FarmED is one of 22 partners across the UK working with the Centre for High Carbon Capture Cropping.
That is a £6m, four-year research project sponsored by government agency Innovate UK looking at how crops like hemp can improve the soil, help farmers diversify and tackle climate change.
To demonstrate the crop’s potential, a barn is being built with hempcrete and hemp blocks in the walls, hempboard for internal walls and hemp fibre for insulation.
Wilkinson said: “This is a win-win crop. We just have to develop markets… so there will be a demand for it, so farmers can grow it.”
“It doesn’t need much in the way of inputs, it suppresses weeds so it doesn’t need much herbicide and it hardly needs any fertiliser.”
Architect Tim Tasker said using hemp products in house building locks away carbon compared with traditional, carbon-intensive building products.
“It takes two to three acres of hemp to build a four to five bedroom family house.
“That is grown within a season – within three months. If you were to plant spruce trees on that same acreage… it would take 25 years,” he added.