History of hemp in France: from 176,000 hectares to 632

A genomic study published in 2021 in Science Advances compared 110 plants from around the world. According to its authors, Cannabis sativa was domesticated in East Asia in the early Neolithic. Every current variety, whether grown for fibre or as a drug, descends from a single gene pool that still survives in feral plants and local landraces in China.

Europe grew hemp mainly for fibre and seed. FranceAgriMer, the French agricultural products agency, notes that the plant supplied textile fibre for the sailing navy (ropes, sails) and for clothing, along with its seeds. Today the word "hemp" means industrial varieties low in THC, and our article on the differences between hemp and recreational cannabis explains the distinction.

By 1661, Louis XIV's fleet had shrunk to about thirty ships in poor condition, and Colbert was given the task of rebuilding it. At Rochefort, the naval intendant Colbert de Terron decided on 25 March 1666 to build the ropeworks, which became the first building of the new arsenal.

According to the educational file of the Corderie Royale, the building is 378 metres long, since laying very long hemp cables (twisting the strands together) took a great deal of room. Bales of hemp came in by sea or by river and were combed, spun and laid into ropes. The ropeworks closed in 1862, once steel cables had replaced hemp on ships.

In 1961 the geographer Jeanne Dufour traced this decline in L'Information géographique, in an article whose title leaves no doubt: "A dying crop: French hemp". Hemp covered roughly 176,000 ha in 1840 and still over 100,000 in 1862. The area then dropped to 26,000 ha in 1900 and 12,500 in 1914. It stayed between 2,000 and 3,000 ha until 1953, before falling to 935 ha in 1959 and 632 ha in 1960.

By the late 1950s, only a few pockets of the crop remained. Sarthe, for a long time the leading hemp department, had 47% of the area in 1960, and the Loire between Les Ponts-de-Cé and Ancenis had 42%. On the eve of the 1939 war, Le Mans had been chosen to host the national interprofessional hemp committee. Hemp still covered 38.7% of the arable land on the island of Béhuard, near Angers.

The causes are well documented. The FranceAgriMer sector sheet lists the arrival of motor ships, followed by cotton and synthetic fibres in textiles. The fibre lost its two main outlets, the sailing navy and textiles, at almost the same time.

The international prohibition of cannabis might have wiped out farm hemp. Instead, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs exempted it in so many words: under its article 28, the Convention "shall not apply to the cultivation of the cannabis plant exclusively for industrial purposes (fibre and seed) or horticultural purposes".

Separating the fibre plant from the drug plant let a small sector survive. According to FranceAgriMer, French breeding turned to varieties rich in fibre and low in THC. How these varieties are registered and checked is explained in our article on the European variety catalogue.

For thirty years, French law permitted only fibre and seeds. The order of 22 August 1990 limited the growing, import and industrial use of hemp to those two parts of the plant. On 19 November 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union called that framework into question with the Kanavape ruling. Under that ruling, a member state may not ban CBD lawfully produced in another member state from the whole plant. Our article on the Kanavape ruling follows its reasoning.

The order of 30 December 2021 repealed the 1990 text and set the ceiling at 0.30% Δ⁹-THC. It kept a ban on selling raw flowers, which the Conseil d'État struck down on 29 December 2022. Our article on the legal THC level in France explains the current threshold.

Hemp area is rising again. FranceAgriMer counts 4,000 ha in 1990 and 19,500 ha in 2022, worked by more than 1,500 growers, and ranks France third in the world behind China and Canada. In the Eurostat database, updated on 10 September 2026, France had 22,930 ha in 2025 out of 37,830 ha in the EU, which is 61%.

French hemp is still mostly an industrial crop. The FranceAgriMer sheet, based on InterChanvre figures, says the fibres go into paper (50%), insulation (29%), and plastics and textiles (10% each). The hurds, the woody core of the stem, end up as animal bedding (51%), mulch (28%) and building materials (20%). The flower makes up only 5% of the uses listed, and it goes to the pharmaceutical industry. Our report on hemp area in Europe breaks these series down by country.

For this sector, CBD sold in shops as flowers or resins is a recent outlet, and the one under the tightest rules.

The two classifications by ANSM, in 2023 for HHC and in 2024 for other derivatives, concern semi-synthetic molecules and leave hemp growing and CBD untouched. They are covered in detail in our article on the HHC timeline.