Abstract
Hemp has recently been rediscovered as a novel resource crop in various regions of Japan. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the production characteristic of hemp, and to analyze its energy balance. Evaluation was made by using the data of the hemp farming and the primary processing. The input energy of farming and the primary processing resulted in 11,442MJ/ha and 25,271MJ/ha with the energy profit ratio of 11.7 and 4.8 respectively. The amount of the energy consumption in the primary processing was the largest in all the operation processes. The energy profit ratio of the hemp pellet fuel was 4.2 almost in equilibrium with that of the wood pellet, and showed the possibility of its effective use.
