Where Does Hemp Grow? A Deep Dive On This Versatile Plant

Hemp, formally known as industrial hemp, has been growing for tens of thousands of years. It’s believed to have been one of the first plants used by the Neanderthals to make fibre, hemp was cultivated in China starting about 5,000 years ago, it was used widely in Europe during the Middle Ages, and it reached the Americas in the 16^th century.

Over time, many uses for hemp were discovered. It’s used today to create clothing and textiles, rope and other cords, health foods, and many other products. Until recently, however, most people were only familiar with hemp because its name was commonly (and incorrectly) used to refer to its sister plant, cannabis.

Hemp does contain a small amount of the psychoactive THC that makes marijuana users high, but the plant and its byproducts are non-intoxicating. They also contain much higher levels of a similar compound, CBD, which delivers quite a few apparent medical benefits.

In the late 2010s, growing hemp for the purpose of extracting CBD and selling CBD products was legalised in most of the Western world. Laws in many countries had previously banned the growing of hemp, classifying CBD as a controlled substance just like marijuana.

There’s now enormous demand for hemp and it’s cultivated around the world. Hemp is an annual plant generally grown from seed and planted in the spring, in temperate climates. The plants can also be grown indoors.

China is the world’s #1 hemp producer, largely because it’s one of the only major nations where growing industrial hemp was never banned. Chinese hemp is used primarily to make textiles and paper.

Canada and the US are the world’s second- and third-largest sources of hemp. Canada focuses mostly on the hempseed market, however, while American crops are grown primarily for CBD extraction. France is #4 on the list, with Chile rounding out the top five.

UK laws governing hemp have drastically held down farming of the crop. Currently, expensive growers’ licences are required and the plants’ flowers and leaves — the primary sources of CBD — can’t be processed or sold legally. The major use of British hemp is as bedding for horses.

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Hemp Isn’t the Same as Cannabis

For many years, particularly in the 1960s and 70s, marijuana was commonly called pot, dope, and often, hemp. Since both cannabis and hemp were illegal to grow in most countries back then, most people never realized that the two plants aren’t the same.

Hemp and cannabis are closely related members of a plant species known as Cannabis sativa, and they’re quite similar in most ways. They look much the same, they contain most of the same compounds, and they each apparently provide impressive medical benefits. They differ in one important way, though.

Cannabis plants contain bountiful amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive plant compound that makes users high. Hemp plants contain very little THC, so products sourced from hemp aren’t intoxicating.

However, hemp is rich in a similar compound, CBD (cannabidiol), the active ingredient in today’s CBD products which appear to deliver impressive health and wellness benefits. Cannabis plants have very low CBD levels, so it makes no sense to try to extract cannabidiol from them. (THC and CBD are among 100+ compounds known as cannabinoids and found in both plants.)

In short, it’s easy to confuse hemp and cannabis or lump them together — but cannabis and the products derived from it deliver a mind-altering experience while providing some apparent health and wellness benefits. The CBD extracted from hemp (and the hemp itself, in countries where it’s legal to consume, not including the UK), delivers its reported benefits without the high.

A Brief History of Hemp

Some historians believe hemp’s use dates back to the Paleolithic Era, some 50,000 years ago. There are records of hemp use in China almost 3,000 years BC and in Mediterranean nations nearly 2,000 years ago, and during the Middle Ages, hemp became commonly grown and used throughout Europe. Later, the plant was brought to Chile and to North America after that.

Hemp was originally used to create fibres, instrumental in producing rope and other types of cording, as well as clothing. Other early uses of hemp included the production of foodstuffs, oil, and paper. During the Industrial Era, more uses for hemp became evident, including the manufacture of insulation, paint, and composite building materials.

Hemp was an important crop in many nations for centuries, particularly in America where even many presidents farmed industrial hemp. The tide turned, however, in the mid-20^th century as the United States and other nations began a concerted war on recreational use of marijuana.

The US Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 essentially prohibited the growing of cannabis without a special, difficult-to-obtain tax stamp, and the Act lumped hemp in with cannabis. After a brief respite during World War II, when hemp was needed for the war effort, hemp was again made virtually illegal to grow.

The US Controlled Substances Act of 1970 formalized the ban by classifying hemp and marijuana alongside heroin as substances highly likely to be abused. Thanks to America’s actions and a UN Convention on Drugs naming hemp as a narcotic, many other nations followed suit and banned the growing of hemp alongside their bans on cannabis cultivation.

Quite honestly, there was diminished interest in hemp by then, as synthetic materials had largely overtaken hemp in terms of popularity. Renewed worldwide interest in the plant didn’t occur until the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries when the apparent medical benefits of CBD extracted from hemp became known.

Finally understanding the difference between hemp and cannabis, Britain, America, and many other nations belatedly enacted laws that again allowed hemp cultivation and use. Since the apparent benefits of the plant and its CBD were still only shown in preliminary research, the laws all emphasized that hemp was a food or supplement, not a medical treatment.

The most important facet of those laws was a limit on the amount of psychoactive THC that could be contained in plants and CBD products. In Britain and some other nations, the maximum THC level was set at 0.2%, it’s 0.3% in the US and many other countries, while some jurisdictions set higher levels, lower levels, or only allow the sale and use of THC-free CBD.

During hemp’s “prohibition” period, most of the industrial hemp used to make clothing and other products came from China, the Soviet Union, Canada, and a few other nations where the plant could still legally be grown. The increased demand for hemp, though, quickly caused renewed interest in hemp farming — and many countries have become hemp-producing hotbeds.

Growing Hemp

Hemp has historically been grown outdoors because farmers can scale their crops and harvest them easily. It can be grown indoors as well, but since indoor cultivation drastically limits output, most hemp farmers still plant outdoors.

Hemp thrives in temperate climates with moderate rainfall. It’s a spring crop that matures in about four months. Through years of growing and cross-breeding, three types of hemp plants have been developed: one for use in creating fibre, one used for grains and seeds, and a third grown to produce buds that contain the highest amounts of CBD.

The latter variety of hemp most closely resembles cannabis. They’re bushy plants with wide branches that produce the largest clusters of flowers and buds. Despite the appearance, however, this type of hemp still contains very low levels of psychoactive THC.

Where Is Hemp Grown?

The list of nations and American states where hemp is farmed grows every year, as demand for CBD and other hemp products increases and the legal landscape becomes clearer. Hemp is now grown in nearly 50 nations (and more than half the US states), although many of those countries’ crops are used for purposes other than CBD extraction.

It’s fitting that China is the world’s top hemp producer since the plant has been cultivated there for more than 5,000 years. There has never been a ban on growing industrial hemp in China, either, so the country’s farmers have been able to grow their crops for decades, centuries, or longer without interruption.

At one point, Chinese hemp production accounted for more than 70% of the world’s annual output, although that percentage has declined recently. The country’s crop is used mostly to create textiles and paper.

Canada legalised hemp production in 1998 after a 60-year ban on growing and has quickly become the world’s #2 hemp-producing nation. Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba grow the most hemp, and it’s been primarily used to produce hempseed oil and other food products. Hemp for CBD extraction is becoming more important to Canadian farmers every year, however.

America has also come on strong to become the third-largest hemp producer in the world. Kentucky and Oregon are home to the largest industrial hemp industries, and most farmers grow the plants to be sold to CBD producers.

Europe’s top CBD-growing nation is France. That’s not surprising, since France was the only Western European nation that declined to ban hemp production throughout the “prohibition” era of the 20^th century. Right behind France and rounding out the worldwide top 5 is Chile, the first South American country to begin growing hemp in the 1500s.

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