Hemp is one of the earliest cultivated crops in human history. Archaeological and textual evidence places its domestication in Asia at least 10,000 years ago, and the plant has been continuously cultivated somewhere in the world ever since.
Archaeological origins (10,000 to 6,000 BCE)
The earliest direct evidence of hemp use is from the Yuanshan archaeological site in Taiwan, where pottery imprinted with hemp cord fragments has been dated to roughly 10,000 BCE. Wild Cannabis sativa was native to Central Asia. The plant likely spread eastward into China, where its use diversified rapidly. By 4,000 BCE, Chinese sites show hemp being used for textile fibre, paper precursor materials, and as food (the seeds were consumed as a grain).
Asia: the original hemp culture (3,000 BCE to 200 BCE)
China developed hemp into a foundational crop. The earliest hemp paper is dated to around 200 BCE in Western China, predating the formal invention of paper by Cai Lun by several centuries. Confucian and Taoist texts reference hemp as one of the "five grains" of ancient Chinese agriculture. Buddhist and Hindu traditions in India developed parallel uses of cannabis, though more often for ritual and medicinal purposes than food.
European adoption (500 BCE to 1500 CE)
Hemp arrived in Europe via trade routes from Asia by 500 BCE. The Greeks and Romans used hemp for rope and sailcloth. Hemp cultivation expanded substantially during the medieval period, driven by demand for ship rigging. By the late medieval period, hemp was the dominant fibre source for European naval and merchant fleets.
The maritime era (1500 to 1850)
From the 16th to mid-19th centuries, hemp was strategically essential to every major naval power. A single 18th-century warship required tens of thousands of pounds of hemp for rigging, sails, and caulking. England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands all imposed mandatory hemp cultivation requirements on colonies and settlers. The British Royal Navy's expansion was supported by hemp imports from the Baltic, Russia, and (later) North America.
Hemp was also central to early colonial America. The Virginia Company required settlers to grow hemp in 1619. Several US states followed with their own mandates. Hemp was used as legal tender for paying taxes in colonial Virginia and Pennsylvania. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and several other Founding Fathers grew hemp commercially.
Decline and criminalisation (1850 to 1937)
Multiple factors converged to undermine the hemp industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:
- Steam ships replaced sail, eliminating the maritime fibre market
- Cotton, mechanised through the cotton gin, became cheaper for textiles
- Wood pulp displaced hemp for paper
- Synthetic fibres (rayon, nylon) emerged in the early 20th century
The 1937 US Marihuana Tax Act effectively criminalised cannabis cultivation by imposing prohibitive taxes and registration requirements. The Act made no distinction between low-THC industrial varieties and high-THC drug varieties. Canada followed with similar legislation. By the mid-20th century, hemp cultivation had effectively ended in both countries.
Brief wartime revival (1942 to 1945)
During World War II, the US government temporarily reversed its hemp prohibition to support fibre needs after the Japanese conquest of the Philippines cut off the Manila hemp (abacá) supply. The "Hemp for Victory" campaign encouraged American farmers to grow hemp under federal contract. Several hundred thousand acres were planted between 1942 and 1945, primarily in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Kentucky. After the war, the prohibition was reinstated and the industry disappeared again within a decade.
Modern revival (1998 onward)
Canada introduced the Industrial Hemp Regulations in 1998, creating the first North American framework for licensed hemp cultivation of low-THC varieties. Canadian acreage grew from a few hundred hectares in 1998 to peaks above 40,000 hectares in the late 2010s. The food hemp industry developed in parallel through the late 1990s and 2000s, with several Canadian companies founded in that window growing into globally significant hemp food producers.
The United States lifted federal hemp prohibition through the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act (Farm Bill), which removed hemp (defined as cannabis with 0.3 percent THC or less) from the Controlled Substances Act. State-level rules vary; some states have embraced hemp cultivation while others remain restrictive.
Europe's hemp industry, never as thoroughly suppressed as North America's, persisted at small scale through the 20th century in France, Germany, and Romania. The European Union raised its industrial hemp THC threshold from 0.2 to 0.3 percent in 2023, aligning with the North American standard.
Where things stand
Global industrial hemp production in 2025 sits at roughly 250,000 to 300,000 hectares, with China still leading by raw acreage, Canada leading in food-grade production, and France leading in fibre production. The industry remains small relative to its historical peak, and small relative to comparable agricultural crops, but is growing in most producing countries.