The return to old building methods by mixing crop by-products with mineral binders is arousing great interest in Europe since about 25 years. The use of these bio-aggregates based materials for the design of building envelopes is a valuable opportunity to deal with increasingly demanding thermal regulations. In addition, the regulatory framework is moving towards reducing the overall car-bon footprint of new buildings. Some traditional and historic buildings are based on timber framing with earth-straw as infill material for instance. Hemp concrete is a bio-based material that can be manually tamped in timber stud walls or more recently in the form of precast blocks. Owing to their low compressive strength, bio-based concretes using a large volume fraction of plant-derived aggregates are only considered as thermal and sound insulation materials. The structural design practice of wood frame walls does not assume any mechanical contribution of hemp concrete whereas it may contribute to the racking strength of the structure. In this context, more research is needed regarding the shear behavior of crop by-products and bio-based concretes. In this case, the objective of the study was to perform direct shear tests under three levels of normal pressure on hemp shiv and rice husk as unbound crop by-products. The results showed that the friction angle of the granular skeleton based on rice husk for a given relative displacement was significantly lower than that measured on hemp shiv. This is in accordance with what had been observed on bio-based concretes cast by mixing aggregates with lime and shear strength parameters measured by means of triaxial compression.