firms and farmers. Economic projections have indicated
that hemp will be a highly profitable crop, provided we can convince the government to
follow the United Nations policy on fibre hemp and permit industrial scale trials.
Andrew Katelaris, Bio-logical Products, 3 Luton Place, St. Ives 2076, Sydney, Australia.