Hemp Cultivation in Tasmania
Hemp Cultivation in Tasmania
The situation in Tasmania, Australia:
During the 1992/93 growing season, the University of Tasmania at Hobart, carried out field trials together with the Tasmanian Hemp Company to investigate the production potential of fiber hemp in Tasmania.
The dioecious Hungarian cultivar Kompolti was sown in a replicated field experiment at a rate of 50 kg/ha of seed. Sowing dates were November 2, 16 and 30 and the experimental plots were harvested about 4 months later.
All crops emerged rapidly within a week of sowing, and full ground cover was reached soon. Weeds were effectively smothered, so no extra control methods were required. No significant pest or disease damage was observed.
Irrespective of sowing time, plants started to form inflorescences in the middle of January, which slowed down vegetative growth in favor of reproductive development. Yields were 8.0, 8.4 and 6.1 ton/ha of stem dry matter. Delta-9-THC content was measured in young leaves and female inflorescences several times during the growing season, and it was always well below the legal limit of 0.3 %.
If better adapted (i.e. later flowering) varieties were used, yields of 10 to 12 ton/ha of stem dry matter could probably be obtained in Tasmania.
Wolfgang Spielmeyer, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
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David P. Watson, Chairman
David W. Pate, Secretary
Robert C. Clarke, Projects Manager
Hayo van der Werf, Editor in Chief
Irene Bijl Treasurer
With contributions from various other Hemp experts around the World.
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In the beginning
“What happens to those beautiful native forests in Tasmania?” was the question posed in a Dutch living-room in 1988 when we were sharing photographs and experiences. After explaining that a good proportion ended up as woodchips for Japan which we then bought back as paper, a friend said that he had seen something on Dutch TV about hemp for paper. I was brought up as a logger's daughter in Tasmania, and began to feel very angry with myself for not having seen beyond trees for paper.So began our long search to track down this curious phenomenon. Our lives are now totally dominated by hemp, despite the warnings of a visiting Dutch Hemp Project leader not to let it do so.
Frits’ niece helped us to locate the Dutch university students researching hemp and our knowledge (and Frits' translation skills) began to improve dramatically. Since then, we have visited the Dutch Hemp Project's pulp researchers and the research farm and hosted two of the top researchers for a whirlwind tour here in 1993.
The Tasmanian hemp story
Our achievements, apart from notoriety and positive public education throughout Australia, include three annual licensed trials of low-THC hemp supervised by the University of Tasmania. Frits harvested our 1994 trial between a morning rehearsal and evening orchestral concert with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at the end of March. Our bureaucrats are nervous about the venture, but have not yet put a stop to our endeavors, although they suggest that we should walk before we run. In our opinion we have walked for too long: the world can't wait for sensible solutions and our campaign has broadened from hemp for paper to hemp for just about everything! Tasmanian farmers are most interested and the general public is supportive. The only abusive phone call we ever had was from an elderly ex-employee of one of Australia's pulp and paper manufacturers who claimed the Dutch were "decadent"!We set up the Tasmanian Hemp Company to help our negotiations with government and business. We had already founded the Hemp for Paper Consortium Incorporated, a small non-profit community association aiming to spread information on the agricultural, industrial and environmental benefits of a hemp industry. I began by submitting a plan to the Tasmanian Government in February 1991 for an environmentally sound pulp mill based on hemp. This was in answer to a call for expressions of interest in a Northern Tasmanian Pulp and Paper Mill. Frits' translations of Dutch research as well as information gathering since 1988 provided the basis for the submission.
The later establishment of the company was seen as a practical example of promoting an industrial approach to hemp, a lead which the consortium had hoped would be taken up by business people in Tasmania. This did not happen, however, mainly through lack of government interest. Considering the enormous obstacles placed in the way of the Hemp for Paper Consortium Incorporated when lobbying for licenses to grow hemp, it is little wonder that others have not wanted to venture in.
Our company is the first importer of hemp fabric to Tasmania. We are sewing this into clothes which we sell, to promote products that could be produced from fiber grown here. Our biggest step will be achieving a commercial license to grow hemp here in Tasmania, for which we began negotiations with the Tasmanian government officials recently.
It is interesting to note that our license applications now need to go through the Poppy Advisory Board of Tasmania. Tasmania is the only Australian state which grows opium poppies. The poppy officials are nervous of Tasmania’s “clean” image being ruined by the media painting Tasmania as the drug state of Australia, were we also to grow hemp. They insist that the low THC content of our crop will not get in the way of a good story.
Our objectives
Long-term: to develop hemp as a new crop and a sustainable industry which will help overcome Australia's problems of soil degradation, pollution from agricultural chemicals, and controversy over the use of native forests.Short-term:
a) to provide organically grown hemp for export to existing markets,b) to set up separating machinery in Tasmania as a first step to down-streaming, so that companies in Tasmania interested in either the bast or core fiber can be supplied (e.g. to replace expensive, imported Kraft pulp; to provide horse bedding),
c) to set up a small integrated pulp/paper/textile/fluff mill in Tasmania.
Patsy & Frits Harmsen, Directors, Tasmanian Hemp Company, 430 Tinderbox Road, Tinderbox, 7054 Tasmania, Australia.
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*Industrial-Hemp has no psychoactive properties following definition of the European Economic Community (EEC); THC content is less than 0.3%. In general, low THC-seed varieties without psychoactive properties are those that have a THC content of less than 1%. (See also No-THC Hemp-seed.) THC= Delta-9 TetraHydroCannabinol.
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Tasmanian Trials
