🐑Cotton to Hemp

PROBLEM:

The financial and political incentives to fight climate change, soil degradation, and systemic degeneration are insufficient compared to the risks we face as humanity.

Nonetheless, industrial hemp, which has been used for its many benefits for 10.000 years, has sunk into obscurity due to political reasons worldwide last 100 years, despite being one of our most powerful instruments for addressing climate change and producing positive impacts on both the environment and economic mobility, especially in emerging countries.

The biggest obstacles are; the lack of infrastructure and machinery and more importantly, the lack of young farmers in the country. The total number of farmers has also decreased from 1.127.000 to 512.000 in the last 5 years. (1*)

Plant-related know-how has been lost over the last 50 years, both in agriculture and industry.

SOLUTION

Hemp is one of the plants in the world with the highest rate of carbon sequestration in a short period of time, as well as benefits in a variety of fields such as textiles, construction, paper, bioplastics, human and animal health, soil, and environmental health.

We can develop a management and growing plan based on the needs of farmers or industries, obtain government permits, supply seeds for planting, and provide guidance for the transition to regenerative practices with hemp in rotation.

Our strategy is simple: invest in hemp production and support related industries to boost the value of hemp raw materials and end products by using MRV technologies to measure carbon sequestration, environmental improvement, biodiversity protection, and new job creation.

Working with specialists, institutions, companies, and colleges, we have numerous current research and development projects in many different sectors that can be done with hemp.

The goal is to build a sustainable economy without becoming trapped in the carbon tunnel vision and relying solely on demand for impact certificates.

Source:

(1*) https://veri.sgk.gov.tr/

Approach 1

Our country ranks among the top ten in textile and cotton production. According to TurkStat-National Cotton Council reports, Turkiye, which has hundreds of brands on the global market, imported 1.2 million tons of fiber cotton in 2021. (2*)

Today, with the increasing water problems, we need to consider hemp farming as an alternative. Hemp, which can be harvested 2 times a year, requires less water compared to cotton and has up to 3 times fiber yield according to the following data. If we consider the cultivation areas, hemp cultivation can increase fiber production in our cities such as Kütahya and Afyon, whose climate is not suitable for cotton production, and provide new employment to the people of the region. When we compare cotton and hemp fibers in terms of strength, the robustness of hemp fibers will make a great contribution to the environment and our economy in terms of sustainability.

Physical properties of hemp fibers together with other cellulosic fibers. (Gedik ve ark., 2010)

Fiber Type	Single fiber length (cm)	Treated fiber length (cm)	Dry specific strength (cN/dtex)	Wet specific strength (% kuru)	E-module (Mpa)	Annual fiber yield (kg/ha)
Cotton		1-6	25-50	105	11	800-1000
Hemp	100-300	65-75	35-70	105	12,7	3000
Jute	160-360	65-75	30-34	100	19-35	2200
Flax	20-40	10-40	30-55	105	12-26	2000

As a result, we must work with Anatolian farmers to switch to regenerative hemp growing in order to meet the demands of an expanding population, tackle environmental issues, and to improve the quality of the products created.

Approach 2

Turkiye caused 523 million tons of carbon emissions in 2020 and 14% of this amount was caused by agriculture. If in 2020, 12.5% of the total cultivated land was hemp (2,742,000 ha) that was planted twice in a year; one for fiber, one for multi-purpose; potentially the country’s agriculture would’ve been carbon-neutral.

We aim to solve the problem by incentivizing small/family farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture by generating extra financial income with carbon-offset markets and impact certificates through regenerative hemp farming and MRV technologies. In the meantime, to create a sustainable model for the industry, we are creating a market for climate-conscious hemp-based products such as food, cosmetics, and textiles.

At the moment, our main line of business is the for-profit food brand "Earthist Garden," which produces hemp-based food products as a sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to other crops. Eventually, we hope to produce hemp hearts as our flagship product as a Turkiye pioneer; a commodity proven in the global marketplace with a potential market of 100% consumers that can be used by potentially thousands of businesses to diversify the hemp industry while empowering small/family farmers with their harvests. (We will have a great food market reach as dehulled hemp seeds are in the market as imported so far.)