Just about everywhere you look these days, you’ll find hemp. This versatile member of the cannabis family is shaking off its hippy shackles and moving into the mainstream. It’s appearing in all kinds of food products, is used to make clothing and New Zealand even has a few houses built from hemp. The fact that it literally grows like a weed means we are likely to see even more of it in future.
Hemp is a strain of the Cannabis sativa plant, and has been cultivated for thousands of years – in fact, the oldest piece of material known to man is a piece of hemp fabric dating back to 8000BC. In China, hemp has been used to make fabric and rope for more than 3000 years, and it was so important to the British Royal Navy for sails and rigging in the 16th century that Queen Elizabeth I decreed that farmers had to grow hemp on part of their land.
Hemp advocates say it has more than 25,000 uses, ranging from food, beauty products
