Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jun 2014
Source: Times-Tribune, The (Scranton PA)
Copyright: 2014 Associated Press
Contact:  http://www.thetimes-tribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4440
Author: Kristen Wyatt and Bruce Schreiner, Associated Press
Page: B3

UNCERTAINTY IN HEMP MARKET

STERLING, Colo. - Marijuana's square cousin, industrial hemp, has 
come out of the black market and is now legal for farmers to 
cultivate, opening up a new lucrative market. That was the idea, anyway.

Would-be hemp farmers are having mixed success navigating red tape on 
everything from seed acquisition to processing the finished plant. It 
will take years, farmers and regulators agree, before there's a 
viable market for hemp.

Hemp is prized for oils, seeds and fiber, but its production was 
prohibited for five decades because the plant can be manipulated to 
enhance a psychoactive chemical, THC, making the drug marijuana.

The Farm Bill enacted this year ended decades of required federal 
permission to raise hemp, but only with state permission and checks 
to make sure the hemp doesn't contain too much THC.

Fifteen states have removed barriers to hemp production, though only 
two states are forging ahead this year - Colorado and Kentucky. Both 
struggled to get their nascent hemp industries off the ground.

"We're just going to try and see if this works," said Jim Brammer, a 
Colorado alfafa and hay farmer who acquired one of the state's 114 
licenses to raise hemp.

Mr. Brammer agreed to let activists try the crop on a single acre of 
land in exchange for a cut of the proceeds, if any materialize. He's 
not optimistic. "If it comes in nice, then great. If not, then at 
least we tried something new," Mr. Brammer said.

A 2013 report by the Congressional Research Service pegged hemp 
imports at $11.5 million in 2011, a tiny sum relative to other 
imported crops. That study concluded that despite an ardent fan base 
and a market activists peg at about $100 million a year, "the world 
market for hemp products remains relatively small."

And U.S. farmers won't even be able to tap that small market without 
f ederal authorities removing barriers to seed acquisition.

Kentucky's first industrial hemp plantings were delayed for much of 
May, when federal authorities ordered nearly 300 pounds of hemp seeds 
from Italy detained by U.S. customs officials in Louisville.
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