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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

What's the interest in hemp other than for marijuana? It's the least useful of the bast fibers. Sisal, jute, and manila all have big markets. Hemp and kenaf are niche products. The EU has allowed hemp production for years and it's still a tiny business.

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Hulled hemp seed sells for about £10 for 200g in my local organic shop. Then there's oil which by many measures is healthier than olive oil.

Apart from food and CBD, hemp is generally more environmentally friendly than cotton and grows in a far wider range of climates and is softer than the fibres you mentioned.

Then there are cosmetics, hempcrete, animal feed, bioplastics, etc...

> Then there's oil which by many measures is healthier than olive oil.

I found this statement hard to believe, so I checked. I can confirm you are right, and by a large margin. Wikipedia has a comparison of vegetable oils [1]. Hemp oil has the most polyunsaturated fatty acids, at 82%. However, it has a low burning point, so I guess it's best to use it in salads, rather than for frying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp_oil#Comparison_to_other_v...

CBD sales in the US over the next two years will likely exceed the value of all combined global hemp sales for 2017 (~$3.9b). A modest market for it in the US makes it a billion dollar crop.

"That would create a legal market for CBD that could be worth more than $20 billion by 2022, according to research firm Brightfield Group. ... Next year alone, sales of hemp-derived CBD in the U.S. are expected to rise almost 10-fold to $5.7 billion, according to Brightfield."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-19/trendy-he...

Hemp is a route to CBD oils, which are hot right now

Cattle forage.

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