Local innovator finds new uses for hemp
The hemp craze that seized the imagination of Kern’s ag industry four years ago may have worn off, but a local transplant from New York is making another, equally ambitious run at it from a whole different angle.
Inside a 20,000-squarefoot factory in Shafter that was originally designed to produce cement, inveterate tinkerer Ronald Voit is turning hemp fiber into strong but lightweight construction materials — drywall and two-by-fours — unlike anything else on the market.
His product has almost nothing to do with the CBD market that in 2019 made Kern County California’s hemp capital. That is, he values the product not for its oil or its cannabidiol but its hurd, which is the stalk material that historically has been a waste byproduct that farmers would till back into their soil after harvest.
His company, Foreverboard, has attracted enough interest, Voit says, that supply poses a bigger challenge for him than demand. Now, as he gears up formal materials testing later this month, he is working to round up money from investors for construction of another manufacturing plant near Sacramento and, potentially, additional installations around the country.
Hemp has long been recognized for the strength of its fiber, which made the boom-to-bust CBD market something of an irony. The plant used to be grown for rope, but in recent years past it was prized more as non-psychoactive cannabis alternative that many believe has medicinal properties.
When demand for CBD failed to meet expectations, prices dropped and a new
crop of Kern growers took losses. Kern Ag Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser said local production dropped from more than 10,000 acres to, now, fewer than 1,000.
Farmers seem to have “really put the cart before the horse,” he said, adding that there may eventually be a stronger market for hemp fiber.
Voit’s central pitch, apart from Foreverboard’s light weight and strength, is that his whitish aggregate is superior to gypsum and wood because it is not combustible or susceptible to mold and insects will not eat it.
In a sense, the company’s secret lies not in hemp fiber — cotton works about as well, he said — but in the magnesium oxide he uses in place of petroleum-based compounds used in domestic construction materials.
The idea is that, while conventional drywall holds moisture in a way that can promote mold, organic material treated with magnesium oxide releases water molecules in the form of
vapor, much the way old buildings in Asia and Europe have for centuries.
George Swanson, a building biologist based in Austin, Texas, who has collaborated with Voit, said use of magnesium oxide-based construction actually dates back millennia to ancient China and the Great Wall itself.
He said he persuaded Voit years ago to quit incorporating styrofoam beads in his drywall, and that since he did, Swanson has used Foreverboard’s drywall for construction of homes for people sensitive to petrochemicals.
Hemp hurd is an attractive, unique material free of sugars, acids or oils, Swanson said. There remain market challenges, he said, but eventually hemp as a construction material could catch on in the U.S. building industry.
“Right now, for building materials, nobody’s ordering enough bulk to stabilize the markets,” Swanson said. “They will in the future, for sure.”