Building with hemp in Germany

It might sound crazy, but when you look for a house made from hemp in Germany, you won’t find one. Although Germany is Europe’s leading country concerning sustainability nobody managed to build a house from hemp. The question that arises is: why? The answer is difficult to find.

A hemp build house in Oude Pekala (The Netherlands) Photo: Dagblad van het Noorden

It is not the law neither culture. Since 1997 it has been legal to grow industrial hemp in Germany. Farmers and businessman alike used this opportunity. Till 2006 the numbers of hemp fields grew steadily. In 2006 about 1.356 Ha. was grown by 214 companies. In 2014 that number shrunk to 100 companies and 715 Ha. It is striking that the withdrawal of a EU subsidy in 2012 hardly influences the growing of industrial hemp. The number of companies involved in the hemp game remained steady at about a hundred since 2011. In 2014 there combined crop grew with about 300 Ha. So it seems that 17 years of legalized hemp growing in Germany has lead to a 100 farmers growing it with success. 

In spite of the ending of European subsidies it is fair to state that the political will to turn hemp into a success is present. In 2013 Hock GmbH & Co’s president Carmen Hock-Heyl received the ‘Deutscher Umwelt Preis’ for her product insulation mats. These are hemp based insulation panels. And all tough the video made for the award ceremony contains the inevitable joke about smoking the product the cultural barrier to grow and sell hemp seems absent. The packaging of the insulation material show the five fingered leave with pride.  

The lacking of a hemp based house can’t be explained from a lack of production either. Besides of the insulation mats from Hock there are numerous other company’s  that produce building material made of hemp. One of them is Hanffaser Übermarck. A processing plant where farmers bring there crop. Here the plant is turned into raw materials for a number of products. Ranging from building block to insulation and from door panel used in the automotive industry tot humidity controlling mortar.     

Looking for German’s first hemp house is researching pointes that are few and wide across. Connecting them gives to little information to give birth to a pattern which in the end will lead to building a house from hemp. German cellars are moist free due to hemp. The plant keeps German attics warm in winter and cold in summer. German kids are playing on hemp floors. So the answers to why there is no hemp house in Germany is easy. Nobody ever build one or the sustainable explorer that build it never took the effort to share his work with the world.