Recent legislative changes in Victoria have removed such a threat from the state’s industrial hemp growers.
The industry is now set to skyrocket.
Industrial hemp has negligible levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the compound which causes the recreational ‘high’.
However, waterlogging and water stress can cause THC levels to rise.
Previously, if THC reached 0.3 per cent, a crop would be destroyed.
That level has now been raised to one per cent, giving farmers more of a buffer against mother nature.
And despite the cap on THC being designed to avert mass production for all the wrong reasons, the genetic line of Cannabis sativa used recreationally — marijuana — has THC levels of up to 30 per cent.
Industrial hemp is distinctively different, and it is the clever innovation of ‘hempcrete’ bricks that gets it into the press, with hemp house production increasing 23-fold in the seven years to 2022.
Echuca grower David Brian says one per cent THC will not be reached; crops are safe.
“It was a major risk prior to 18 months ago because the threshold then was only 0.3 per cent,” he said.
“But it is not a risk now.”
The myths of a history of conspiracies to ban cannabis in both the US and Australia may deflate the tut-tutting growers, but it needs scrutiny.
A reliable CSIRO source once told me the Federal Government was pressured by a competing cotton industry in the 1960s to outlaw hemp.
I can’t find a scrap of evidence for this and wonder why the cotton industry would find need: cotton is lighter, warmer and easier to dye than hemp, which loves a good wrinkling.
Researcher Dr John Jiggens’ claimed that the penal colony of NSW was a cover story for Britain replacing the hemp industry it lost along with the American colonies.
In the US, Harry J. Anslinger was the key advocate for banning hemp there, by banning cannabis in toto.
Anslinger was the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and built his case on the now debatable evidence of widespread psychosis, abuse by Latino migrants and even ‘Satanic’ jazz music.
Interestingly, before his appointment, Anslinger described concerns over cannabis use as ‘absurd fallacy’, and his about-face has been attributed to pressure from competing industries.
Plausible claims include newspaper owner W.R. Hearst, who grew trees to produce his own paper, and William DuPont, then perfecting the production of nylon, being threatened by hemp.
They therefore pressured the government for a hefty tax.
US researcher Dr David Musto snuffs this idea out, based on his own thorough research and more so that he met Anslinger towards the end of his life, who said it never happened.
“I think (the conspiracies) come from people who can't believe that you could actually ... be against marijuana just because it's marijuana,” he told PBS in 1998.
The next hurdle in Australia’s hemp house construction industry is to overcome the stigma attached to the plant, which, according to Victorian hemp house builder Rose Rule, has more to do with hippydom and highs.
Ms Rule works with the best architects and tradesmen to build houses she describes as ‘sharp’.
“There’s definitely a lot of myth from people who think it’s all hippy and eco-warriors from the city, when in fact it’s a lot more sophisticated,” she told Country News.
“And it’s been the hardest part to market the rebranding of what are aesthetically beautifully homes.”
Time will tell if people can delineate between both plant types, see the fibre as a good carbon lock-up into paper, textiles and bricks, and appreciate a farming revolution that won’t corrupt the kids.
Andy Wilson writes for Country News. He is a pre-peer review science editor in a range of fields and has a PhD in ecology from the University of Queensland.
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