Hemp vs Dagga

By Caryn Dolley
Source: iol.co.za

Hemp is increasingly emerging on the radar of businesses and farmers, says a partner in a hemp company.

Tony Budden, a partner with Duncan Parker in Hemporium, a company that imports hemp materials and then creates items out of these, said more and more farmers, from the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, were expressing interest in hemp.

He said a number of companies were also interested in using hemp, which he described as a “zero waste” plant as all of it could be used.

Hemp, a fibre crop, is a member of the same family as dagga, which is illegal in South Africa.

Budden explained that Hemporium imported a number of hemp materials and that these were then used to create items and products.

He said Hemporium imported hemp:

- Fabrics from China.

- Building materials from the UK and France.

- Rope from Hungary.

- Paper from Germany.

- Oil, processed seeds and nutritional products from Canada.

- Carpets from India.

Budden said hemp clothing made up Hemporium’s biggest market, followed by cosmetics.

More recently, fabrics had increasingly started selling, he said.

He was also behind the country’s first “hemp house” – a home built in Noordhoek and made almost exclusively of hemp materials.

“Our aim is to showcase what hemp can do,” Budden said.

He said the job-creation potential of hemp was “huge” because apart from growing and processing it, many products could be made from it.

Hemp vs dagga:

- Cannabis sativa L, (sativa, var. sativa) is grown for industrial use.

- Cannabis sativa indica usually has poor fibre quality and is grown for recreational or medical use.

- The industrial varieties of hemp contain less than 1 percent of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in dagga.

- The percentage of THC is higher in smoked dagga.