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Envisioning a Sustainable Future for Appalachia with Industrial Hemp

By October 7, 2024October 9th, 2024No Comments

October 7th, 2024

Two hundred years ago, Kentucky was the epicenter of US hemp cultivation. 

There are a lot of surprising words in that sentence, but it’s true. The US has a long history with hemp that has largely been forgotten since the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 politicized and criminalized the cultivation, distribution, and possession of this crop.



If we look to the era before the hemp taboos set in, we see an essential crop which was used to make cloth, rope, paints, ink, varnishes, and lamp oil. Uncovering the history of hemp within the Appalachian region can help us envision how this plant could reinvigorate the region’s agriculture and manufacturing sectors in the future.



Six months ago, I was a member of the hemp-uninformed masses, but our members insisted hemp presented an immense opportunity for Appalachia, so I began my research, and I started with the basics.

First I got the whole hemp vs. marijuana distinction straight. Though hemp and marijuana (or simply cannabis, which is the preferred term nowadays) are both members of the cannabis family, they are not the same, and hemp and marijuana should not be thought of as interchangeable. The differences between the two plants, I discovered, comes down in part to the proportions of the THC and CBD chemical compounds within them. While marijuana/cannabis has high levels of THC (the compound responsible for its psychoactive effect) and lower levels of CBD (a compound with no known mind-altering psychoactive properties), the ratios of these two compounds is reversed in hemp, which has high CBD and lower THC levels. Back in the 1800s and into the 1900s when all cannabis was criminalized, no one knew that high THC content was what made some cannabis psychoactive, let alone how to detect it. Now, thanks to modern technology, the THC levels can be measured in any given plant and regulation is possible. In 2018, 81 years after the Tax Act of 1937, the 2018 Farm Bill lifted the federal ban, and legalized the cultivation of hemp with THC levels under .3% for those with a state license.  

The legalization of hemp opened up not one, but three main hemp markets based on different parts of the plant: fiber from the stalk, grain from the seeds, and floral from which CBD is extracted. And with this foundation set, I dove into each of these markets to explore the unique opportunities offered by each part of the plant. I discovered all the useful things that can be made with hemp today and how and where it can be grown. Through this research, I started to piece together the goal expressed by members at ReImagine Appalachia’s 2024 Strategy Summit: the idea of a future where hemp is sustainably grown and manufactured into products right here in Appalachia!



Of course, there are major challenges in the hemp industry today; a processing bottleneck, misconceptions about regulations, uncertainty and fluctuations in the market, and the generations of lost knowledge. All of these challenges pose hurdles to the resurgence of the US hemp industry. However, it seems the plant itself can offer us some solutions. 

I set out to read about hemp markets and economic potential, but I found the more I learned about hemp, the more it began to teach me about the larger systems of agriculture, production, consumption, and the ways in which we work with the land, which left me with a new vision of the way things could be, a way of manufacturing that looks like harmony, balance, and restoration instead of extraction and waste. Let me try to explain.



A biomaterial is a material that comes from a living source like a plant. Hemp, as it turns out, is an amazing biomaterial because it grows quickly and produces a lot of biomass, the stuff that can be made into products. One of the major benefits of biomaterials is their potential to increase environmental sustainability throughout a product’s lifecycle. At the start of production, biomaterials come from renewable sources instead of non-renewable resources like fossil fuels, and at the end of use, bio-based products have the potential to degrade back into the soil under the right conditions, which decreases the buildup of waste. These benefits are often envisioned as a cycle in which biomaterials are grown in the soil, processed and used as products, and then returned to the soil through composting. This cyclical process can be repeated with different products to form a circular economy in which resources are cycled through the soil in what is often considered an ideal system for a sustainable future.

Circular systems sound great, but in reality, many plants that become biomaterials today are still grown in unsustainable ways. For instance, crops may be grown with a lot of industrial fertilizers which can create nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that reduces the overall environmental benefit of the resulting biomaterial. In order to shift to a truly circular economy, we also have to reimagine our agricultural systems to prioritize the health of the soil and surrounding environment in order to reap the greatest benefits from biomaterials. And to me, it seems hemp is one plant that can help with this.

During my research, I was amazed to learn hemp is a crop that can also improve soil health. Hemp’s unique resistance to contaminated soils has even prompted some studies that found it could be grown on brownfield sites (the often highly-contaminated land where coal plants and other industrial activity have previously operated). It is possible that hemp could serve as a pioneer species for brownfield sites, the first plants that bring life back to barren soils by reintroducing valuable nutrients into the ground. Additionally, hemp can specifically sequester carbon, or put carbon back into the soil, which will then allow other plants to grow too.



Looking at sites that have faced high levels of contamination reminds us of how important it is to take care of our soil’s health, as restoring soil from the brink of annihilation can be challenging and costly. Though it may seem ironic, industrial agricultural lands can actually exhibit poor soil health if one crop is grown on the same piece of land year after year. This is because all plants absorb and deposit different nutrients in the soil. Hemp, for example, requires a lot of nitrogen to grow, so growing only hemp in the same spot every year will soon suck out all the nitrogen from the soil, and future crops will struggle to grow as well as it did before. 

One solution to this problem is crop rotation; by growing hemp in a field one year and another plant, say soy (which puts nitrogen back into the soil), the following year, the balance of nutrients in the soil can be maintained. Crop rotation is one principle of regenerative agriculture, a type of agriculture that actively works to improve soil health, thus improving the quality of crops and general environmental health in the long run. 



Regenerative agricultural practices like crop rotation could also prove highly beneficial for farmers looking to get into the hemp market from an economic standpoint. As a new market, hemp is still considered risky; the price and expected profits have fluctuated since 2018, and it is predicted that more time is needed for the market to stabilize. Aside from improving soil health, growing hemp in a rotation with other plants can also decrease the risk farmers assume by growing it because they will also have some more stable crops to fall back on if something unexpected does happen in the hemp market.



Another aspect of diversifying hemp crops can come from the part of the hemp plant farmers choose to harvest. After hemp’s legalization, there was a major increase of farmers growing hemp for CBD. Unfortunately this influx of supply flooded the market and the market price of CBD fell drastically, so many farmers did not see the returns they hoped and others failed to break even. Part of creating a stable hemp industry will involve building out the fiber and grain markets instead of only the CBD side.



Luckily, there are many opportunities for growth in the fiber and grain hemp markets.

Hemp grain has recently been approved for use in chicken feed, and it is full of protein for humans as well. 

Further, hemp fiber can be used across many different industries to make products for construction like hempcrete (a concrete alternative), insulation, and fabricated solid wood. These applications are not a far flung fantasy. In fact, these products are currently being produced around the Appalachian region!

Hemp fiber can also be used in plastic-alternative such as filler in bioplastics and fiber glass replacements for the automotive industry. As a bioplastic feedstock, hemp could help reduce single use plastic waste by forming compostable packaging. 

And of course, hemp could also be used in textiles and rope manufacturing as it was in Kentucky’s hemp heyday. 

At the “Grow it in Appalachia: Can the Ohio River Valley Become a Hub for Biomaterials Derived from Industrial Hemp?” listening session held on September 26, 2024, participants proposed the concept of a bio-based eco-industrial park in which co-located facilities could work together to make full use of all the byproducts of hemp and other bio-based materials created during processing and production. In addition to an eco-industrial park setup, a seller’s co-op model could also ease the squeeze felt by the current hemp processing bottleneck. It’s clear that more processing facilities are needed to support the growing biomaterial industry, and this type of joint collaboration could potentially increase production while reducing some of the risks associated with scaling up biomaterial markets.

As in the past, hemp has proven itself to be a versatile plant, which could once again become an essential crop. Though challenges remain for hemp-based production, at this point in my learning, I now see hemp as a part of a new era for Appalachian manufacturing. The question now is where will we actually go next with hemp in the 2020’s, the 2030s, and beyond? These answers still remain unwritten, and it is up to us to determine exactly how we will use this comeback plant to hopefully build strong local economies that work in harmony with the environment.

Join in on this conversation and continue to follow along with the other pieces within ReImagine Appalachia’s Make it in Appalachia series where we explore opportunities for Appalachia’s manufacturing sector that build on existing assets and strengths to transition into a sustainable and prosperous future for the region.