Imagine a world in which hemp is entirely legal. What is more, it is the most valuable and widely grown crop. It is depicted on coats of arms, hemp growers are awarded honors, and superpowers compete over hemp. All of this was reality when the history of hemp was only just beginning. Why did superpowers stake their fortunes on hemp, and what brought about the pause in hemp production? The thorny history of the plant, told through the lens of two countries, holds the answer.
How it all began. Hemp in the Russian Empire
Industrial hemp plantings were widespread in tsarist Russia. Hemp was used in many fields, from cooking to medicine. The scale of production was enough to supply the entire country, and in the 19th century Russia was the world leader in hemp exports. Hemp shipments abroad were a key source of the state's foreign-currency revenue. During the Age of Discovery, the navy played a decisive role. Every country needed durable sails for its fleet to reach distant new lands. Such were the sails made from Russian hemp fiber, 10 times stronger than cotton. This is why Russian hemp and its fiber were in tremendous demand around the world and substantially enriched the treasury.
- Tsarist Russia was called "poskon Rus" in honor of poskon, a hemp-based material.
- The ancient Slavs discovered hemp far earlier than flax. They used it in everyday life, weaving bast shoes from it and sewing poskon shirts.
- Hemp was of enormous importance to Peter the Great. The enterprising ruler recognized the true value of hemp tow, and it soon became the foundation for the sails and rigging of first the Russian, and later the American and English, fleets. Hemp opened the ruler's path to maritime supremacy, the founding of the great Russian navy, and vast horizons for world trade.
Hemp in the Soviet Union
The USSR held 60–80% of the world hemp market. Until the early 1990s, industrial hemp brought in up to 50% of the crop-farming sector's income. At one Politburo session, the topic of increasing hemp production volumes was raised 11 times. Hemp growers who achieved success in cultivation received awards and even the honorary title of Hero of Labor. In 1998, hemp was given special status: it was named a crop of the 21st century on a par with wheat and soy.
- Hemp helped people survive during the Great Patriotic War: in villages and hamlets, homespun winter clothing was made from the hemp remaining on the plots.
- Hemp was depicted on the coats of arms of Russian towns and districts. Among them were Dmitrovsk, Surazh, Yepifan, Novozybkov, as well as the Dmitrovsky and Kimovsky districts (the latter in Tula Oblast).
- Hemp was given a special role in the "Friendship of Peoples" fountain: an enormous golden sheaf of hemp and wheat adorned the main fountain of VDNKh.
Hemp in the USA
As far back as colonial times, people in the territory of the USA recognized that hemp was an ideal raw material for fabrics and ropes. The first plantations for growing industrial hemp appeared in the Jamestown and Virginia colonies. A law was soon enacted obliging colonists to grow hemp, refusal was against the law. As a result, the industrial hemp sector flourished: 90% of all ropes and sails were made from hemp fibers. Hemp fabric was used to sew the uniforms of the Continental Army that fought for the colonies' independence, as well as the first national flag of the USA. From 1631 until the 1800s, taxes could officially be paid in hemp in America. Over time, attention also turned to the plant's medicinal properties: in 1841, physician and chemist William Brooke O'Shaughnessy presented the findings of his research into the healing properties of hemp, and new hemp-based medicines began entering use rapidly. The year 1850 marked the peak scale of hemp cultivation, 40 thousand tonnes.
Hemp paper was used to make textbooks, money, canvases for artists (it is on such canvases that Van Gogh's paintings have come down to us), books, including the first Bible. Industrial practice showed that growing hemp does no harm to the environment. The United States Department of Agriculture concluded that hemp yields 4 times more pulp and produces 4–7 times less pollution. In 1916, the US government forecast that by 1940 all paper would be produced from hemp and that deforestation would have to be halted. This forecast was written into the Department of Agriculture's implementation plan.
- In 1938, hemp was called a "billion-dollar crop" in the USA, because it became the first agricultural crop with a turnover of a billion dollars.
- Henry Ford built the first model of his automobile from hemp plastic panels; moreover, this car ran on hemp fuel.
- America had a world-famous farmer who grew and promoted hemp. His name was George Washington.
- During the Second World War, the film "Hemp for Victory" was made in the USA.
The beginning of the contradictions
In the 1930s, innovations in agricultural machinery could have triggered an industrial revolution in the use of hemp. This single resource could have provided millions of new jobs and thousands of high-quality products. However, the states began introducing legislative restrictions on the use and sale of hemp-based medicines, and the word "poison" had to be printed on their labels.
In the 1930s, strict bans on hemp were introduced across all US states. How did it come about that hemp was first valued and grown the world over, with promising forecasts made, only to suddenly be declared a poison and banned? The history of hemp is full of paradoxes: the contradictory conflict and the campaign against hemp began with a substitution of concepts.
Banned: paper that had to be eliminated
The first US Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. It turned out that hemp paper has special technological properties: it is of higher quality than wood paper, requires no bleaching, and does not even yellow over time. In terms of production cost, such paper was cheaper than wood paper. This meant that wood was no longer needed to produce newspapers, books, and documents, and this ran counter to the interests of American industrialists.
Big business declares war
The blow from the green competitor threatened the petrochemical monopolist, the DuPont corporation. Innovations in hemp production would have destroyed more than 80% of this business, for who would there be to sell huge volumes of bleach to? The interests of media magnate William Hearst were also affected; he owned paper production, newspaper publishing houses, and a stake in DuPont. They had no need for competitors. To divert attention from hemp as a raw material, they brought in Harry Anslinger, who was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. A PR campaign called "Reefer Madness" was launched. In effect, the US industrialists were fighting hemp, but positioned themselves as fighters against marijuana. Their goal was the collapse of the hemp industry.
The verdict
The community fighting hemp succeeded in introducing aggressive taxes on growing the plant, endless bureaucratic inspections, fines, and arrests. The new hemp law allowed cultivation under license, but licenses were not issued. To anyone. Farmers had to shut down their unprofitable operations. Anslinger did everything to get the countries of the world to adopt a ban on growing all varieties of hemp, including industrial hemp. And in 1961, the member states of the UN signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The countries agreed to establish the strictest control over the cultivation of dangerous narcotic-bearing plants: the opium poppy, coca, and cannabis. The head of the USSR, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, signed the agreement as well.
The impact of the agreements
After the UN assembly, the Soviet Union was forced to reduce its sown areas. A ban on marijuana was also introduced, but sowing hemp continued to be grown on an industrial scale. No one back then checked the level of psychoactive compounds in the plant, so little is known about studies of THC content in hemp from Soviet times. Even so, breeders were tasked with developing non-narcotic varieties of hemp that were safe for the population. But how? The USSR did not yet have such technologies.
Of no use to anyone
The areas under cultivation began to be inexorably reduced. This entailed a reduction in revenue as well. Agricultural producers tried to get through to the government. The question was put squarely before the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1982: something had to be done, the hemp sector had fallen into a state of crisis. The decision was tragic: the USSR effectively ceded the hemp sales market to the USA, where, to put it mildly, no one favored hemp anymore.
Competitors finish it off
On top of that, the USSR had its own people for whom reviving the hemp sector was disadvantageous. During the perestroika years, competing producers who specialized in other raw materials began their own campaign against hemp. This led to the near-complete disappearance of hemp raw material from production. In the 1990s, the sector was almost destroyed.
And what followed was more than 40 years of a complete ban on cultivation, from the UN assembly in 1961 until 2007. A thriving, export-oriented sector was destroyed to its foundations. But the history of hemp does not end here. A comeback lies ahead.
Modern history: a second birth. The status of hemp in the USA
At a later congress in the USA, lawmakers debated the legal status of hemp and concluded that the plant had been banned for entirely wrong reasons. In 2014, President Obama signed a bill on the legal cultivation of hemp on farms, the Hemp Farm Bill. The first states to resume cultivation were Kentucky, Vermont, and Colorado. They observed the strict conditions and directives from the section on the legality of conducting research with industrial hemp in the Federal Farm Bill. Amendments to existing laws were also adopted, and now the US Drug Enforcement Administration is prohibited from imposing additional taxes on hemp growers who cultivate the plant for research. Today, hemp in the USA has penetrated almost every sphere of life.
Hemp is actively used in the production of:
- Food products
- Plant-based meat
- Cosmetic products
- Medicines
- Clothing
- Paper
- Furniture
- Construction materials
The current status of hemp in Russia
In 2007, a federal law was issued in Russia legalizing the cultivation of 28 domestic varieties of industrial hemp. A mandatory condition is a psychotropic-substance content of less than 0.1%. Today, the number of companies growing bred varieties of the crop can be counted on one hand, but it is gradually increasing. Large plants are being built to produce composites, gunpowder, and cellulose from hemp. Russia subsidizes hemp cultivation. Moreover, in our country it is somewhat easier to revive this production sector, because we have inherited the rich knowledge and traditions of working with hemp accumulated by our ancestors.
An expert's commentary
Scientists and economists are preoccupied with the revival of hemp growing. The President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Sergeev, noted: "It (hemp) can save us from paying the cross-border carbon tax. And at the same time it will restore our presence in the industrial fiber market." The scientist also emphasized the plant's ecological benefit: "How should one sow with annual crops? It is well known what to sow. Hemp is among the very first choices. Per hectare of plantings, it sequesters better than a good deciduous forest."
"We smile at the word 'hemp,' but for physiotherapeutic remedies, generally speaking, it is hemp and others that may have a serious medical future, and consequently a business one as well," said Alexander Sergeev.
We are moving toward hemp being recognized once again as a crop of the 21st century. Its beneficial technical properties and the diversity of its applications are indisputably valuable. Hemp is destined to once again become a sought-after and essential crop for the development of the economy, of production, and of a new approach to resource consumption.
This is what we make
We make all of this ourselves — a full-cycle plant in the Uzlovaya SEZ, 0% THC.
Hulled hemp hearts (separated)
Protein over 30% · omega-3/6
Cold-pressed green hemp seed oil
Omega-6 : omega-3 = 3.5 : 1
Hemp protein flour
Protein 40–45 g/100 g
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