Julien Hilaire of the Cantate du Chanvre retraces the difficulties encountered by the hemp sector in transforming this plant into a textile.
Hemp is a plant that grows easily but is difficult to harvest. There is a very specific agricultural protocol if we want to cultivate textile hemp, which is different from what farmers have put in place so far. It is not complicated to get your hands on writings about hemp as well as flax but they date back to 2-3 centuries ago.
The problem is that a missing link appeared in the 1950s, when the experienced people you could find along the Loire in Angers f.e retired in the 1980s and were unable to pass on their know-how: on varieties, agriculture and processing.
First of all, a resurgence of the promotion of hemp involves the farmers learning again the right farming methods to process it into textiles.