i doubt that that is the case in every country. Hemp textiles have been around for hundreds of years. A country like India with it's own agricultural production of hemp and it's own textile industry should have a high percentage of hemp clothing if it is as good and practical as claimed.
Thousands. Are you thinking there must be something wrong with it, because it's not more common than it is? Price is probably the biggest factor from the consumer point of view.
How do you know it doesn't? I've never been there. I don't know. But I'll bet India, like the U.S., has entrenched industry that fights tooth and claw to keep competitors down. And as Hyo points out, processing hemp requires different machinery than cotton, and therefore there are start-up investment costs, which means convincing a bank that there will be a market for something different. (Not new in the historical sense, but new to today's consumers.)
Henry Ford created a car using hemp. HEMP PLASTICS ROOM - THE USA HEMP MUSEUM Let me be clear, cotton subsidies aren't bad because they hurt hemp sales, they are bad because they are a big government solution that creates problems instead of solves them. Having some industries demonize hemp to get the government to remove their competition is only a small part of it. The current agriculture instead of saving family farms has helped kill them. The subsidies make farm land more valuable and big agri-business more profitable, so they buy the land, and new farmers can not afford to get started. The super rich like ted turner have pocketed millions of dollars from far subsidies. There are people living in suburban homes that get rice subsidies for their lawns, because historically the land they live on once had rice. Corn subsidies force us to put ethanol blends in our cars and make our country fatter. Environmentally the extra land cultivated by corporate farming and the subsidy system produces more homogeneous planting reducing diversity and increasing the possibility of massive crop failure. Current practices of pesticide and fertilizer use also scar the environment.
I have been there, although I wasn't on a hemp truthiness mission. There is hemp textile production there (Indian made hemp goods were available on the open market) but it didn't appear to be a major part of their textile industry. Looking at the process to get usable hemp fibers out of the hemp stalks while leaving the unusable fibers behind look like it would cost more than getting usable cotton fiber. That is not to say that when all is considered hemp isn't a better fiber for some textiles, but sometimes reality bites. Some trivia: The word Canvas comes from Cannabis from back in the olden days when ships sails were made of hemp.
Around here, many of the planters who have not given up growing cotton own the Cotton Gin to separate it. (Planters without a gin switched to corn, soybeans, rice or catfish) If you wanted to subsidize getting out of the cotton business, you would allow the growers to depreciate the gin on their taxes, so they could get out of the cotton growing business without being stuck with a dead cotton refining business. Cotton gin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [ame="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=US-49E+S&daddr=US-49E+S&geocode=FapsAQIdXzqe-g%3BFclhAQId-j2e-g&hl=en&mra=pr&sll=33.64451,-90.299571&sspn=0.011522,0.022724&ie=UTF8&ll=33.644849,-90.292704&spn=0.011522,0.022724&z=16&layer=c&cbll=33.644564,-90.29259&panoid=UaXsVp56Dn77u4p9fnBmxw&cbp=12,279.76,,0,5"]http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=US-49E+S&daddr=US-49E+S&geocode=FapsAQIdXzqe-g%3BFclhAQId-j2e-g&hl=en&mra=pr&sll=33.64451,-90.299571&sspn=0.011522,0.022724&ie=UTF8&ll=33.644849,-90.292704&spn=0.011522,0.022724&z=16&layer=c&cbll=33.644564,-90.29259&panoid=UaXsVp56Dn77u4p9fnBmxw&cbp=12,279.76,,0,5[/ame] Cotton Modules in front of a Cotton Gin 'near' me. One of only two working gins I pass by in my most common 55 mile 'commute', two more are abandoned, due to lack of cotton.
"1793: Eli Spitney invents cotton gin and chokes on the threads." [I don't remember where that comes from. Maybe Mad Magazine 45 - 50 years ago. Odd, the things you remember.]
In the US, the cotton gin was an important invention because of the cotton that could be grown here. There are other varieties of the plant in which the seeds didn't pose such a problem. Whitney may have been cursed like Gatling. He had hoped that the gin would have reduced the need for the ownership of slaves by reducing the work load of cotton production. Instead it just allowed the South increase cotton production beyond personal and local use to exports.
