One plant, so many uses – but misconceptions are keeping it on the back foot. (Photo by Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Cannabis is associated with getting high, but it’s slowly forming part of the commercial and more mainstream market for medicinal use — CBD oil or capsules for stress, anxiety and pain, or CBD topical creams for muscular pain and skin issues.
Cannabidol or CBD is the part of the cannabis plant that doesn’t contain the psychoactive element, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC.
Hemp looks and smells the same, but it has a much lower THC composition. Hemp’s uses are widespread, but misunderstood. Ayanda Bam, the executive director at SilverLeaf Investments, said when referring to hemp’s uses, the five Fs come to mind: food, feed, fibre, fraction and fuel.
“The thing about hemp that’s really great is the kind of miraculous properties that it has, which is that it can be made into a whole variety of different products, and can be done at the same time, not by choosing whether or not you do one thing or another.”
Bam added that hemp is a “dual-purpose crop”, because it is a food and industrial crop and each component, from the leaf and stalk to the seed, has a use.
Hemp seeds can be milled into a powder that can be consumed in smoothies, cereals, soups or in drinks. They can be pressed into oils used in beverages, food and cosmetic products, or dehulled and consumed whole. Hemp seeds are rich in omega three, six and nine and have high protein content, with hemp powder and oil considered superfoods.
“You grow for food and for industry at the same time, because you’re just using different parts of the same plant. And this is why this [plant] is so extraordinary,” Bam said.
The hemp stalk contains substances used in textiles and wood products. It can be broken up into two parts: the fibres and the hurds. The hurds are hard and resemble wood chips.
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
Bam said hurds have “extraordinary uses” and have become a popular material for companies seeking alternative building materials. Hempcrete, for example, is made of lime water, hemp hurds, sand and other substances that are combined to make a construction material that’s strong, durable, fire-resistant and has good insulating properties.
Afrimat Hemp developed hempcrete building blocks that were used to build South Africa’s first “hemp hotel”. The 12-storey building in Cape Town was completed in June last year. Afrimat had not commented by the time of publication.
Hemp hurd is also used for animal bedding because of its insulative and hygroscopic nature that enables it to absorb moisture. Hurds are used as a wood composite for particle boards, laminate floors and floor boards.
The stalk’s fibre is processed and used for a variety of textiles that are made into clothing and shoes, and converted into composite materials used to make stadium seats, car or aviation parts and furniture.
Bam said there is high demand for composites that are natural and bio-based.
“Hemp has amazing properties, because it has very high specific strength and stiffness, so you can make it with a whole bunch of technical textiles or composite materials. The advantage is that these are not made from petroleum and are made in ways that are not harmful to people,” he said. “These products are going to find lots of applications and I’m talking composites across everything, whether it’s automotive, mobility, furniture, in designs, sporting and equipment, a whole range and these products are already being made.”
The inner parts of the fibre contain cellulose, and that holds a lot of potential when it comes to making paper, pulp and bioplastics.
“These are like industrial raw materials, for which there is a major demand. Chemical cellulose is in everything industrially. Even the stuff that glues your pills together is made out of cellulose,” Bam said.
Compared with other cellulosic plants such as cotton, hemp has much greater advantages because it doesn’t require pesticides, needs very little water and can even grow in arid areas and on degraded mine lands.
“It’s highly resilient, because it gives farmers the ability to maximise the value of their crop because you can market every single part: you can market the flowers, you can market the seeds, and you can market the stalk. So if, for example, there are disruptions in supply chains, or prices change, then you’re not left with just one thing to sell, you’ve diversified your economic streams,” he said.
Despite its advantages, South Africa is rather slow in its uptake of hemp farming and current regulations don’t make it easy for entrepreneurs or farmers to tap into the potential of the industry.
Hemp4Life founder and owner Ben Sussman recently appeared before the portfolio committee on agriculture, land reform and rural development to make a case for why the government needs to provide funding to farmers and entrepreneurs in this sector.
In his presentation on 27 February, Sussman told the committee that he had been running from pillar to post for two years to get funding and the current regulations are causing a bottleneck for farmers who are trying to get their products on the market.
It is still illegal to trade cannabis products in South Africa even though the government eased regulations on cannabis use in private spaces. Sussman said these regulations don’t have an impact on farmers who are growing their produce at high scale.
Obtaining a hemp permit is a long process that hinders entrepreneurs from entering the sector.
Sussman said hemp is a lucrative business and has potential to create many jobs.
“The cannabis and the hemp sector, but hemp mainly, is about job creation. If you look at the farm that I want to start — 50 hectares — you’re looking at 255 people that can be employed as a labour force.”
He said farmers are selling their harvests illegally, which is costing the South African Revenue Services billions of rands annually.
Bam said the gap is that the midstream — the step between the farmer and the manufacturer where the produce is sorted and processed — which requires machinery, has not been invested in.
Agri-economist Wandile Sihlobo said the relevant departments need to address regulatory issues to create an enabling environment for hemp farmers, which the private sector could co-fund with the government over time.
“From what we have seen in Canada and elsewhere, the hemp and cannabis industry can create a decent amount of jobs — particularly in the value chain of the processing and the usage of that — but South Africa remains a country where all of this infrastructure is not yet being built up because we have spent a lot of time with ambiguous regulations of this, and that’s the starting point.”
Said Bam: “What we would like is the same kind of opportunity to be given to us to be able to compete, to demonstrate what we can do right in terms of building commercially viable, profitable industries that employ large numbers of people that make a major contribution to the fiscus and ultimately are really, really, really important for the planet as well.”