What would give you more pulp - an acre of hemp or an acre of pine trees?

Question

What would give you more pulp - an acre of hemp or an acre of pine trees?

Answer 1

Hemp produces 3 to 4 times the amount of dry fiber/acre/year than pine trees.  Read the link below.  Also consider kenaf as a source of fiber to make paper.  The second link below.

http://mojo.calyx.net/~olsen/HEMP/IHA/ih...

http://www.visionpaper.com/

Answer 2

i would imagine an acre of pine trees would give you more...BUT, once you cut those trees, it will take years to get that same crop again, whereas hemp could be regrown in a fraction of the time...so in the long haul, you could harvest more from the hemp.

Answer 3

Hemp.  If I recall, hemp produces 20 dry tons per acre per year of cellulosic material, harvested twice per year in experimental plots in Hawaii.  Pine is 15 average dry tons per year, over 20 years.

Answer 4

Flax in the old days.  Now we use petrochemicals instead to make sail-cloth and how many acres of flax would we need to make a barrel of oil would be the next question.

Answer 5

You left a few elements out of your equation.  Time, and whether or not the acre of pine trees is "old growth" or farmed.

The old rule of thumb came from Lester Deweys report to the USDA in his 1914 report which said that one acre of hemp will produce 4 times the cellulose of an old growth forest.  Since that time, "managed forests" where trees are planted close together and cared for like a farm crop will slightly outproduce hemp on an annualized basis.

The person who mentioned 20 tonnes per acre in Hawaii, Joe A, is way off the mark.  He recalls incorrectly.  

I was there.  It barely yielded anything and was shut down by the DEA before the crop matured.

Answer 6

The hemp of course,  it will grow faster and closer together than pine would, yeilding more pulp over a shorter time than pine.

Answer 7

hemp renews faster...

it also has other uses

Answer 8

Pine trees!!!!!

Answer 9

the hemp would give more pulp.  the advantages of pine trees are  they grow to become products much more valuable than the pulp.  the pulp is more of a by product, on the way to producing lumber, utility poles, plywood, etc.  the pine trees can grow on steep sites,  poorer soil sites,  difficult to access sites.

the pulpwood from pine utilizes the undesirable (twisted, deformed, forked,  poor performing) trees.  all of the mills and loggers are already equipped to process pine.  converting to hemp would be expensive.

i dont know about  how the quality of the paper compares.

Answer 10

An acre vof trees.