Russia remembered the world leadership in the cultivation of hemp

Tsarist Russia produced 40% of all hemp used in Europe. In the USSR, this agriculture was no less popular: the Soviet Union annually produced almost 45 thousand tons of hemp, plus 6-7 thousand tons of hemp oil. By 1936, 680,000 hectares were under this crop on the territory of the USSR – this is 80% of all world hemp crops. Not without reason, at the Friendship of Peoples fountain located at VDNKh, along with ears of wheat and sunflower inflorescences, the author of the composition placed hemp leaves. So what was the need for so much hemp, and why did we suddenly stop growing it?

– Why is hemp needed at all – to make ropes?

– Including, but not only. The range of hemp uses is very wide in construction: it is heat and noise insulation, hemp concrete, cellulose, and paper, and fabrics, in addition, the fire (woody remains of the plant) is used in animal husbandry as an environmentally friendly bedding and as mulch in greenhouses, for example.

– The fact that hemp can be used to make paper is a well-known fact.

Yes, and excellent quality. By the way, this is how we will save our forests, because you can get more paper from the biomass that hemp crops give than from selected Siberian forests.

– What is hemp concrete, and where is it used?

– These are very light building blocks that are made of concrete and fires. For example, the famous Stalinist skyscrapers were built from such blocks. In general, in Russia there are more houses built with hemp,? than anywhere else in the world. They are warm, durable and environmentally friendly.

Where else is cannabis used?

– In the chemical, perfumery, food industry – the list is huge, from cat litter to expensive perfume and some types of plastic, it’s easier to say where it is not used.

– If this is such a golden Klondike, then why did we refuse to cultivate this valuable agricultural crop? And when did it happen?

– In 1956, the UN pushed through a resolution on the fight against drug addiction, which included one of the measures – the destruction of hemp crops. Allegedly, if you sow several bushes of marijuana in the center of a hemp field, they will pollinate the entire field, and instead of hemp we will have pure cannabis.

– Isn’t that right?

– Of course not! This resolution was pushed through by the oil lobby, because many products, the same plastic that we now get from oil, were previously made from hemp biomass.

And, of course, in the 1960s the West was in the midst of drug addiction, the governments of these countries did not know how to deal with this scourge and rushed from one extreme to another.

– Are you going to be engaged in hemp growing, are you not afraid that your crops will be plucked by drug addicts, not even allowing them to ripen?

– This is how everyone reacts when they find out that we want to cultivate hemp. But it is impossible to “get stuck” from technical hemp. In order for a plant to be considered narcotic, it must contain at least 10% of narcotic substances, and in technical hemp it cannot be more than 2%.

– Where do you get the seeds from? Will you buy abroad?

– No, we already have our own varieties in Russia, they ripen well in our climate. The height of an adult plant reaches 3 meters. Last year industrial hemp was rehabilitated from the point of view of the law and officially returned to the crop rotation. In the Vladimir region, 1.5 thousand hectares have already been given for this crop, in the Ivanovo region – 2 thousand hectares, and the authorities of the Moscow region are also not opposed to our farmers engaging in hemp growing. By the way, individual hemp crops in the Russian Federation have been cultivated since 2016, but until 2021 the farmer had to take permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Now this is not necessary, since the culture was introduced into crop rotation.

– So what is the problem then, why cannabis cultivation is not developing? After all, the climate of our country suits her well.

– We do not have special equipment for harvesting in the country. All Soviet enterprises that were engaged in the production of harvesting equipment for hemp growing closed long ago. The only country that in 1956 refused to ratify the UN documents on the destruction of hemp crops was France. They never stopped sowing this crop and they also produce the best hemp harvesters. They differ from the usual ones in that the machine has two headers, one at the top for seeds, the other at the bottom for the stalk.