As a teenager growing up in rural Devon, Andrew Jones ‘couldn’t wait to get away’, he recalls with a laugh. Some 30 years later, with a successful career in banking under his belt, including working in Hong Kong and Singapore, he wanted nothing more than to ‘get back to my rural beginnings’. So in 2017 he returned to England and did a post-graduate diploma in agriculture at the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) at Cirencester.
‘I found myself looking at alternative crops and the challenges that were facing farmers, the environment and consumers,’ he says. ‘Towards the end of my career in Asia, I had founded a solar company in India with a partner there, which we exited in 2022. So, I [already] had a history and interest in sustainable businesses.’
In 2020, after much research, Andrew founded Fibra, which aims to partner with growers to unlock the potential of industrial hemp as an economically viable, climate- and nature-friendly break crop and source of natural, low-carbon fibre. The company’s first hemp straw processor, which it designed and had made specially, has been installed in a partnership deal at Guiting Manor Farms. The state-of-the-art facility is unique in the Cotswolds.
‘In China and Europe the hemp industry is very well developed compared with the UK, which currently lacks growers and processing facilities,’ Andrew says. Yet hemp offers an environmentally friendly natural fibre alternative to synthetics like polyester, as well as a replacement for other natural fibres like cotton whose production is high in water and chemical inputs, not to mention transport miles to markets. From housing, construction, clothing, healthcare and horticulture, to the aerospace and automotive industries: there is a vast array of outlets for using milled hemp straw products, he says.
Fibra aims to establish a locally grown industrial hemp network by offering farmers ‘a turnkey solution’: discussing with them how hemp might be integrated as a break crop into their farming regime, sourcing registered seed suited to their ground conditions (hemp grows on most soils), and guaranteeing a price for their crop, which will be processed at the mill at Guiting Manor Farms.
Fibra also gives support through the Home Office licence application process, which has recently been relaxed so that hemp can be grown anywhere on a licensed farm – hemp straw, while it is a variety of cannabis, has so little THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) that it ‘has no psycho-active value to anyone,’ Andrew points out.
Andrew (who grows hemp on his farm between Chippenham and Marlborough, and has already recruited some other growing partners) sees great potential for arable farmers in the Cotswolds to take up the crop. Guiting Manor Farms, now in its second year of growing, is leading the way.
Balancing food production, managing climate change and maintaining biodiversity while being economically viable is a huge challenge for farmers, says Nick Bumford, Farms Director at Guiting Manor Farms. Careful thought goes into which crop rotations will perform best and keep the farms’ soil – ranging from clay to Cotswold brash – in good health. There are many benefits from growing hemp, he says:
‘We plant the hemp at the very end of April and it is in the ground for about a hundred days. It sequesters between ten and 16 tonnes of carbon per hectare per annum, in those hundred days, which is massive. The hemp will [also] condition and improve the soil – that is scientifically proven.’ No pesticides are applied and there is just one application of fertilizer.
Growing up to eight feet tall, with cane-like stalks, palmate leaves and small, greenish-yellow flowers, hemp plants are cut in August and left to ‘rett’ in the field (allowing bacteria, moisture, sun and air to separate stem material from fibre). Baling takes place in September and bales are taken to the mill, freeing up the field to go into another arable crop.
‘Last year we planted 40ha [with hemp]; this year it was 44ha. We are aiming for [harvests of] six to seven tonnes of hemp per hectare,’ Nick says. ‘We are farming about 700ha of arable [and] the plan is to increase our areas [of hemp] and rotate around the farm.’ The added variety of using hemp as a break crop (particularly since the neonicotinoid seed treatment ban has made growing oilseed rape more challenging) should benefit both other break-crop and cereal yields, Nick says.
When Andrew first approached Nick to see if Guiting Manor Farms would partner as a hemp grower with Fibra – he had remembered the farm from a field trip with RAU – it was Nick who suggested that one of their modern grain stores could be available to house Fibra’s hemp processor. Andrew leapt at the chance, not least because the site’s generation and use of solar power enhances the credentials of ‘a very environmentally robust crop, processed in a very environmentally robust way’. The impressive processor installation project, costing around £1 million, won a Defra-funded Farming in Protected Landscapes grant of £239,225 – allocated by the Cotswolds National Landscape team.
At full capacity, the decortication facility can process 10,000–12,000 tonnes of hemp straw per year. Decortication involves milling the hemp into three distinct products: bast fibre (the outside of the plant); hurd (the woody core); and dust. Bast can be cottonized and blended with other natural fibres, to use in healthcare products and textiles; hurd can be used in construction including bio-composites and insulation; dust can be pelletised for biomass energy. To name just a few uses. Andrew adds:
‘There are a number of companies now operating in the UK that are building sustainable housing projects using hemp, not just for the production of insulation but also for entire cassettes for modular construction.’
Fibra is looking to partner with more hemp growers in the Cotswolds, to build supply and demand in parallel. Through discussions with manufacturers, Andrew knows that production at scale is wanted and needed, and ultimately he aims to create a network of mills with local supply chains across the south of England and then nationally. With agricultural, political, environmental and consumer interests all coming together in the desire for economically viable, sustainable products, he feels the time is right: ‘The world of natural fibre is seeing a renaissance.’
Find out more about Fibra at https://fibra.bio
For more info on Guiting Manor Farms, visit www.guitingmanorfarms.co.uk
