How the Australian Bushfires Affected our Crop

On the day we planted our hemp crop (November the 8 we looked out over the horizon and saw a huge pillar of smoke rising into the sky.

I remember thinking to myself "Why are they burning the Cane fields today ? Turns out that was the start of the Australian bushfire crisis."

For the next 2 months life was a wild ride. Our family was evacuated from our house by the police force. We had to draw a map and stick it on our front door to show the fire fighters where the water tanks and taps were located and to let them know that we had left the house so that they didn't waste time looking for us in a bushfire hazard.

On that particular day the map looked like this ;

For many weeks the smoke stretched all the way from the skies of the northern rivers to Sydney, even all the way down to Melbourne. Over a million hectares of forest burned and over half a billion animals were wither burned or displaced.

This crop was planted in the day the fires started and suffered terribly as a result of smoke inhalation and poor light quality for an extended period of time. As you can see the plants have gone to seed extremely early to try to escape the fires !

These poor little darlings were severely stunted by the Australian bushfires. As hemp is such a a light sensitive plant it just never received the light that it needed throughout the crop.

The bushfires also occurred in one of the worst droughts in history where everything was already starving for water.

The bushfire crisis started back in november but is only now slowing to a halt in february due to long awaited rains! Fingers are crossed that the drought is broken but nobody is sure yet. 

Respect to everybody who fought the fires and donated to the bushfire fundraisers!

By the way, we believe that growing hemp on mass is the #carbon sequestering solution to the bushfire crisis !!  

Stay tuned for more updates soon.

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#bushfire #hemp  #bushfiresaustralia #bushfires #bushfiresnsw #bushfireaustralia #bushfirecrisis

 

To see how growing hemp links into our broader carbon offset program please click here;

BROADLEAF HEMP CARBON SEQUESTRATION & EMISSIONS REDUCTION INITIATIVE