Italian designer Giorgio Armani starts cultivating hemp. His company will take part in a consortium of farmers, seed producers and industrialists. This consortium will restart the hemp cultivation in the Italian countryside forgotten since decades.
At the end of the sixties hemp was substituted by artificial fibers, but due to a revival of natural fiber, hemp production has been restarted.
Besides that they are able to cultivate the hemp without pesticides, so the textiles will be environmentally sound. That's why Armani has already started using hemp for his collections, imported from France.
The project starts this year with sowing 200 hectares near the city of Ferrara, Italy. They will also build a factory for refraction of the hemp, necessary for further processing. That factory will have a capacity of a 1000 hectare production target for next year. This amount will be the production limit due to restrictions of the Italian government.:
