Italian farmers turn to hemp

Italy is an industrial power, at a European and global level. However, agriculture remains a very important sector. It is estimated that 35% of land in Italy is devoted to agriculture or pasture, which provides employment for 4% of the country's economically active population. The most widespread crops include wheat, grapevines, olives and, increasingly, hemp.

In recent years, several countries have suffered a brutal economic crisis. Italy has been one of them, with repercussions for the agricultural sector. Although there has already been some recovery, local farmers are still a long way from the seeing the improvements that have been made in other sectors.

The reality in the Italian countryside is that the prices of agricultural products have stayed very low, particularly the price of wheat, which together with the loss of land quality and fertility, and the fact that the large companies that import the grain charge a high price, has led many farmers to explore the options of cultivating other plant species. In this context, hemp is becoming an alternative that more and more producers are turning to.

Hemp is a more profitable product

Hemp is one of the new crops that has started to become more widespread, with more and more people and more and more land dedicated to growing the plant. The boom began in 2016, when its cultivation was legalised. The aim behind the legalisation was to encourage the production of hemp by permitting its growth for non-pharmaceutical use provided it had a THC content below 0.2%. This aim seems to have been achieved, given that in just a few years the area of land used for the plant's cultivation has increased from 400 hectares to 4000 hectares today. This has led to a proliferation of products such as hemp 'ricotta', organic bricks, hemp pasta and hemp biscuits.

The south of Italy is a poor and agricultural region, in contrast to the industrialised north that has cities such as Milan and Turin. And that is why it is in the south of Italy where we can find various examples of this agricultural re-conversion process that has made hemp a way out of the crisis.

The agricultural cooperative Colli Erei is based in Sicily. This company brings together about twenty workers and has been able to produce 150 tonnes of hemp. Its objectives include promoting and marketing the product in the region. In fact, its crops end up being used to produce pasta, oil and flour. The economic figures speak for themselves, because a comparison shows that hemp is much more profitable for these farmers. On the market, the sale of wheat yields a profit of about €250 per hectare cultivated. Hemp, on the other hand, can be ten times more profitable, generating a profit of up to €2,500 for production over the same area.

Hemp cultivation is good for the soil

A monoculture is damaging to the soil. For many years, only wheat was grown, it was not alternated with other crops and there was a low level of diversification. This created ideal conditions for soil erosion, with the subsequent risk of loss of fertility and productivity. In fact, according to data from the Italian Council for Agricultural Research and Agricultural Economy Analysis, the amount of land sown with durum wheat fell by 7.4% in southern Italy last year and by more than 9% in northern Italy. Global production decreased by more than 4% during the last year, which shows that this crop is in decline due to the economic and environmental problems it causes.

The expansion of hemp cultivation is a way for the soil traditionally dedicated to wheat to regain a higher level of fertility. But it is also a way to put back into use land that had been abandoned due to its low output and the low profitability offered by its use or crops.

It is becoming increasingly evident that hemp has properties that make it very beneficial for the health of the fields and that help restore the soil's health. This is being demonstrated by farmers in the fields of Taranto, in the southern Italian region of Apulia, who after seeing how a toxin present in the pastures was killing their flock of sheep have decided to use hemp to make land they were sowing rich again.

The reason for this pollution is the Ilva steel plant, one of the largest in Europe. Founded in 1905, the factory has had a huge environmental impact in the Taranto area, so much so that it has even contaminated the soil with its waste. To solve this problem, farmers implemented a process of phytoremediation; phytoremediation is a term coined by Dr Ilya Raskin of the Biotechnology Centre at Rutgers University (New Jersey) which usesplant species in rotational cultivation to decontaminate soils, purify waste water, and even to clean air in indoor spaces. More specifically, the cultivation of hemp in Apulia meant the pollutants were absorbed by the plants' roots, which store and, in some cases, transform the toxins into harmless substances.

Thanks to this, around 100 farmers and stockbreeders who live close to the factory have not had to relocate in order to be able to continue their work. If plantations continue at this rate, Apulia could soon become one of the epicentres of low-THC cannabis in Italy.

An ancient power in hemp production

The cultivation of hemp has been common in the Italian peninsula throughout history. In ancient times, the Romans cultivated the plant; they did so making use of crop rotation to diversify production and ensure that the soil did not become exhausted.

More surprising is the fact that, in the middle of the 20th century, Italy was the second largest producer of hemp, only behind the Soviet Union. In the 1940s, more than 100,000 hectares were dedicated to hemp cultivation in Italy. The decline came with the move towards synthetic fibres, which displaced hemp as a raw material. At the same time, the war on drugs dealt another heavy blow to the sector, especially when the country signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961.

Almost 60 years later, hemp is once again becoming an important plant for Italian agriculture. The 2016 law, in addition to permitting cultivation, allows the marketing of its flowers. This has led to a flourishing of a market for the sale of 'light cannabis'. There are now more than 500 shops and establishments throughout the country, with the economic repercussions that this implies, dedicated to its sale. These flowers have a wide variety of uses, as they can be used, for example, for herbal teas or as an aromatic plant. However, it seems that most customers simply smoke them. Although they have low THC-content, they offer an immediate and pleasant feeling of relaxation after consumption.

Producers hope that a pathway will open up soon for the legalization of the cultivation of plants with a psychoactive substance content above 0.2% and for the development of pharmaceutical experimentation. This would be an important boost for the economic recovery of the Italian countryside and the consolidation of a powerful industry in the global cannabis sector.