Industrial Hemp Plant Production

Hemp is a unique crop that can help shape a better future for family farms for generations to come. ... The hardy plants are pest-resistant so there's no need for pesticides and herbicides, mature within months, and can produce additional crops, year after year.

Hemp grows extremely fast in any kind of climate. It does not exhaust the soil, uses little water, and requires no pesticides or herbicides. Dense planting leaves little space for light, hence few chances for weeds to grow.

Its skin is tough and insect resistant, and this is why often hemp is used as a rotation crop. Its fiber and oil can be used in making clothes, papers, building material, food, skin care products and even biofuels. No wonder it’s considered by many as the most versatile and sustainable plant on earth

David Arkin, another Berkeley-based architect, designed multiple natural homes with lime plaster that proved fire-resistant in the 2017 North Bay wildfires, remaining standing while all the homes around them burned down. One example was a home ”directly in the line of fire,” according to an Arkin-Tilt company report that was later publicized in Fine Home Building magazine. The homeowner, who had tried to evacuate, ended up inside the home as the fire approached. The house, built of straw bale, earth, and lime plaster, “held them safe until dawn.”  Everything surrounding the house burned to the ground, including outbuildings and all the trees. “We posit that the metal roof, strawbale walls, wrap-around porch supported by fire-salvaged redwood posts, and ample defensible space all contributed in saving the house, and possibly lives,” the article concludes.  

“In nearly every California wildfire one finds examples of homes of earth and straw surviving where nearby homes of other materials burned," Arkin told HempbuildMag in an email.