Green Gold: Is Hemp the New Oil?

Hemp has a long history in the UK. Once mandated by Henry VIII to supply fibre for rope and sails, it was a staple crop across southern England. Today, just 1,000 or so hectares are licensed. Yet its potential is vast: bast fibres for construction and textiles, protein-rich seed for food and feed, and shiv for biobased building. This offers UK farmers a diversification opportunity at a time when traditional break crops like oilseed rape are in decline.

My Nuffield travels took me to the USA, Canada, China, Zimbabwe, and Europe. I found that hemp’s future depends on three interlocking challenges: agronomy, processing, and demand. Modern agronomy is still rebuilding after decades in the shadows. Seed yields are unreliable and while fibre yields are more promising, harvesting and retting introduces risk and complexity. Processors are the next bottleneck: without regional hubs for decortication, straw cannot move beyond the farmgate but most fundamentally, demand is yet to materialise at scale. Farmers are reluctant to grow without buyers, and processors cannot invest without supply - a ‘chicken and egg’ cycle that has kept the crop niche.

Despite this, I see clear pathways forward. Successful hemp sectors abroad show the need for well-developed end markets and farmer-processor partnerships. What unlocks demand is not simply ‘more hemp’, but hemp products that do something better than the alternatives: textiles with superior performance, foods with superior health benefits, construction materials which result in more comfortable homes.

The path to success for the UK is threefold:

• Focus on niches first. Collaborate with researchers to identify high-value applications that leverage hemp’s unique traits, such as in medical aids or performance textiles, where buyers will pay a premium.
• Invest in agronomy and processing. Support breeding for early-ripening, shatter-resistant seed varieties, and back grower networks trialling establishment and retting methods for more consistent yields and fibre quality. Invest in regional hubs with modern decortication equipment to give farmers reliable outlets.
• Build wider markets with policy. Just as Canada scaled canola with coordinated breeding, processing, and market pull, UK hemp will need policy support. Marketing its environmental benefits and embedding hemp in construction standards or subsidy schemes can drive demand at scale.

Hemp offers a case study in how novel crops can succeed or stall. Taking it from niche to mainstream requires coordinated effort: farmers, processors, researchers, and government acting together. With the right support, hemp could emerge as a cornerstone of sustainable industry, reducing reliance on petrochemical products and living up to its promise as the ‘new oil’.