Hemp cultivation in New Zealand

By LAURA RICHARDS
Source: stuff.co.nz

Hemp Technologies' Gregory Flavall, based in Taranaki, would like to see the world's first hemp industrial village located in his home province.

Originally from Stratford, Flavall has brought his knowledge and expertise of the hemp industry to Taranaki from the United States and the United Kingdom where he learned first-hand about processing hemp for a variety of uses.

With the tag line of ''Food, Fuel, Shelter, Jobs – Hemp is Now!,'' Flavall said Hemp Technologies would like to help farmers in Taranaki realise better income and employ people to process hemp.

''Maize growers are looking for alternatives because maize beats the crap out of the earth while hemp does not. Hemp is a replenishing plant for the earth, like lucerne or alfalfa as we call it. It re-nitrogenises the soil after harvest, and it's good at aerating soil, and is a break crop for other crops.''

During the 2012-2013 growing season in Taranaki, there were a few farmers in Taranaki who grew 4.45 hectares of hemp and he would like to see more farmers growing hemp in the 2013-2014 season.

''Last year, we grew 11 acres (4.45ha) and this year we will grow 100 acres (40.46ha) from the seed we grew last year.''

Flavall would like to just as quickly leap forward to growing almost 81ha ntsG hectares nte to substantiate the building of a processing facility.

''I am pre-emptive,'' he said. ''We're going to be releasing shortly the first development of its kind in the world — the Taranaki Hemp Industrial Village.

''It's a self-sustaining and self-generating industrial village for everything relating to hemp — everything will be results and sales driven. It will run on the co-operative business model.''

The plan would see a facility, costing $500,000 to build, that could produce pressed oil, protein and flour. It would produce fibre insulation, along with material for animal bedding, garden mulch and fibre for paper making.

''Hemp is the only plant in the world that will feed, provide fuel, house and shelter. We will create something close to 1000 new jobs here,'' Mr Flavall said.

''My plan is to grow this from 100 acres (40.46ha) to 250 acres (101ha) as 250 acres will then justify two shifts working in the processing facility,'' he said.

A hemp straw decorticator will do 2.5 tonnes per hour and it would be in the facility that the raw straw is processed into fibre, bio-mass and building material.

While in the beginning there will not be textile fibre produced, Flavall said the company would need to breed ''proper'' seeds over the next few years.

''No country is producing anything near the textile quality that China can. But they are fast running out of fibre and they are trying to get some processing off the ground in Canada where they are growing 65,000 acres (26,304ha) of hemp this year because they want the raw fibre to process into textiles and sell to the United States.

''They are screaming out for it, and if we can come anywhere's close to that then we will have a good export market,'' he said.

Over the past 18 months, Mr Flavall said he had witnessed the willingness of people to help with not only the growing of hemp on their properties, like John Earney of Avonstour Organic Rare Breeds Farm, but also those in other businesses — from seed cleaners to engineers.

Mr Earney told Fairfax Media, ''Greg is the driving force behind this''.

''I grew one acre of hemp last year and we're putting the whole of the seeds produced into 15 acres this year,'' Mr Earney said.

The plants during last summer's growing season ntsG and no rain during the drought nte reached nearly eight feet (2.44m) tall, Mr Earney said.

The license that he has applied for and obtained will cover his entire farm and Earney has already planned where he will be planting and growing hemp on his farm this year.

He liked that the plants are not heavy on the earth and replenish the soil. Flavall said it had only been five years since he was introduced to hemp through a friend who wrote a thesis on the plant. He got excited after reading the thesis and decided to find out as much about hemp as he could.

''Two weeks later I was on a plane to England and hooked up with a company over there that was building with hemp.''

From there, he went back to the United States and then he travelled back to Taranaki two years ago, ''because in New Zealand it is legal to grow hemp''.

- © Fairfax NZ News

Houses of Hemp in America

This article, titled "House of hemp? Pushing cannabis as a

construction material" by Jeffrey Head appeared last year in

 latimesblogs.latimes.com

 

Woody Harrelson championed the environmental benefits of hemp. Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein incorporated it into their collections. Now a company promoting hemp as the eco-building material of the moment said it wants to build California's first hemp house.

Hemp Technologies said it wants to use hemp-based materials to construct a 500-square-foot structure at the ruins of Knapp's Castle near Santa Barbara. The castle, completed in 1920, was built for Union Carbide founder George Owen Knapp but destroyed by wildfire in 1940. Since then, all that has remained on the property are the sandstone blocks outlining the once-grand estate.

The principal material for the project is Hempcrete, made of the woody internal stem of the Cannabis sativa plant, which is processed into chips and mixed with a lime-based binder. That concoction is then sprayed on, poured into slabs or formed into blocks like concrete to create the shell of a building. Interior surfaces are plastered, and exterior surfaces are stuccoed.

“The walls are to be framed and earthquake-braced internally with lumber,” said Greg Flavall, Hemp Technologies' co-founder, who added that “hemp is very close in cellulosic value to wood.” The material helps to keep structures warm in winter and cool in summer, he said.

Other advantages, advocates have said, beyond the fact that the plant can be grown with little water and few pesticides: Hemp is resistant to fire damage and termites. Although air does not pass through the walls, moisture naturally dries out, and mold or dry rot are not problems. David Madera, who co-founded Asheville, N.C.-based Hemp Technologies with Flavall, credited the walls' lime content, which needs carbon dioxide to harden.

The lime will pull carbon dioxide from the environment after the home is built “because the lime wants to go back to being a rock,” Madera said. “That means the wall is going to get harder and harder over time.”

Flavall said the Knapp's Castle structure “will lock in about 12 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have escaped into the atmosphere when the hemp cellulose decays in the field.”

That is, if the structure is completed. A Santa Barbara County official said a project has been submitted for planning approval but still needs to pass most stages of the permitting process. A house, outbuilding or any other structure would have to be deemed appropriate for the site, and any unconventional materials would have to be declared safe.

Madera, who declined to disclose the identity of his firm's California client, said Hemp Technologies has consulted on three Hempcrete houses in North Carolina, where the material was treated as an alternative form of insulation.

Although hemp contains only trace elements of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, hemp is still derived from a cannabis plant. State and federal laws do not make a distinction between varieties of cannabis used for clothing or building materials and varieties used for more psychoactive purposes, so producing hemp is prohibited. Importing hemp, however, is legal, and various companies are pushing forward with hemp building products too.

Hemp Traders in L.A. distributes Hemp Board, a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) made from the same woody material that goes into Hempcrete. Hemp Board President Lawrence Serbin said his MDF is a sustainable alternative for doors, cabinets and shelves.

Spanish architect Monika Brümmer has developedCannabric and Cannapanel, which, as the names suggest, are cannabis-based building blocks and wall panels. She has completed several residential projects in her country, where the products met construction standards.

-- Jeffrey Head

One of three Hempcrete houses in North Carolina designed by Push Design with Hemp Technologies providing hemp materials and serving as consultants.

Photos, from top: Another Hempcrete house in North Carolina. Credit: Push Design. The site of Knapp's Castle in Santa Barbara County. Credit: Pfly / Wikipedia Commons