Pubdate: Sat, 14 Jan 2006
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2006 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact:  http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: Laura Rance
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?330 (Hemp - Outside U.S.)

IS HEMP BECOMING THE NEW CANOLA?

After Hype-And-Bust Cycle, Crop Looks Like It Might Be Here To Stay

THERE are a few people in this province getting a little high on hemp 
these days. But it's for all the right reasons.

After a somewhat shaky start, there is an industry growing around 
this not-worth-smoking cousin to the marijuana plant.

Some are even comparing it to where canola was in its development 50 
years ago: in its infancy, with poorly understood agronomy, 
underdeveloped markets and few varieties.

Of course, there are some differences. Producers must have a licence 
from Health Canada to grow hemp, and that requires undergoing a 
police check. They must provide global positioning system 
co-ordinates of their field, which makes it relatively simple for the 
RCMP to determine the difference between a hemp field and a grow op.

And just for good measure, they can't grow it near schools or other 
places where young people hang out. Secondly, hemp has an advantage 
over canola in that the plant's fibre has commercial applications as 
well as its seed. Hemp was once grown here for use in rope and other 
fibre-based products. But it was banned in 1938 because it was too 
hard to tell apart from the more potent stuff.

"Industrial hemp is different in that it has the opportunity to 
develop an industry based on total plant utilization," Keith Watson, 
a diversification specialist with Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural 
Initiatives recently told an agronomists' meeting.

Health Canada began allowing the production of hemp that contains low 
levels (less than .3 per cent) of delta-9 THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) in 1998.

Initially there was a lot of hype around the crop, just like there 
once was around ostriches and emus and echineacea -- diversification 
ventures that have since gone the way of the dodo bird.

And for a while, it looked as though hemp was headed down the same 
path to obscurity. Farmers who initially attempted growing the early 
varieties wound up with dense fields of plants pushing 10 feet or 
more. Harvesting the coarse fibrous stocks even sent a few combines 
up in smoke.

Then Consolidated Growers and Processors Ltd., one of the first 
processors to attempt establishing a plant in the province, fizzled 
out before construction began.

The California company entered the Manitoba scene with big plans to 
build a processing plant. It contracted 20,000 acres with growers in 
the Dauphin area in 1999, boasting it would be buying 70,000 acres 
the following year.

But it ran into a few problems with the Manitoba Securities 
Commission and then went bankrupt in early 2000, leaving growers with 
a mountain of seed and no market.

Rather than chalk it up to another bitter farming experience, these 
growers rose to the challenge. They formed the Parkland Industrial 
Hemp Growers, new generation co-operative, and started pursuing 
marketing and processing opportunities for a crop they believed has a 
future here. The result is a company called Parkland Bio Fibre Ltd., 
which is working toward construction of a plant to process hemp 
plants into insulation products used in place of pink fibreglass.

The seed will be marketed through other processors that have set up 
in the province. Hemp Oil Canada Inc. (HOCI) and Manitoba Harvest 
Hemp Foods and Oils prevent market-crippling oversupplies through 
contracts with producers.

That say they're experiencing rapid growth in demand for their range 
of food and skin-care products as healthy, natural alternatives. Hemp 
seed oil doesn't have a long shelf life but it is high in 
polyunsaturated fats and essential fatty acids.

The Ste. Agathe-based HOCI moved from processing 800,000 pounds of 
hemp seed in 2004 to 2.5 million pounds in 2005. Growers' acres have 
risen from 1,200 acres in 2004 to nearly 10,000 acres expected for 2006.

With production averaging around 700 pounds per acre for seed, the 
crop provides growers with a relatively good return compared to other 
crops they can grow -- even more if they grow it organically. And 
those returns will get even better if the fibre-processing venture 
gets off the ground. There's even some work taking place in other 
parts of the world on using hemp oil for biodiesel production.

Agronomic questions are being resolved, too, mainly through on-farm 
trial and error. There are few herbicide products registered for 
application on hemp, which may complicate weed control but keeps 
input costs relatively low.

What's nice about these three processing companies is they are 
Manitoba-grown. In some cases, their investors are the same farmers 
who grow the crop. And they are diversifying their market through the 
development of different products from the seed, oil and fibre.

None of this is happening as fast as farmers had hoped. But these 
early setbacks -- which forced growers to become leaders in the 
industry's evolution -- may actually contribute to the industry's 
long-term stability.

It's a bit ironic. Many of the much-touted benefits of exotic crops 
or livestock and value-added processing have turned out to be little 
more than hallucinations for farmers. Hemp, it appears, may not.

Laura Rance is associate editor of the Farmers' Independent Weekly 
(www.fiwonline.com). 
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom