They grow millions upon millions of tons of it each year and have an entire infrastructure of university and government research organizations built up around hemp cultivation.
The industrial products are never coming. Access by US domestic engineers and scientists to hemp on the order of days instead of weeks won’t change that.
There are billions of people on earth for which hemp cultivation has never been illegal, where they have grown it for centuries if not millennia.
To think that domestic production will spin up the release of industrial products can only lead to one of two conclusions:
1. There are no industrial uses of hemp to the degree that advocates claim. (The ludicrous ones) or,
2. Most of rest of the world, around 3 billion people, are all stupid and/or incompetent and only the smart and industrious US domestic engineers and scientists can figure out how to use hemp for things other than hippy bags.
I’ve been around the world. I’m going to go with 1.
I’m not saying hemp doesn’t have industrial uses.
I’m saying that the claims by some of its more fervent activists, on the order of “hemp fuel will power hemp steel-manufactured flying cars adorned in hemp faux “Rich Corinthian“ leather, that land of runways made of hempcrete and it’s all going to be carbon neural and organic because hemp violates the laws of thermodynamics and doesn’t require fertilizer or pesticide” are wrong.
The real action now seems to be in bagasse, the leftover strands after extracting sugar from sugar cane. It's a waste product from sugar mills, so it's really cheap, sometimes free. It's made into biodegradable containers for fast food, replacing styrofoam. Many of those little white clamshell boxes used for food delivery are now made from bagasse. It's also possible to make oriented strand board from bagasse, although that hasn't really caught on.
There's huge amounts of agricultural waste available very cheaply, if you have a use for it. Ethanol fuel from cellulose was a hot idea once, as a way to do something useful with corn cobs and stalks, but it's just not cost-effective.
"There are no industrial uses of hemp to the degree that advocates claim."
That's a leap too far, especially considering the current chaotic state of the laws governing its use. There are surely advocates that also make leaps too far but the truth about the potential resides in the known uses, which are many, and those yet to come, which are also likely to be many.
Since China has a head start working on this we can assume it's likely they will be leaders in both hemp production and manufacturing hemp based products, and we can only blame ourselves if they are. But that still doesn't mean that the U.S won't invest in processing hemp grown here into useful and profitable products and when it does the cost and profits of production will stabilize.
As the parent poster said, in most of the rest of the world, there are no such laws governing its use, and for some reason, nobody in it really has much of a need for this 'miracle' plant.
How do you explain that?
I don't know what those sell for but it's probably pretty hard to beat the price of what could be grown here legally.
Levi corporation announced just this year a line of the jeans and other clothes to be made with hemp. I think they're being made offshore but the point that it will take time for industries to ramp up for using hemp is made by that single case alone.
The market for it will surely grow from this point and likely peak and stabilize pretty quickly and, no, it won't be a "get rich bonanza" for farmers because it will grow almost anywhere here but it will be another crop they can grow and sell and that's good thing.
As far as I know, most followed US hegemony, and for example in germany it was legal, but very hard to get permission to grow hemp. So only small uses like for making rope and birdfood.
So I also believe demand and supply for various things will grow. I really like for example, that nowdays you can get organic hemp seeds in the supermarket. It gets more in fashion, because it is nice and quite healthy. But no, hemp will probably not disrupt big industries. It might disrupt the alcohol industrie a bit though, when it is widespread legal.
Honestly the science on this isn't in because the funding has never been available.
(it's also totally orthogonal to my claim.)
There are some questions around whether the “entourage effect” is beneficial with CBD. In other words, does the presence of THC and various other compounds make CBD oil more effective for x or y (vs pure isolates of just CBD).
But “industrial hemp” really just means cannabis with a THC content below a federally determined guideline. And that’s why it needs to be tested for being “hot”. Many people lose their crops because they test hot and find themselves with smokable weed.