“Hempcrete” is strong, nontoxic, and highly sustainable.
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
For now, it’s only a gaping hole in the ground, 100-by-100 feet, surrounded by farm machinery and bales of hemp on a sandy patch of earth on the Lower Sioux Indian Reservation in southwestern Minnesota.
But when construction is complete next April, the Lower Sioux—also known as part of the Mdewakanton Band of Dakota—will have a 20,000-square-foot manufacturing campus that will allow them to pioneer a green experiment, the first of its kind in the United States.
They will have an integrated vertical operation to grow hemp, process it into insulation called hempcrete, and then build healthy homes with it. Right now, no one in the US does all three.
Once the tribe makes this low-carbon material, they can begin to address a severe shortage of housing and jobs. Recapturing a slice of sovereignty would be a win for the Lower Sioux, once a largely woodland people who were subjected to some of the worst brutality against the Indigenous nations in North America.
They lost most of their lands in the 19th century, and the territory finally allotted to them two hours south of Minneapolis consists of just 1,743 acres of poor soil. That stands in contrast to the fertile black earth of the surrounding white-owned farmlands.
Nearly half of the 1,124 enrolled members of the tribe need homes. Some of the unhoused camp on the hard ground outside the reservation, with nowhere else to turn. Those who do have shelter live in often moldy, modular homes with flimsy walls that can’t keep out the minus-15 Fahrenheit winter cold.
Now, they have two prototypes that are nearly done and know how to build or retrofit more. While learning how to make the houses, the construction team developed a niche eco-skill they can market off the reservation as well.
“The idea of making homes that would last and be healthy was a no-brainer,” said Robert “Deuce” Larsen, the tribal council president. “We need to build capacity in the community and show that it can be an income stream.”
That one of the smallest tribes in the country, in terms of population and land in trust, is leading the national charge on an integrated hempcrete operation is no mean feat, seeing that virtually no one in the community had experience with either farming or construction before the five-person team was assembled earlier this year.
“It’s fantastic,” said Jody McGuinness, executive director of the Hemp Industries Association. “I haven’t heard of any other fully integrated project like this domestically.”
Besides, hempcrete as a construction material is normally the domain of rich people with means to contract a green home, not marginalized communities. That’s because the sustainable material is normally imported from Europe rather than made locally. “It’s accessible to people with wealth, who can afford to build a bespoke house. It’s not accessible to the general public,” McGuinness said.
