A collective of farmers met on a former hemp farm site this month to launch a mass civil disobedience campaign to legalise growing hemp without a licence.

The campaign to legalise growing hemp aims to increase the amount of crop grown by UK farmers for use as food, CBD products, manufacturing and construction materials. After launching the campaign this month, the collective Liberate Hemp is inviting the public to join them on 18 June for a ‘mass grow’ in Bristol.

Despite the World Health Organisation saying that industrial hemp poses no public health risk, the growing of hemp is legally treated in the same way as growing high THC cannabis and is only permitted under a licence granted by the Drugs and Firearms unit at the Home Office. This means that even hemp plants grown for health, construction and manufacturing purposes are subject to a strict licensing regime, regardless of THC content.

In addition to the public mass hemp planting in Bristol on 18 June, Liberate Hemp is asking the public to openly grow a hemp plant at home explaining their personal motivations for doing so on social media and fixing signs in their gardens calling to legalise growing hemp.

Zena Winterbottom is the former production coordinator at Hempen, a hemp farm that was forced to destroy its crop mid-season in 2019. After Hempen ran out of traditional legal avenues to challenge government hemp policy Winterbottom left so that she could be free to take part in civil disobedience for full access to the hemp plant without jeopardising the business.

“Hemp is an amazing economic and ecological lifeline for UK farming but the licensing regime makes it really difficult to grow and produce it here. Instead, the government seems to want us to import from places with supportive hemp policies like Switzerland, France and China,” Winterbottom said.

“Like Hempen, farmers that have tried to do everything by the book and have been punished for it by being denied a licence without good reason,” she added. “One farmer was denied a renewal of his licence because his farm was near a nuclear weapons facility and another because it was near a bed and breakfast.

“Hemp is too important for the health of the nation, the health of our communities and the health of our planet to wait for the government to explain why they have criminalised growing it. As a movement we can do things that businesses can’t. We are going to start growing it at home and if that’s wrong they can prosecute us and justify themselves in court.”