I imagine the people who own the land (ie. farmers) don’t have an interest in it because there isn’t an established industry to process it into products like cloth or rope or paper. This means they would have to buy the equipment not only to harvest / plant but also to process into usable material. If there was a pulp factory that would buy it from them they might plant it, but I doubt that any existing pulp factory would buy it as they would probably have to modify their production process slightly to make it into paper. Essentially it’s the chicken and the egg problem of farmers don’t have a market to sell it to, and factories can’t buy enough to justify converting the production process to use the new material.

They are also burned as fuel to process the wood into paper. It is cheaper for them to burn the wood for fuel / energy than to buy the electricity usually.

No need to oppose it if people are too scared / poor to try it. I also imagine there are better crops than hemp for paper. Lignocellulose (the type of plant matter used to make paper) typically makes up about the vast majority of the total dry matter in most plants. There are probably many other plants that produce the raw material more efficiently on a land and water basis with much less risk of getting outlawed.

I would bet that the processing is actually the much tougher problem to deal with than the growing of the plants as machinery is in general more expensive than plants and land.

It might even be cheaper to produce less plant matter on more lower quality ground than to use less land that is more ideal for growing. But I suspect it is just complacency on the part of the growers and / or paper pulp processors.

Market consolidation doesn’t explain why new materials and processes aren’t being invested in?

Why wouldn’t it? Companies that have invested millions in land and equipment to harvest trees aren’t going to just stop using their equipment and get new equipment / land for a different material on a whim. If it makes them money they’ll keep doing it. No reason to take a potential Billion dollar risk on changing equipment and production processes. Sunk cost fallacy is a real barrier for a big company with millions in assets. They probably won’t change unless they have a competitor producing goods cheaper or a government regulation / tax prompting them too. Changing production practices has a cost that most public companies are too cheap to pay for. They would rather use the money for stock buybacks, exec compensation, and investor dividends.

The market ain’t perfectly efficient, companies don’t care about efficiency if they are making money hand over fist. I imagine it is being done somewhere but it is just on a much smaller scale. If they grow enough they will get offers from big companies to buy them as that is cheaper than actually competing. For hemp there is also the risk that if you get too big they bribe lobby for making it illegal to put you out of business.

I think people underestimate the laziness/complacency of most people / companies, if it works why change it? Any employee has a better chance of being fired for trying to innovate than actually getting rewarded / promoted. Heck I imagine an executive could theoretically also get canned for trying to change the production process if they fail, though I imagine they would just pin it on a middle manager.

Yeah I looked it into a bit recently, and found it very interesting mostly on the basis of production per acre. Are you planning on solar for the home’s energy or some other source? Now that I think about it something like biomass would work quite well as a supplemental energy source for the winter when the sun isn’t out much. If you are going for solar will you have a battery system as well for evenings / winter or are you grid-tieing for that?

Processing the biomass could take some planning if you produce it on a large scale. I ran some rough numbers for total energy production per acre per year for giant miscanthus and it is quite shockingly high. It takes 2-3 years to get established but once it does it is a powerhouse. It can produce 15-20 tons (short) of biomass per acre depending on growing climate/conditions once it is fully established. With 20t/acre, it has a 17 MJ/kg LHV(heat from burning) and it would contain about 85,679 kWh of energy; At 40% electrical conversion efficiency, you can expect around 34,271 kWh of usable electrical energy. That’s enough to power and heat 3-4 houses if you burn it in a CHP power plant.

So you could potentially plant 1/3 - 1/4 acre of a home’s yard and have easily have enough biomass to heat and/or power a home. Definitely could be worth looking into giant miscanthus (wiki link) depending on the area and site. Being a plant, it tends to produce more the warmer the weather is in the area as long as it has sufficient water to grow. At that scale all you would probably need is a scythe, a shed, and a fireplace for heat. A small hay-baler might be nice too, even if not strictly necessary. It may not be as efficient per area as solar but I imagine is a whole lot cheaper.

I also read that with torrefaction it could be a drop-in fuel for existing coal plants which would be stellar from an environmental perspective. I think it would compliment solar well particularly in the winter when you burn excess harvested sun for heat so you could have a battery / fuel usage then for when you can’t produce any energy. Anyway I hope you / someone finds it useful. I hope I didn’t overshare, I feel like I wrote a book lol.

Edit: I’d also be interested in hearing about your planned house. I have read about house building some from an energy use / conservation perspective and found it interesting. Have you read / heard about Passive House’s? I suspect they overlap pretty well with carbon negative housing in general.

I mean it might work with Luigi pic in the background. But we all know that won’t happen.

Good suggestions. Speaking of carbon negative and biogas digesters, have you heard of Giant miscanthus? It is both carbon fixing a great feedstock for biomass energy. It is a lot more productive per area planted than a wood would(heh) be since it is a fast growing perennial grass. It stores a lot of carbon and nutrients in it’s roots which it then reuses to regrow when warmer weather comes.