19/08/2026
We were curious about how h**p is coping with this unusual heatwave, so we visited the place where our material starts its journey: the h**p field. Specifically, the Hanfland Hanfprodukte h**p fields around St. Pölten, just 46 km from our production site.
Even with extremely low rainfall and no additional irrigation, the h**p fields were still looking lush green and only limited stress was observable. H**p can establish complete ground cover within just a few weeks, shading the soil and reducing water loss and it can develop a very long root system that can reach up to 2.5 m in depth, with taproots even deeper.
A little different from the previous season was that the male plants were almost completely dried up, as they started producing pollen already in the middle of June and all of it had already been released. Male plants drying up in the field is a normal phenomenon, but it usually happens a few weeks later.
The real outcome and performance will only be possible to assess after the harvest and we will try to compare it to other crops. We don’t want to spread extraordinary claims: under severe water and heat stress, h**p suffers too, but depending on the variety, it can outperform many other crops.
In a three-year European field study, reducing irrigation by 50% resulted in a 29.9% reduction in seed yield with a specific variety and this variety could be developed further to achieve greater heat resistance. So, as European summers get hotter, resilience is about understanding which crops can still perform well under increasingly imperfect conditions and still bring significant harvest quantities.
That matters beyond agriculture. This field is the beginning of our material supply chain. And if we want to build more with renewable resources, we also need to understand how reliably we can grow them under the climate conditions ahead. The lucky thing is that h**p seems to be among the better-performing ones.
