By: Morris Beegle,
Long fiber, short fiber, staple, blends and why hemp needs more than one route into the textile and materials market
There is a debate running through the hemp textile business that became particularly obvious during the textile events in New York this month which included the NIHC Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit and the Farm to Fabric event by Choose Your Change.
For some people, the gold standard is long-line hemp: textile cultivars grown specifically for fiber, properly retted, scutched and hackled, then processed through systems derived from the linen industry. Done well, it produces exceptional yarn and fabric while preserving qualities that make hemp different from cotton in the first place.
I am a fan of it. I’ve seen excellent long-fiber hemp textiles in Europe and Asia, and there is every reason to build that part of the industry.
Where I part company with the purists is the argument that cottonizing hemp, producing shorter staple fiber or blending hemp with cotton somehow cheapens the crop or sends the industry in the wrong direction.
The question usually comes out something like this:
Why are we trying to make hemp into cotton?
We’re not. We’re trying to make hemp usable across more of the textile and materials industry, including an enormous manufacturing system built around cotton and other short-staple fibers.
We are doing essentially the same thing in other markets.
In paper and packaging, wood pulp is the dominant feedstock and the manufacturing infrastructure has been built around it. The goal isn’t to make hemp into a tree. It’s to process hemp cellulose so it can work within paper, pulp, molded-fiber and packaging systems that already exist.
In plastics and composites, petroleum-based polymers dominate an even larger industrial system. Developing hemp fiber, cellulose, fillers and bio-based compounds that can run through existing extrusion, injection-molding, thermoforming and composite manufacturing equipment isn’t an attempt to make hemp into petroleum. It’s how you give manufacturers another feedstock without asking them to tear out billions of dollars of machinery and start over.
Textiles are no different.
Cotton has generations of infrastructure behind it: harvesting and ginning, fiber standards, spinning systems, mills, machinery, manufacturing knowledge and global supply chains. Making hemp staple fiber compatible with some of that infrastructure is not abandoning what makes hemp different. It’s removing one of the largest barriers to using more of it.
At the same time, compatibility shouldn’t become the only objective. Long hemp fiber has properties that make it valuable precisely because it isn’t cotton, whether that’s in long-line textiles, composites, panels or other engineered materials.
The goal isn’t to force hemp to behave like something else. It’s to understand what hemp does well, process it accordingly and get as much of the plant as possible into markets that already consume enormous volumes of fiber and raw materials.
That’s how hemp gets beyond being a specialty crop.
Put the Market in Perspective
Global fiber production reached approximately 139 million metric tons in 2025, according to Textile Exchange’s newly released 2026 Materials Market Report. That was up another 7 million tonnes from 2024. Textile Exchange
Polyester accounted for 59 percent, or 82.5 million tonnes. Cotton represented another 18 percent, or 25.7 million metric tons. Man-made cellulosic fibers such as viscose, modal and lyocell represented about 7 percent. Animal fibers combined accounted for roughly 1 percent. Textile Exchange
Hemp remains a tiny fraction of the total.
Those numbers put the internal hemp debate in perspective.
The modern textile industry was built to move enormous quantities of relatively standardized fiber through established opening, cleaning, carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing and finishing systems. Cotton has had generations to develop the genetics, farming practices, harvesting equipment, ginning infrastructure, quality standards and machinery required to supply that system.
Modern industrial hemp has had a few years.
The crop spent most of the twentieth century pushed out of mainstream agriculture in the United States and much of the Western world. Those lost decades of infrastructure development don’t magically reappear because hemp is legal again.
We have to build what is missing while taking advantage of infrastructure that already exists.
Understanding Long Fiber
Europe’s flax industry shows what a mature bast-fiber sector can look like.
France, Belgium and the Netherlands produce roughly three-quarters of the world’s long flax fiber, according to the Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp Economic Observatory. European flax acreage has more than doubled during the past decade, scutching capacity continues to expand, and between July 2025 and March 2026 European mills produced at least 142,000 metric tons of certified long flax fiber.
Western European flax acreage is expected to reach roughly 220,000 to 230,000 hectares in 2026, another record.
For hemp, the flax industry provides both a model and existing infrastructure. The Hemp4Circularity project in Northwestern Europe is working to integrate textile hemp into the established flax value chain. Its 2025 textile hemp trials offer a useful look at actual yields, retting, scutching, fiber length and spinning performance rather than theoretical potential.
Long fiber is frequently associated with premium textiles, and properly processed long-line hemp can produce fine, strong yarns and distinctive fabrics.
But long fiber shouldn’t be confused with luxury apparel alone.
Preserving fiber length can also be valuable in composites, automotive components, construction and interior panels, molded products and other engineered materials where hemp and flax fibers provide reinforcement. In those markets, fiber length, orientation and mechanical properties can be more important than whether the material could ever be spun into a shirt.
The new Textile Exchange report gives that side of the discussion additional context. For the first time, the organization estimated global fiber volumes flowing into specific end-use categories. Between 1990 and 2025, technical textiles were the fastest-growing of the three largest end-use categories, with an estimated compound annual growth rate of 4.1 percent, compared with 3.2 percent for home textiles and 2.6 percent for apparel. Textile Exchange’s technical-textile category includes automotive textiles, construction materials, filtration systems, geotextiles, medical products and nonwoven hygiene products. Textile Exchange
Some of the largest future markets for long hemp fiber may have nothing to do with clothing.
Long fiber deserves investment, as does the infrastructure required to grow, harvest, ret, scutch, hackle and process it properly. What doesn’t follow is the idea that long fiber is therefore the only legitimate destination for hemp bast.
Why Staple Fiber Changes the Equation
Cotton fibers are measured in millimeters. Long bast fibers can be measured in meters. That difference has enormous consequences once fiber reaches a mill.
Much of the world’s spinning infrastructure is designed around short staple. If hemp can be processed into clean, consistent fiber that works reliably on those systems, manufacturers gain access to machinery, mills, workers and supply chains that already exist.
This is the practical reason for cottonizing hemp.
Early attempts were often lousy. Cotton Incorporated documented a U.S. trial in which hemp blended with cotton proved too coarse and generated roughly 100 times the acceptable number of yarn breaks during ring spinning. Textile World has covered both those early difficulties and the continuing development of U.S. cottonized hemp.
That kind of performance isn’t commercially useful. It also isn’t proof that cottonized hemp doesn’t work. It is evidence that fiber preparation and consistency determine whether it works.
Processing has continued to improve.
A 2025 study published in Cellulose examined mechanical and chemical cottonization of hemp and its spinning potential, including 100 percent treated hemp and hemp/cotton blends using open-end rotor spinning.
Other recent research has compared hemp/cotton yarns across vortex, ring and rotor spinning systems, while commercial processors continue refining mechanical, enzymatic and combined approaches to remove or reduce lignin, pectin and other non-cellulosic material while improving fineness and consistency.
The useful question today isn’t whether hemp can be chopped short enough to resemble cotton. It is whether processors can repeatedly deliver staple fiber within specifications that mills can run efficiently and brands can buy at commercially realistic prices.
Every improvement that gets hemp closer to those specifications opens another piece of an enormous existing market.
How Much Hemp Can a Mill Actually Use?
Fashion for Good’s Beyond50 Denim project provides a good example of where this work is heading.
The project includes BESTSELLER, C&A, Reformation, Target, PDS Limited, Bossa and Nice Denim, along with fiber-processing companies SEFF and Fibre52. The goal is to push cottonized hemp content beyond the roughly 20 percent level that has historically presented difficulties with spinning, handfeel, appearance and finished-fabric performance.
The target is 50 percent or greater hemp content in denim while maintaining performance comparable with conventional cotton products.
Whether that percentage proves commercially viable across broad product categories remains to be seen. That’s why they’re doing the work.
More telling is who is doing it. These are major brands, manufacturers and technology companies trying to determine how much hemp can move through existing textile infrastructure without sacrificing the qualities consumers expect from the finished product.
A hemp industry capturing even a small percentage of the cotton textile market would be radically larger than the textile hemp industry we have today.
We don’t need every pair of jeans to become 100 percent hemp for that to happen.
Cotton Could Use the Help
Hemp versus cotton is another argument that doesn’t accomplish much.
Cotton is an extraordinary natural fiber. It supports millions of farmers and workers, consumers like it, mills understand it and generations of industrial development have gone into making cotton textiles efficient and affordable.
It also has vulnerabilities.
Cotton production in several important growing regions faces water constraints, drought and extreme heat. Research published in Agricultural Water Management in 2025 examined increasing exposure to compound drought and heat across global cotton-growing regions and the relationship with cotton yield failures.
Cotton isn’t the enemy. Overdependence on a narrow group of raw materials is the problem.
Agriculture works better with rotations and diversity. Supply chains benefit from multiple sources of raw material. Textile companies increasingly need options that can reduce pressure on existing fiber systems without requiring them to abandon the equipment and manufacturing knowledge they already have.
Hemp can help fill that role.
If a pair of jeans can be made with 30 percent hemp and 70 percent cotton without sacrificing durability, comfort or price competitiveness, less cotton is required for that particular fiber blend.
Multiply modest percentages across denim, workwear, canvas, footwear, upholstery, knitwear and home textiles and the potential volume becomes substantial.
Hemp doesn’t have to replace cotton. It can work alongside it.
The U.S. Piece Is Getting More Interesting
USDA’s Economic Research Service published a new U.S. Hemp Fiber Market Outlook on September 15 as a special article in its September Cotton and Wool Outlook. Economic Research Service
American acreage harvested for hemp fiber increased from fewer than 7,000 acres in 2022 to nearly 22,000 acres in 2025. Utilized production climbed from roughly 20 million pounds to approximately 65 million pounds during the same period.
USDA now describes hemp as the second-largest U.S. agricultural fiber product by production volume behind cotton.
That second-place ranking requires some context because the gap between cotton and hemp remains enormous. But the direction is encouraging.
The United States also doesn’t have to invent an entire textile industry before hemp can participate. Cotton spinning knowledge, textile research, mills and downstream manufacturing remain in place, particularly in the Southeast.
The challenge is connecting American hemp agriculture and processing to that infrastructure with fiber those mills can actually use.
Textile World’s reporting on the development of the U.S. hemp textile industry provides a useful look at that challenge, including the work around retting, decortication, degumming, fiber consistency and matching different grades of hemp fiber with appropriate end uses.
Companies including Panda Biotech, Bear Fiber, BastCore, IND HEMP and others are working on different pieces of the equation, from genetics and farming through decortication, refining, cottonization and finished-product development.
At the same time, other companies are pursuing nonwoven materials, building products, composites and industrial applications that require entirely different fiber specifications.
A real fiber industry won’t be built around one perfect product. It needs multiple grades, customers and markets.
Blends Aren’t Second-Class Textiles
There is a strange notion within parts of the hemp community that a 100 percent hemp textile is inherently more legitimate than a blend.
Textile manufacturers have blended fibers for generations because different fibers bring different characteristics to a finished product.
Wool contributes warmth, elasticity and resilience. Cotton provides softness and well-developed spinning characteristics. Hemp offers strength, durability and absorbency. Flax has its own hand and performance characteristics. Lyocell can contribute softness, drape and moisture management.
A good blend uses those differences.
Hemp/cotton is one combination. Hemp/wool is another. So are hemp/lyocell, hemp/flax, hemp/recycled cotton and combinations that haven’t reached meaningful commercial production yet.
The percentages will vary according to the product, equipment, fiber quality, price and performance requirements.
A 30 percent hemp textile doesn’t need to apologize for not being 100 percent hemp. If it performs well, sells, creates demand for hemp acreage and reduces demand for another raw material, it has earned its place in the market.
Bamboo, Lyocell and the Broader Fiber Mix
Bamboo frequently gets included in discussions of natural textiles, although the terminology has become muddled by years of marketing.
Most material sold casually as “bamboo fabric” isn’t mechanically extracted bamboo bast fiber. It is regenerated cellulose, usually viscose or rayon, produced using bamboo as the cellulose feedstock.
The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance on bamboo textiles requires manufacturers selling these products in the United States to identify them accordingly rather than simply labeling the textile “bamboo.”
Lyocell belongs to the broader regenerated-cellulosic family, although its manufacturing process differs significantly from conventional viscose.
These distinctions are worth making because the future fiber market isn’t going to divide neatly into “natural” and “synthetic,” any more than hemp will divide neatly into long and short fiber.
There is cotton grown under different agricultural systems. Hemp and flax processed through different mechanical and chemical routes. Wool with its own performance characteristics and agricultural footprint. Regenerated cellulose made from wood, bamboo and other feedstocks. Recycled natural and synthetic fibers. New bio-based materials. And, for the foreseeable future, a tremendous amount of polyester.
Manufacturers ultimately have a practical question to answer: What material gives this product the performance, cost, durability and supply security it requires?
Hemp needs to be able to answer that question in more than one way.
Farmers Grow Stalks, Not Shirts
A commercially healthy hemp fiber industry cannot depend on selling one perfect grade of bast fiber into one premium market.
Farmers grow stalks, not shirts.
Processors have to deal with everything that arrives at the facility. Fiber quality and length vary. Decortication and refining create different grades and fractions. The hurd has value. Fines have potential markets. Different fiber specifications are better suited to different manufacturing processes.
The economics improve when more of that material has somewhere profitable to go.
The longest, cleanest fibers may move toward long-line textiles or high-performance reinforcement applications. Other bast fiber may become cottonized staple. Different grades can supply nonwovens, insulation, composites, automotive materials, construction products and panels. Hurd can move into building materials, animal bedding, biocomposites, paper and other products.
Trying to force all hemp fiber toward a single idealized application leaves value on the floor.
The better question is: What is the highest and best use for each fraction of the plant?
That is how a commodity develops multiple markets instead of remaining dependent on one.
One Percent Would Be Enormous
At 139 million metric tons, today’s global fiber market is difficult to comprehend from inside the hemp business. Textile Exchange
One percent would equal roughly 1.39 million metric tons of fiber annually.
Two percent would approach 2.78 million metric tons.
And the overall market is still expanding. Textile Exchange’s previous Materials Market Report projected global fiber production could reach approximately 169 million tonnes by 2030 if business continues as usual. That projection comes from the 2025 report, while the new 2026 report establishes the updated 2025 baseline of 139 million tonnes. Textile Exchange
Hemp doesn’t need to dominate that market to become a major agricultural commodity, nor does all of that growth need to come from apparel.
Long-line textiles can grow. Cottonized hemp can move into mainstream spinning systems. Long technical fiber can reinforce composites and panels. Shorter fibers can supply nonwovens and insulation. Hemp can be blended with cotton, wool, flax, lyocell and recycled materials.
The opportunities aren’t interchangeable, and neither are the specifications required to serve them.
That’s the point.
Match the Fiber to the Job
Nearly three-fifths of global fiber production is polyester, and the new Textile Exchange data shows 88 percent of polyester produced in 2025 was virgin fossil-based material. Cotton occupies another enormous share of the market while facing agricultural and climate pressures in important growing regions. Textile Exchange
Against that backdrop, arguing about whether long-line hemp is more authentic than cottonized hemp is a remarkably small fight.
There is room for a beautiful 100 percent long-line hemp shirt made in Japan or Europe. There is room for American cottonized hemp in denim and workwear. There is room for hemp blended with wool, cotton, flax, lyocell and recycled fibers. There is room for long hemp fiber reinforcing an automotive panel or replacing a portion of fiberglass in a composite.
These aren’t competing definitions of hemp. They’re markets.
The same principle applies well beyond textiles. We don’t need hemp to become wood before it can enter paper and packaging. We don’t need hemp to become petroleum before its fibers and cellulose can enter plastics and composites. And we certainly don’t need hemp to become cotton before it can become a meaningful part of the textile industry.
We need materials that work with the manufacturing systems we have while building new systems where hemp’s own properties justify them.
Farmers need profitable acres. Processors need multiple outlets for what comes through their facilities. Mills need fiber that runs. Manufacturers need predictable materials. Brands need products consumers actually want.
Build the long-fiber supply chain. Improve cottonized staple. Develop better blends. Expand composites, panels, nonwovens and technical applications. Keep improving genetics, harvesting, retting, decortication, refining and spinning.
Then match the fiber to the job.
Hemp doesn’t need to become cotton.
It needs the chance to work alongside cotton, flax, wool, lyocell, wood, petroleum-based materials and the rest of the modern materials market, replacing a little here, complementing something there and opening entirely new markets where it makes sense.
