From the Ground Up: The Sustainability of Hemp from Seed to Solution

Hemp has a long history alongside humans, but what does its future look like? The hemp plant, its seeds, and its oil have been documented throughout ancient and modern history for myriad uses, including food, religious purposes, as well as materials for paper, cloth, and building (1). In 2024, the US hemp market was estimated to be valued at $11.03 billion and projected to reach $30.24 billion by 2029, supported by increased global demand for eco-friendly products, favorable regulations, and opportunities for innovation (2). One significant feature of hemp is its sustainability throughout its lifecycle, including its ability to sequester carbon, its biodegradability, and its resource-efficiency. The beneficial relationship humans have with hemp is poised to continue to grow, so long as it can overcome various challenges to its widespread adoption.

Life Cycle of Hemp, from Plant to Product

Lawrence Serbin, founder of Hemp Traders, explains that there are two different types of hemp fiber: bast, which is the outer bark, used for making twine, yarn, rope, textiles, and paper; and hurd, which is the inner stalk, similar to balsa wood. Hemp grown for fiber is planted densely, Serbin says, using anywhere from 75 to 130 pounds of seed per acre. Hemp seeds are far less expensive than cannabis seeds, he notes, and the varieties are tall and thin with few branches and low concentrations of cannabinoids.

Harvesting is done in August or September in the US, Serbin says, and occasionally as early as July in Europe, though it is done before the plant begins flowering. Traditionally, the plants are harvested and laid in the field to ret so the bark separates from the core, which helps the decortication process. Machinery separates the bast and hurd for post-processing. The next steps depend on the desired end product. Textiles would involve removing lignans and combing the fibers to specific lengths, for example. Different processes would need to be done to turn the hemp into paper, buildings materials, animal bedding, and plastic composites, Serbin explains.

The properties of hemp make it a better option for certain products including rolling papers, tea bags, and coffee filters, Serbin states. As a clothing material, hemp is comparable in some respects to cotton, in terms of the fiber it produces. Hemp is not going to replace cotton, Serbin explains, but blending it with cotton brings the best of both worlds. With hemp comes breathability, strength, and durability, and with cotton is the stretchiness, dye-ability, and softness.

Hemp Cultivation

Hemp has unique cultivation requirements, requiring less water than cotton, for example (1). Serbin has conducted a real-world experiment comparing the cultivation of a field of hemp and pima cotton in California’s Central Valley. The two fields were grown next to each other and planted at similar times. “Since we use the drip irrigation system, we were able to measure the flow of water that we were putting into it,” he explains. “I had always heard that hemp used less water than cotton, but there are some exaggerations made on hemp, and I wasn't sure if that was really true or not. But we measured it, and we found that hemp used 20% less water than cotton, and then subsequently, we found that we could use even less water and it would still grow the same. So, I'm going to say hemp uses about 20 to 35% less water than cotton.”

Additionally, hemp produces more fiber per acre compared to flax and particularly cotton—approximately 600 times more fiber per acre, Serbin states. “If you can grow corn, you can pretty much grow hemp,” he adds. Though still susceptible to fungus and molds, hemp appears pest-resilient, Serbin adds, and he has seen it overshadow weeds growing alongside the hemp. “We were told that this was a problem for cotton, that if you did not take care of the weed, it could outcompete the cotton plants, and then they were having to spray an herbicide on it,” he explained. “However, the hemp got an early start, grows a lot quicker, fans out completely shading the ground, and all the weeds were completely knocked out.”

The crop itself is versatile and benefits the soil as well, Steve Allin, founding director of the International Hemp Building Association (IHBA), explains. “It’s the sort of crop that can be used to improve the soil and adds to a more sustainable, or even organic system of agriculture by providing a rotation crop to lower the use of herbicides and to maintain some of the mineral balance in the soil, because it does return quite a bit of its uptake in leaf matter and waste left behind in the crop. So, it's very good for tillage farming and for the health of the soil.”

Hemp as a Building Material

One of the advantages of hemp cultivation is that its fast growth contributes to its ability to sequester carbon. A 2022 review of hemp used in concrete describes hemp concrete (hemp hurd, water, and lime), or “hempcrete,” as “carbon-negative,” absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere than it gives off during production (3). “It is indeed one of the few materials that can continue to absorb carbon after being employed in construction, storing more carbon in the atmosphere over the building's lifetime than was emitted during construction...Hemp concrete is also recyclable at the end of the building's lifespan,” the review explains. It also notes that hemp can be harvested in 60 days (3).

In 2024, the International Residential Code included hempcrete, defining it as a “nonstructural, biocomposite insulation infill material,” noting the benefits of hemp-lime include “high thermal performance, low embodied carbon emissions in production, high carbon sequestration in service, healthy living environments and high fire resistance.” (4)

Around the world, Allin adds, buildings have been constructed using hempcrete, from temporary shelters in Nepal to luxury homes in Canada, as well as larger scale industrial buildings, government buildings, and storage buildings. In 2021, he published the book, “Hemp Buildings: 50 International Case Studies,” a collection of the possibilities of hemp architecture in multiple environments (5). One of the main forms of hemp buildings is modular housing, Allin explains. “Basically, there are a few forms of it,” he states. “There are forms where you have modular framework and then you apply the infill on site, either on the floor or lifting up into position or standing up, spraying into an application like that, or they are all made in a factory.”

Hemp stalk has noteworthy advantages as a building insulation as well, Allin explains, since it doesn’t require excessive chemicals in the production. “You're insulating or encasing or building with material that has these abilities to provide great levels of comfort while working at very low energy consumption rates, and they’re nontoxic and nonflammable.” It is also moth-proof and does not degrade to a great degree, he adds.

A study published in 2024 notes some of the benefits of hemp, but also a challenge to its widespread use: “Hemp’s porous structure contributes to improved thermal insulation, soundproofing, and biological resistance, making it suitable for in-fill materials, plastering, and insulation applications. However, its low compressive and flexural strength remains challenging, limiting mainstream use.” (6)

Hemp as a building material still has negative associations with “natural building,” making them harder to market and less popular than conventional materials, Allin explains. Large-scale investment in hempcrete will take time, he adds, as it will be decades from now before we can demonstrate the time-tested durability of hemp buildings.

Allin also points out that the benefits of hempcrete buildings, such as the lower energy costs over time, for example, are not measured in ways that the modern construction industry understands. “Those are things that aren't factored in, so the disadvantage is that we have to address that, and that is quite an uphill struggle, but it's really a question of gathering enough evidence to be able to present to the people that regulate building codes in Europe, so they have to adjust those kind of measurements.”

“Nothing good is cheap,” Allin states about hemp building materials. “But with that said, the cost of hemp has hardly gone up at all in the 20 years that I've been building with hemp.”

Hemp and Consumers

Consumer knowledge of hemp products seems to have grown in recent years, especially as interest in eco-friendly products has risen. Some major companies have also been incorporating hemp and explaining its benefits for consumers and the planet. In 2020, Levi Strauss and Company released a sustainability report, highlighting how hemp uses less water, chemicals, pesticides, and land to cultivate (7). “One of our key fiber innovations, cottonized hemp, is much less water-intensive than conventional cotton production and has the added benefit of relying on rainwater instead of irrigated water that could be used for other productive purposes,” the report states. Cottonized hemp is coarse, and does require a softening process that results in a texture similar to cotton, it adds.

Additionally, outdoor clothing company Patagonia also features hemp in its clothing line. “Hemp is durable, comfortable and breathable, and its cultivation has a low impact on the environment,” it states. “It needs little to no irrigation and uses less fertilizer than other crops (and does not require synthetic fertilizer). Hemp’s deep center taproot replenishes vital nutrients in the soil and prevents erosion.” According to a dedicated hemp information page on its website, the company began a workwear hemp denim line in 2021 (8).

This is significant progress, because when Serbin was first starting hemp education, the crop was stigmatized. “Early on in the 90s, when I was working on this, we were always getting the joke, ‘hey, can I smoke your fabric?’ That was a big joke all the time. People say, ‘Oh, you're just working on hemp because you want to legalize marijuana.’” Nowadays, though, the average consumer is probably familiar with hemp products such as hemp paper, clothing, and hemp seed oil, he says.

As Serbin suggests, consumer ignorance is not the main barrier to widespread adoption of hemp, but rather the economics. “Hemp was outlawed for 80 – 85 years in America. It missed the entire dawn of modern agriculture and modern technology in order to be able to utilize it and make it cheaper.” Consumers are still focused more on the price of an item than the materials it is made out of, he explains, and there isn’t yet a large enough market for hemp to offer competitive prices. More technology in hemp production to reduce the labor intensiveness of hemp production could allow the price of hemp to become comparable to cotton or flax, for example.

Challenges and Regulations

Hemp as a crop and product has a lot to catch up on to become used on a large scale. It was not until the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (9) that the production of hemp was authorized and hemp seeds were removed from the list of Controlled Substances. Still, hemp is not treated the same as other crops, and the farmers have unique procedures to follow. “If you want to grow it, you have to get a background check,” Serbin explains. “You're treated like you're a criminal, you still have to get a registration or a license, depending on which state you live in, and that's extra money. Then once you grow it, you're required to have somebody from the government come to your field and test it and make sure that it's not marijuana.”

The development of universal hempcrete standards has been called for in order to guarantee quality and regulatory compliance as well as promote wider usage in construction (6). Allin explains that materials in Europe are measured by how they perform, whereas in America, materials are measured by how they are installed. The International Hemp Building Association is developing a guide to be used for regulations and measuring the materials. “What we're trying to do is describe a best practice guide, so there are guidelines internationally that can then be adapted or adopted by the local institutions, and then to also develop standardized training modules that, again, can be authenticated by people and associations around the world and can be used by our members to train people.”

Serbin argues that the growth of hemp as a building material requires fewer restrictions. “All we need is the government off our back, allow the farmers to do what we do, and we're going to see the participation in the innovation that's going to allow hemp to very soon be cheaper than cotton.”

Technology

One of the modern agricultural technologies Serbin has employed with his hemp crops is a drip irrigation system with added nitrogen as a fertilizer, resulting in 50% higher yield.

In 2023, he began a more substantial project in order to innovate the harvesting and decortication of hemp. After seeing the capabilities of a machine in China removing fiber from jute, Serbin tested the machine in his own hemp fields, and saw favorable results. The process of harvesting the hemp and feeding it into the machine by hand was still labor intensive, so he worked with farm equipment manufacturers in Pennsylvania to create a sort of “Frankenstein machine” that successfully harvests and decorticates simultaneously while also collecting the hurd in a separate bin.

Advancements in hemp technology haven’t been developed earlier because there was little market for it due to prohibition, Serbin explains, predicting that his new machine will have a large impact in that area. “The amount of money the farmer will earn from growing hemp will double or triple, and the cost of the fiber will be lowered by half to two-thirds,” Serbin explains. “This machine will be to hemp what the cotton gin was to cotton.”

Allin has also recently started a company developing small-scale decortication units that enable processing of the hemp fiber to create unique composite materials that are UV-resistant and water-resistant.

Hemp’s Future in the Global Market

If hemp is to have a large national or international impact, several factors will need to come into play. Markets for hemp will need to be created close to the cultivation of the materials, Allin explains, though one challenge is that it takes several years for farmers to become hemp farmers. “We’re really looking at developing all the things at once, because that's the only way: to develop the markets and the products as quickly as you can, as you produce the things,” he states. “And now there's lots of products out there that need to be made more locally, and the more local they are, the more likely they are to be used on retrofit projects, even without any kind of regulation or grant funding or whatever else.”

Encouraging younger generations to become interested in developing this sustainable building industry is important, Allin adds, especially for providing them hope in the face of climate change.

Collaboration and continued efforts for innovation will also be crucial. Allin mentioned the upcoming International Hemp Building Symposium in Minnesota at the Lower Sioux Indian Community, highlighting the academic presentations, research and product development, demonstrations of fiber processing and spray technology (10). Building with hempcrete has occurred in the Lower Sioux Indian Community since 2016 (11).

“Fiber forms the invisible part of many of the things in our modern world,” Serbin states. “So, the idea is, can we make the hemp more competitive?” He explains that hemp fiber must be competitively priced with fibers that come from petroleum, such as polyester fiber, nylon, rayon, and other synthetic fibers, which do not biodegrade well. Hemp as an environmentally friendly and cheaper alternative would encourage more demand, supply, and improvement in technology. The space for opportunity will be huge, Serbin predicts.

References

1. Yano, H.; Fu, W. Hemp: A Sustainable Plant with High Industrial Value in Food Processing. Foods 2023, 12(3), 651. DOI: 10.3390/foods12030651
2. Markets and Markets. Industrial Hemp Market worth $30.24 billion by 2029 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/industrial-hemp.asp
3. Barbhuiya, S.; Das, BB. A comprehensive review on the use of hemp in concrete, Construction and Building Materials, 2022, 341, DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2022.127857.
4. International Code Council Digital Codes. Appendix BL Hemp-Lime (Hempcrete) Construction https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IRC2024P2/appendix-bl-hemp-lime-hempcrete-construction
5. Allin, S. Hemp Buildings: 50 International Case Studies https://seedpress.ie/product/hemp-buildings-50-international-case-studies/
6. Ansari, H.; Tabish, M.; Zaheer, MM. A comprehensive review on the properties of hemp incorporated concrete: An approach to low carbon footprint construction, Next Sustainability, 2025, 5, DOI: 10.1016/j.nxsust.2024.100075.
7. Levi Strauss & Co. 2020 Sustainability Report https://www.levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/LSCo.-2020-Sustainability-Report.pdf
8. Patagonia. Hemp https://www.patagonia.com/our-footprint/hemp.html
9. US Department of Agriculture. Hemp https://www.usda.gov/farming-and-ranching/plants-and-crops/plant-breeding/hemp
10. International Hemp Building Association. 13th International Hemp Building Symposium https://internationalhempbuilding.org/events/
11. McEvoy, E. Hemp Increasingly Becoming a Building Material in the US. Cannabis Science and Technology. April 16, 2024. https://www.cannabissciencetech.com/view/hemp-increasingly-becoming-a-building-material-in-the-us (accessed 2025-08-19)

How to Cite This Article

McEvoy, E. From the Ground Up: The Sustainability of Hemp from Seed to Solution, Cannabis Science and Technology, 8(4), 20-23