Last Friday around 50 people gathered on a Singleton farm to hear the industrial hemp opportunities and the results of a trial of the crop on local farms.

Ecofibre’s managing director Phil Warner spoke to an audience of farmers, interest and investment groups and CSIRO representatives and had it not rained, they would have witnessed the ease in which the crop is harvested.

Instead they sat on hay bales in a shed to see some of the miracle products the easily grown crop can produce.

Among them biodegradable pallets, a product that walks out the door faster than it can be made.

Biofibre Ltd executive managing director Laurence Dummett said he didn’t have to sell the product, once people discovered it they switched to it.

“Eighty billion, that’s billion, of these pallets are used a year and 40 billion of them are one way and can’t be disposed of in landfill,” Mr Warner said.

Mr Warner said Australia was working in partnership with Europe to develop technique and technology around the product.

“There are many ways it can be grown and harvested and 1000 ways it can be used,” Mr Warner said.

Mr Warner said one of the biggest issues holding back the industry was public perception.

“It is the community’s uninformed attitude that is the problem, like many plant species there can be 2000 different varieties and 90 per cent of hemp has no drug value,” he said.

“People see hemp as hemp and it’s not,” he said.

The crop is well developed in Europe and is often seen growing in paddocks at the side of the road.

“It is nothing for a family to go for a drive and pull up for a picnic underneath the shade of a cannabis plant,” Mr Warner said.

Now it has been found that commercial quantities of the product is suitable to grow in the Hunter Valley, the next stage will be the commercialisation of the product