Source: trybudtender.com
With cannabis politics blowing up in the Western world, Asia finds itself lagging behind. That’s not to say there isn’t a lucrative black market for the substance, it’s just on a legislative front most Asian countries have very little interest in legalizing cannabis. However, in China, an interesting market has sprung up. And that’s for low THC hemp.
Every year Chinese farmers in the North set aside some of their lands to farm industrial hemp. The materials end up rendering a great source of income for some isolated communities. The size of the plots vary with demand, but in Hexin, in Heilongjiang province near the Russian border, a farmer could easily set aside 600 hectares of his property for the growing of hemp. Officials need not turn a blind eye to everything these farmers are doing is legal. The growers sell the stems of the crop to textile factories to make high-quality fabric, the leaves to pharmaceutical companies for drugs, and the seeds to food companies to make snacks, kitchen oil and drinks.
In comparison to farming corn, these crops are a gold commodity. Hemp brings in more than 10,000 yuan (US 1,500) per hectare. When compared to just a few thousand yuan for more common crops, it’s plain to see why this has been a popular move to make. Additionally, farmers don’t necessarily have to buy expensive pesticides as hemp has few natural enemies.
Most of these growers are found in China’s frosty north where a hub for this type of crop has been formed. Authorities in this province used to turn a blind eye to crops of this type before legalizing and regulating it last year. Another major growing area is in Yunnan province where the plant’s production has been regulated since 2003.
Together, these areas account for about half of the world’s legal commercial cropland under hemp cannabis cultivation. Considering all the places in the world where the plant is grown, that is huge. There are many places where hemp is legal for cultivation and is used locally for its fibres, but China seems to take the cake.
Thanks to government support and a long tradition, China has quietly become a superpower in the plant’s production and research. Unfortunately, there are no official figures for the amount of the plant that China produces each year, due to the under the table atmosphere of the industry, but plantations are flourishing.
The growth has in part been made possible by government-funded scientists who study the plant’s military uses, including as medication and fabric for uniforms.
They have even managed to produce various hybrids that are able to survive in China’s disparate environments. Remember China is a varied place, with arctic-like conditions in the north, the Gobi Desert, and the subtropics in the South.
Hemp aside, Cannabis sativa has been cultivated in China for centuries, mainly for the plant’s strong fibres which can be turned into rope, fabric and paper. Hemp fabric dating back more than 3,400 years has been found in Shang Dynasty tombs in Hebei, and the fibre is believed to have been the basis of the earliest forms of paper made in the country.
After the establishment of the People’s Republic, the Communist Party-led government classified the plant as illicit drug and introduced some of the world’s toughest rules against its production, trade, and consumption.
Anybody with more than 5 kg of processed cannabis leaves, 10 kg of resin, or 150 kg of fresh leaves can face the death penalty, under Chinese criminal law. Ideally, this was set out to get drug dealers but remains a scary prospect for anyone travelling China with cannabis on their person.
Research into the plant really took off in China in the late 1970’s when the country went to war with Vietnam. The military needed to develop a fabric that could keep soldiers clean and dry in Vietnam’s humidity, and cannabis hemp offered the fibre that breathed and was antibacterial. As a result of that research, more than half of the world’s 600 plus patents related to the plant are now held in China, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. This has prompted concerns in the Western pharmaceutical industry that the Chinese government or Chinese firms might take advantage of the patent barriers.
As things continue to progress in China, with a loosening up of their society, and a closer relationship with the Western world, their hemp market might be set to explode. Just how many farmers or how much land was devoted to hemp crops is somewhat of a national secret. It’s a big figure, but it will not be revealed to the public as plainly speaking, many are operating illegally. To start growing the crop farmers need a special license and so far they’re restricted to growers in Heilongjiang and Yunnan.
The central government last year considered issuing regulations to outlaw these farms but dropped the idea because there were so many of them and the move could trigger massive protests by farmers.
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