For the past year, the City of Greeley’s Economic Development team has worked to kickstart the scaling of industrial hemp as a new federally approved crop with the potential to reshape some primary industry sectors underpinning our regional economy. This snapsot sheds light on this initiative and illustrates how it links to entrepreneurship, industrial development, and job-creation. Greeley is featured as an emerging tech zone in Cannabis & Tech Today magazine.
From the 1700s to the 1930s, American farmers grew hemp as a crop for use in multiple different products from paper to lamp fuels, ship's sails and ropes. While rendered illegal in America for almost a century until the 2014 Farm Bill, hemp’s demise was likely linked to it being labor-intensive and difficult to mechanically process. Hemp is one of the strongest plants in the world that produces two times as much fiber as cotton and uses much less water than cotton or corn.
Led by the cultivation for CBD, hemp’s comeback has been meteoric, which resulted in a price crash for farmers in 2019. Separately, top clothing brands like Levi and Patagonia have rediscovered hemp fabric sourced from Chinese factories. In 2020, Levi launched cottonized hemp jeans following a breakthrough in technology that makes hemp fiber as soft as cotton. Synonymous with sustainability, hemp is being grown in drought prone regions like Colorado’s San Luis valley, where the water situation has become dire for farmers growing crops like potatoes.
New Industries > Startup & Attraction
From 2014, Weld County helped lead the state and the nation in hemp production acreage. Greeley’s focus on industrial scale farming and lower cost processing aims to unlock the commercialization for new uses for the plant hailed as a raw material of our age:
- Hemp Processing: This technology and equipment market is leaping forward, led by decortication; the separation of the plant fiber from the inner wood (hurd).
- Food and Beverage Products: Hemp seeds are increasingly used for protein-rich food and beverage brands, and a potential future feed for commercial livestock.
- Leak & Spill Absorbents: A super absorbent biodegradable material can be made from the core of hemp that is used primarily for oil and chemical spills.
- Bioplastics: Hemp, as one of the most efficient cellulose plants in the world is ideal for the production of plastic using biodegradable binders. Pricing remains an issue.
- Construction Products & Services: Hemp forms a lightweight fiber reinforced concrete material called hempcrete that can be precast into products or cast on site. Certification and acceptance is limited.
- Biofuel Crops: Bioenergy is a fast growing source of renewable energy. Interest in hemp as a high-yielding energy crop with low environmental impact is rising. Commercialization is still limited.