EU-backed hemp farming project launched in Co Clare

The one-year experiment seeks to investigate how growing hemp on local farm land could improve soil quality and benefit biodiversity

Laura Foley, lead for the project, said that hemp ‘has the potential to solve many of our environmental challenges in a way that is economically beneficial to farming communities’. Picture: Debbie Hickey

An EU-backed trial project to plant hemp on farmland in western Ireland in a bid to improve soil quality and biodiversity was launched this week in west Clare.

Loop Head Together, a community-based, local development and farming forum based on the Loop Head Peninsula in west Clare, launched the “Hemp4Soil” initiative, a European Innovation Project (EIP). The project is funded by the EU Recovery Instrument Funding under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2022.

The one-year project ...