Northern NSW coastal primary producers are lining up to add industrial hemp – with its fast-growing and lucrative markets as fibre, food and building material – to summer cropping schedules, as new NSW Government legislation allows commercial cultivation.
Gross margins could be as much as $600 a hectare (dryland) or $1700/ha (irrigated), with minimal water, herbicide or pesticide needs.
A lack of seeds is all that’s stopping mass plantings this year, but plans are underway for several hundred hectares of seed crops in the North West.
Lisomre, NSW, agricultural scientist and environmental engineer, Dr Keith Bolton, has grown trial industrial hemp crops for research on the North Coast since 2000.
He says the plant could play a huge role in the future provision of sustainable food and fibre.
Dr Bolton, who works with Ecotechnology Australia, which constructs sewage treatment systems using wetland technology, first grew hemp as a “mop-crop” to take effluent irrigation.
Extract from The Land, Thursday, May 22.
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