Hemp: A Substance of Hope

Abstract Much of the hemp plant is acarbohydrate known as cellulose, found mostly in the outer bark of the stem, which is about 75% cellulose, while the core is about half that or more. This is in fact typical of plants, making cellulose the most common compound in the vegetable kingdom. It is a simple compound, utilising the three common elements of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and is a structure of many glucose molecules compounded together. There are slight differences in the arrangement of the glucose from plant to plant, making for different qualities in the cellulose yielded. Hemp is one of the best plants for cellulose production for the reasons that the cellulose it produces is well suited for paper manufacture and textiles, and further, it grows quickly without any great need of pesticides. Hemp use has been suppressed in recent times, but due to its usefulness and the ecological advantages in harvesting hemp over cotton and trees, there has been a call for hemp use which is growing worldwide. Businesses such as Minawear in California and Ecofibres in Australia have been working for the last several years with hemp and both have seen an increase in demand. At present most hemp is grown in China, Canada and Eastern Europe, but it has in history been grown in almost every country of the world, due to the ease with which it is cultivated and the need for the cellulose fibres that it yields.