*Documentary makers Blair Johnson (l) and Linda Royal (r) pose in front of The Triangle, a hempcrete housing complex, with with British television presenter Kevin McLeod, host of Grand Designs.*

Bringing It Home, the hemp building documentary, was ahead of its time at its 2013 release, before the 2014 Farm Bill when growing hemp in the United States was still illegal. Co-producer Linda Royal tells the story of introducing hemp building to the United States.

By Linda Royal (formerly Linda Booker)

My friend and cinematographer Blaire Johnson and I had both completed the certificate program at The Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University by 2005. Blaire wanted to make a documentary film on hemp for years but I wasn’t as excited about the subject as she was.

It wasn’t until 2010 when I picked up a USA Today and saw a feature story about the nation’s first hemp house in Asheville, NC that my interest was ignited. The photo and story featured the “Martin-Korp” home, a modern home designed by Anthony Brenner, the father of a little girl who had chemical sensitivities. His search for the healthiest building materials led him to hempcrete. It just so happened Hemp Technologies had set up shop in Asheville to bring the material to the United States.

I recall that I suggested at that time that we just make a short documentary about the house in Asheville, but when we heard about the 2011 International Hemp Building Symposium happening in Granada, Spain we took a leap of faith and decided to go. It was an incredible and very eye-opening experience to attend and meet the brightest minds from around the world working with hemp building materials and other hemp industries.

Subscribe for HempBuild Magazine’s free newsletter

We realized the need for a comprehensive film about industrial hemp and its benefits for human health and the environment that would hopefully give it the respect and research opportunities we were hearing about in other countries.

At that time hemp farming was virtually impossible to do legally in America because of its classification as a Schedule 1 drug (and only 10 states had any kind of hemp farming policy.)

Hempcrete was almost unheard of by the U.S. building industry and the hemp hurd and lime binder mix used in the 2010 Asheville houses was imported from the U.K. We booked our second trip across the pond to England to film the manufacturing facilities where the hemp hurd and binders were made and interview Dr. Mike Lawrence, the researcher behind the HemPod, and Kevin McCloud the host of Grand Designs. We had no idea how big a celebrity Kevin was overseas! He enjoyed filming him at the townhome community he was constructing in Swindon with hempcrete.

Bringing It Home premiered in Los Angeles in 2013 at an event hosted by Hemp History Week. We often hear we were ahead of the curve with our documentary and we’re very grateful to the film festivals that screened it and the multiple awards it received.

Click here to go to our FREE online community.

*The nation’s first hemp house in Asheville, NC, was the “Martin-Korp” home, a modern home designed by Anthony Brenner. Photo courtesy of Linda Royal*

Vote Hemp, the H.I.A., Hemp History Week and many state hemp advocacy organizations used it at screening events to support policy change. Those were exciting years of traveling to many screenings, Green Festivals and Expos around the country and speaking at post-film discussions. At the same time many dedicated people were doing a tremendous amount of work with legislators to support the 2014 Farm Bill to allow hemp crops for research. It was a substantial victory when it passed and I was able to visit and film some of the first hemp research crops in Christian County, KY, the first legal farming of industrial hemp in almost 60 years.

It was wonderful to be part of a positive development with so much possibility for creating jobs, opportunities for American farmers and healthier products and homes that could have a sustainable supply chain using domestic hemp grain and fiber someday.

Where are they now?

Bringing It Home introduces many people in the hemp industry. Here’s what some of them are doing now.

Anthony Brenner’s dream to build a hempcrete home for children with disabilities near Asheville wasn’t funded enough to become a reality. His daughter Bailey is doing well in a group home near his family in North Carolina and Anthony is coaching soccer.

Tony Budden, co-founder of Hemporium in Cape Town continued overseeing the hemp crop trials in South Africa and built a hempcrete home that showcased hemp in everything from insulation, cabinets, carpets, furniture, linens and more. He’s continued to advocate for change in cannabis laws and South Africa could have a hemp program in place by 2023. He and his wife Camilla recently welcomed their baby boy into the world.

After the passage of SEC 7606, hemp lobbyist Ben Droz stayed on Capitol Hill to help with the passage of numerous amendments that became law. He’s now a contributing editor to HEMP magazine, and a hemp advisor and consultant in Washington, DC.

Hemp fashion designer Stephanie Trippe is now the Director of New Faces and Development at Marilyn's Agency. She designed and made my beautiful hemp silk wedding dress with vintage skirt for my April 2018 wedding to Fredric Royal.

Nutiva founder John Roulac now has a CBD company in Colorado and Ian Pritchett (at Lime Technologies) started a new hempcrete panel company called Greencore Construction in the U.K. Eric Steenstra is still President with Vote Hemp, and now Vice President of the California Hemp Council.

My filmmaking partner Blaire Johnson has kept busy filming for documentaries, HBO series (to be aired) and PBS shows including A Chef’s Life, The Future of America’s Past and How the Monuments Came Down.

Linda (Booker) Royal

Eventually I went on to other projects and fell out of the hemp industry loop. When the 2018 Farm Bill was signed removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, I was on tour with my new documentary film STRAWS about plastic pollution in oceans. Everywhere I went neon hemp leaves and CBD were appearing, even in gas stations. While it was good to see “hemp” getting attention, it was disappointing to see most of the interest and investment was going into cannabinoid and CBD products. I guess it’s understandable people and farmers were excited about a different kind of green.

At the beginning of 2020 as things slowed down with STRAWS I was thinking more and more about hemp-lime building again. I discovered the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab major report on hemp-lime and I completed their Online Certificate Program: Healthier Materials and Sustainable Building last fall. As someone with allergies and chemical sensitivities, I’m an advocate for a holistic approach to interior materials and design too.

I also learned about the newly formed U.S. Hemp Building Association and was amazed to see the surge of summits, workshops and webinars attracting hundreds to the topic of hemp-lime building and social media buzzing with new hemp-lime built projects in the US and worldwide.

That’s all wonderful but the U.S.A. is still way behind many other countries in the acceptance and use of hempcrete and hemp insulation in construction and renovation projects. And with climate change not just a reality, but altering reality for American communities, the use of carbon-negative, fire and mold resistant hempcrete should be at the top of the list of materials for developers and architects. But more education is needed and because of the current lack of a supply chain infrastructure, quality hurd is still is imported. The U.S. Hemp Building Association (USHBA) is focused on getting more certifications for hempcrete (one American hempcrete product has received the best/highest rating under “Flamespread” and “Smoke Developed” indices - ASTM E 84-19B testing.)

Now that events and live meetings are happening again, I’m excited to be on the education team for the USHBA and looking forward to being at events like the Southern Hemp Expo this September in Raleigh, NC, and I plan to reach out to green builders and organizations building affordable housing in our area to discuss the health and energy saving benefits of hemp materials. I still believe in the possibilities and solutions the entire hemp plant can be a part of for a healthier planet and I’m forever grateful that Blaire and I had an opportunity to bring hemp into conversations through the creation of Bringing It Home.

Linda Royal is the Producer and Co-Director of Bringing It Home. She is also the Producer/Director of the award-winning documentary STRAWS and Love Lived on Death Row.