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”What I love most about hemp is that it’s such a multi-faceted solution to so many of the major problems we’re facing globally”
Introducing one of our hemp farmers in the UK: Jamie Bartley. Jamie has been growing hemp since 2017 in Leicestershire. He works with a cooperative of other farmers, and has 1,700 acres of hemp currently under licence.
Jamie is also managing director of Unyte Hemp (part of the Unyte Capital Group companies) focused on the hemp market, and growing and building the industrial hemp supply chain in the UK. As you might imagine, he knows everything there is to know about hemp!
We teamed up with Jamie to undertake some of our initial field trials, and we’re looking forward to continuing to work closely with him in all of our upcoming endeavors! To find out more about how we work with farmers, check out our website.
So Jamie, what first sparked your interest in hemp?
I initially started looking at its photo-remedial properties to clean up contaminated land. I quickly realised that hemp’s an amazing crop, and it’s got so much more potential than just cleaning up poor quality lands, so I started my research journey into hemp and what we can do to help with decarbonisation and environmental improvement.
Tell us a little bit about your work with Unyte Hemp
We’ve been working with nine different universities, and pilot development companies, researching various different end-uses for hemp. We’ve refined our model now to initially focus on construction materials and our primary focus at the moment is to produce mass scale carbon negative construction materials – so installation and hempcrete block systems.
Why is hemp so great for using in building materials?
The carbon sequestration. Hemp absorbs 12 tones of carbon per hectare when it’s growing, and then when we harvest that hemp and use it industrially as a replacement for high body carbon construction materials, you’re actually locking up that carbon and storing it long term in the construction materials. So you’ve got real mass decarbonisation if you’re replacing products like concrete or rockwool insulation that have to be mined out of the ground and then heated up to 1200 degrees before getting turned into insulation. If we’re growing hemp, sequestering carbon, and using that filter for insulation, it’s a far more sustainable product.
Using hemp for building, you have a big impact in decarbonisation and construction is a massive end-user. People talk about growing hemp for CBD, but if we grew 380 acres of what we’ve got licenced, we’d supply the entire UK industry for a year. But there’s only a small end-user market and if we are going to have a massive impact in decarbonisation, we need to grow lots of hemp and utilise it in things like construction materials and textiles.
What are some of the barriers to industrial hemp currently?
The main barrier is not having large enough infrastructure to process hemp on a big enough scale to give you the cost efficiencies that you need for it to be mass-adopted. It is really the Capex investment that’s required into the scale of processing and manufacturing equipment that we need.
Have you noticed any changes on your farm since you started growing hemp?
Lots! The follow-on spring barley had a 15% to 18% increase in yield. And that was without any nitrogen or fertilisers put on it. Some of the farmers commented that you could bring 100 farmers here and not one would believe we hadn’t put any nitrogen on that barley.
Why did you decide to team up with Nature’s Data? What excites you about the partnership?
Moving forward, data is going to be key to optimising growth, and also optimising as we develop and produce these different products and cultivate hemp for different end-uses. Data is going to be the key to ensuring we get it as efficient as possible.
We really like the approach Nature’s Data is taking. And that’s why we were so happy to get involved and assist in providing sites for the initial research.
How can data help hemp farmers?
Again, it’s around being as efficient as possible, and decarbonising their crop rotations as much as possible. Data is going to play a part both in terms of climatic data, but also with the actual nutrient profiles of the soils etc. Microdosing certain nutrients where required rather than mass fertilisation – those types of practices are going to become more and more common. And I think we’ll see an adoption – we already see a lot – with arable agriculture in the UK, using technologies and sensors and that’s going to include a lot of data and the ability to understand that data.
Globally, how could data be used to help hemp farmers and encourage more hemp growing?
Once people understand how much carbon is in question, that’s going to be a big part of it – so being able to model that carbon sequestration is going to be really important.
But also, anywhere that people are growing hemp, it’s that same principle that if you’re growing a crop and if you’re going to utilise that crop, you need to optimise your yield. So if you’ve got data available for you to analyse that crop and understand what’s going to optimise it, or how you can further tweak your process to ensure you are responding to that data and therefore benefiting from it, I think there’s a mass need for that globally.
From a global food production perspective, we have to ensure we’re growing enough food – not just for hemp, but generally growing crops as efficiently as possible to ensure we’ve got the food volumes there. And hemp will be important as people move to plant-based protein, because we just can’t survive on the volume of animal-based protein needed to feed the global population. Hemp is a really good win for plant-based protein, because not only do you have viable protein volume from the hemp seed, but you have the sequestration properties, too. It’s a carbon negative source of protein available for mass production and consumption.
Finally, what’s your favourite thing about hemp?
It’s really about its potential to be a solution to so many different problems. It’s such a multi-faceted solution to so many of the major problems we’re facing globally.