Hemp and Industry
The same plant as a raw material. Rope, sailcloth, canvas and paper; the colonial hemp economy; the 1942 US government film Hemp for Victory made when the war cut off Manila fibre; and the modern industrial crop that the 2018 Farm Bill brought back to American fields.
Part of Marijuana
45 moments in this segment.
- - Pulling hemp from the retting pit. Wall painting from the workshop of Guercino showing hemp being pulled from the retting pond.
- - Retting the hemp, Loire c.1900. Postcard of hemp retting at Ingrandes-sur-Loire, a major French hemp district.
- - Fibre plants lithograph, 1902. Lithographed plate of five fibre plants including hemp, from the New International Encyclopedia.
- - Hemp spinner, Brittany. Postcard of a hemp spinner at Pluherlin in Brittany in the early twentieth century.
- - Hemp retting at Ingrandes. Postcard showing hemp retting on the Loire at Ingrandes in the early twentieth century.
- - Hemp hurds as paper stock, 1916. Plate from the USDA bulletin Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material (1916), the study later cited by hemp-paper advocates.
- - Carding hemp in wartime Britain. A female worker carding hemp in a British factory during the First World War, from the Imperial War Museum women's war work collection.
- - USDA hemp fibre bulletin. Plate from a USDA bulletin on hemp fibre production, part of the department's fibre investigations programme.
- - Hemp winding room, c.1920. The winding room of a hemp mill about 1920, where spun hemp yarn was wound into balls.
- - Hemp cultivation, Frattamaggiore 1930. Hemp cultivation at Frattamaggiore, from the Touring Club Italiano historical archive. Italy was the world's second-largest hemp producer between the wars.
- - Rope Making at Charlton (1939). British Pathe newsreel following manila hemp from the Philippines through a Charlton, London rope works, from dockside bales to finished cordage.
- - Henry Ford's Plastic-Bodied Car (1941). Newsreel footage of Henry Ford striking the boot of his 1941 plastic-panelled experimental car with an axe to demonstrate the bio-composite body.
- - Hemp for Victory: Trailer. Short trailer cut from the 1942 USDA film, showing hemp cultivation and processing into rope for the war effort.
- - Hemp for Victory (1942). The US Department of Agriculture wartime film urging American farmers to grow hemp after Japanese conquest cut off Philippine abaca fibre supplies.
- - The Italian Hemp Industry (1944). Silent British Movietone footage shot 30 April 1944 of Italian workers plaiting and loading hemp rope of every type.
- - Producer of Marihuana tax stamp, 1945. A United States special tax stamp for a licensed producer of marihuana, issued July 1945 during the wartime hemp programme.
- - Hemp fields near Ferrara, 1950. Hemp cultivation near Ferrara in 1950, from the Touring Club Italiano archive.
- - Hemp sheaves left to macerate. Sheaves of hemp left in water to macerate, the retting stage that loosens the bast fibre from the stalk.
- - Hemp maceration, Italy 1950. Workers at a hemp maceration pond in Italy in 1950.
- - The Cave Ropemaker of Castleton (1963). British Pathe film of Bert Marrison, aged 78, the last craftsman making rope by hand inside Peak Cavern in Derbyshire.
- - Billion Dollar Crop. Australian 1994 documentary on the history and industrial uses of hemp and the campaign that drove the crop out of legal agriculture.
- - Hemp stalk cross-section. A hemp stalk showing the woody core and the bast fibre layer that is stripped for rope and cloth.
- - Cannabis sativa fibre. Close-up of hemp bast fibre from Cannabis sativa.
- - Combing hemp by hand. Traditional hand-combing of hemp fibre documented in North Macedonia.
- - Weaving Linen (1940s). British Instructional Films footage of bast-fibre spinning and weaving machinery, showing the industrial processes shared by flax and hemp textiles.
- - Can You Build a House With Hemp?. National Geographic on hempcrete construction and how the 1970 US ban on industrial hemp treated the fibre crop as identical to marijuana.
- - A History of Hemp in the United States. National Geographic short film on American hemp, its long agricultural history, its confusion with marijuana, and the farmers trying to revive it.
- - A Car Body Made From Hemp. CNBC on Bruce Dietzen's sports car built with a hemp-fibre composite body, and the material's strength compared with steel.
- - McConnell Introduces the Hemp Farming Act. Kentucky news coverage of Senator Mitch McConnell announcing the bill that would legalise hemp as an industrial commodity.
- - Building Homes With Hemp. CNBC report on hempcrete housing in the United States, where roughly fifty such homes existed at the time, against wider use abroad.
- - What Legal Hemp Means for CBD. News explainer produced as the 2018 Farm Bill passed, on what hemp legalisation would and would not do for CBD products.
- - Hemp Growers React to the Farm Bill. Local news coverage of hemp and CBD producers celebrating the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill.
- - The 2018 Farm Bill Legalises Hemp. Local news report on the signing of the 2018 Farm Bill, which removed industrial hemp from the Controlled Substances Act.
- - A Hemp House on Grand Designs. Channel 4 segment following a couple building an eco-home with hempcrete walls for Grand Designs: The Streets.
- - Hemp: The New Agricultural Frontier. Agricultural machinery briefing on modern industrial hemp for fibre, textiles and seed oil, including harvest and rotation practice.
- - Hemp Farming Returns to Pennsylvania. WHYY report on hemp's revival in Pennsylvania, where it was once one of the colony's leading crops for cloth, paper and shelter.
- - Bringing It Home. Award-winning feature documentary on hemp's past, present and future, made when farming hemp was still illegal in the United States.
- - Hemp and flax compared. Display comparing the working of flax and hemp fibre at the Parc Floral de Paris.
- - The Origins of Hemp in Colonial America. Historian Kent Masterson Brown on hemp in British colonial America and the role the crop played in the economy of the early United States.
- - Spinning hemp on a historic wheel. A demonstrator in Schaumburg costume spins hemp fibre into thread on a historic spinning wheel at the Steinhude linen factory.
- - Hemp fibre detail. Close-up of processed hemp fibre.
- - The Lower Sioux Community Builds With Hempcrete. KARE 11 report on the Lower Sioux Indian Community constructing Minnesota's first hempcrete home using hemp grown on the reservation.
- - Hemp, the Billion-Dollar Crop That Wasn't. Business history of hemp fibre from the 1938 Popular Mechanics 'new billion-dollar crop' article to its near-absence from modern textiles.
- - Hemp: A Useful Resource. ARTE documentary following a Saxon farmer trying to re-establish hemp fibre production in Germany after centuries of know-how were lost.
- - An Architect's Hempcrete Home. Return visit to a hempcrete house designed by an architect, examining how the hemp-lime walls have performed over years of occupation.