Pubdate: Thu, 12 Jan 2006
Source: Brandon Sun (CN MB)
Copyright: 2006, Brandon Sun
Contact:  http://www.brandonsun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2437
Author: Laura Rance
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?330 (Hemp - Outside U.S.)

HIGH TIMES FOR HEMP GROWERS

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: 
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 0.3 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 towards construction of a plant to process hemp 
plants into insulation products used in place of pink fiberglass.

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 over supplies through 
contracts with producers. That said, 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.

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