At this year’s Greenbuild Conference and Expo, held Nov. 4–7 in Los Angeles, bio-based building materials took the spotlight — both on the show floor and in one of the conference’s most crowded sessions.

At the 2025 Rocky Mountain Natural Building Conference in Bozeman, Montana, last week, three leaders in hemp-based construction shared their perspectives on the material’s future: Greg Wilson of HempWood, Matt Marino of Homeland Hempcrete, and architect April Magill of Root Down Building Collective. (Full disclosure: I serve as executive director of the conference hosts, the Colorado-based Natural Building Alliance.)

Hemp building materials will take a prominent place at the Rocky Mountain Natural Building Conference Bozeman Sept. 18-20. Hemp will take the podium along with cob, straw bale, passive house, natural plaster and other natural building technologies, at the Colorado-based Natural Building Alliance's biennial conference held since 2003.

Hemp-lime construction expanded further into the national spotlight this week when a California film festival awarded first prize to a short documentary featuring the Morton, MN-based Lower Sioux hempcrete building team.

An international gathering of hemp building experts will host its annual conference and expo in the United States for the first time at the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, MN in October, 2025.

Multiple US hemp-building companies will make a big splash for around 25,000 visitors at one of the largest US construction sustainability expos and conferences later this month in Philadelphia, thanks to collaboration and the generosity of a hemp processing company and a hemp-building non-profit.

Elections for all seven board of director seats of the US hemp building trade association are taking place online. Voting for leadership of the US Hemp Building Association ends December 9.

Twin houses built side-by-side on 10th Street in Fargo, ND, will compare the building and operational costs of hemp-lime insulation and “conventional” building, as well as the resilience and health environment in each type of building.

Hemp building materials were officially approved in the model US residential building code at a Louisville, KY public hearing overseen by the International Code Council (ICC) last week.