20
Commercial Hemp in Canada - Year two
Roddy Heading
Hemp Futures Study Group
P. O. Box 1680, Niagara on the Lake Ontario
LOS IJO Canada, e-mail: rheading@becon.org
Industrial hemp is growing in 9 of 10 Canadian provinces in
1999, our second fully commercial year. The only province not attempting to grow
hemp was Newfoundland, whose short growing season and harsh North Atlantic
climate will not adequately ripen corn (Zea mays).
Official totals for the 1999 Canadian crop will not be
available until the late fall, but according to an informal survey of licensed
hemp growers conducted in June by the Hemp Futures Study Group, we estimate that
Canada has approximately 30,000 acres (13,600 ha) of licensed hemp sown, an
almost five-fold increase over the initial hemp crop of 5,500 acres in 1998.
If this rate of exponential expansion continues, Canada will
become one of the world’s most prolific modern hemp producing nations in the
new century ahead. Canada enjoys a brief monopoly as sole hemp-providing nation
in the Americas.
Health Canada reported that most of the 1998 harvest of
hempseed was exported to the United States for processing into human foodstuffs.
About one third of the 1998 seed harvest, was certified as organically grown and
sold at a premium price. Early estimates for the 1999 hemp "grain"
harvest reveals that more than 1,500 acres are being grown certified organic.
Most Canadian hemp farmers growing hempseed for export told our survey that they
will likely expand their organic grain production in 2000 and are willing and
eager to meet international criteria when it appears. They see organic hemp
grain as the best return for their investment. They are currently delivering to
New World organic food processors at premium rates, but are preparing to enter
the lucrative European organic food market as soon as possible.
Now that the perception of Canadian hemp has evolved beyond
off-color pot jokes and into a responsible, respectable raw materials export
industry, Federal Minister of Health Alan Rock has replaced the original
"Hemp Project" boss, Ms. Jean Peart of the Bureau of Dangerous Drugs
Surveillance with Mr. Neils Hanson-Trip, an inductee from the Canadian
Department of Agriculture. A new "hemp boss" with a farming
background, taking over the position from a federal drug regulator, suggests
that our federal government has become a little more relaxed with their role as
guardians of string and salad oil.
Health Canada granted 750 hemp licenses in 1999, from more
than 1,000 applications received. Those who did receive hemp licenses were able
to choose from a list of 23 approved varieties of hemp - for seed oil and fibre
end use - that the Health Minister allows to be sown in the Dominion of Canada
for the 1999 growing season.
Manitoba is growing more than half of the Canadian hemp crop
this year, about 4,800 hectares (12,000 acres), an impressive increase over the
1998 provincial total of 690 hectares. The 1999 season will see about 125
licensed Manitoba farmers growing hemp. Many of them are now experienced hemp
cultivators and most are on contract to Consolidated Growers and Processors (CGP).
Manitoba farmers have placed an additional 2,000 acres of choice Manitoba
farmland on reserve for even more hemp in case CGP is able to secure additional
seed stock for sowing, which was in short supply this year.
In spite of alleged CGP stock transfer irregularities and the
resignation of Canadian operations president in the Spring, CGP is proceeding
with plans to erect a new hemp processing factory in Dauphin, Manitoba. They
hope to have this factory up and running by 2001 with a combined annual capacity
of 100,000 tons of stalk and 15,000 tons of seed. Their proposed new 15 million
dollar factory will create more than 100 new careers in Cannabis.
The Dauphin hemp works, conveniently situated in the heart of
the best Manitoba farmland, is also accessible to prime Saskatchewan farmland
where CGP plans to contract farm much more hemp in upcoming years. The standing
offer by CGP to purchase all the seed and stalks its contract growers can
produce for the next three years is a well received market incentive that
signals a bold commitment to the economy of scale; and at the same time makes it
much easier for Western Canadian hemp farmers to qualify for standard crop
insurance, for which they were not able to qualify for during their first year
growing commercial hemp.
Ontario, the second largest Canadian hemp producing district,
has sown 3,500 acres of hemp for the 1999 season. Kenex and Hempline remain the
major provincial hemp producers. Kenex engineers, working all winter in a
converted popcorn factory in Painscourt, Ontario perfected critical techniques
of hempseed dehulling, achieving levels of 95% seed jacket elimination and
succeeded in delivering several container loads of hempseed meal from their 1998
seed harvest to American food processors. They are still processing the tail end
of the 1998 seed crop and will be ready to prepare the current seed crop when it
is ripe in the Autumn.
A dozen small, but none-the-less determined, commercial
Ontario hemp concerns are also cultivating or contracting production of organic
quality hempseed "grain" this year. These ambitious new players are
processing, packaging and distributing a narrow range of marketable hempseed
products, including oils and cosmetics, entirely by themselves. All are
developing direct marketing strategies for dehulled seed destined for export to
Europe and America.
Kenex sales agents in California, vending their commercial
hempseed in the US, created a bit of marketing friction this Spring, the first
recorded within the new Canadian hemp production orbit, with what leading
American hemp food manufacturer Richard Rose calls "practically a trade
war". Mr. Rose alleges that certain Canadian hempseed sales agents selling
direct to medium-sized American hemp food manufacturers have irreparably damaged
the profit level expectations of the entire new world hemp industry. He points
out that, as a result of Canadian hemp meal sales strategy blunders, the price
of top grade hempseed meal fell from US$20 to about US$5 per US pound.
Mr. Rose is also displeased with the narrow range of
offerings that have appeared on the market, as only certain low THC hemp
cultivars are all that Canadian hemp growers are allowed to sow, these chosen
from a list of approved varieties compiled by Health Canada. He would prefer to
purchase his own choices of hempseed varieties, especially ones that develop
much richer levels of specific nutriceuticals and are usable for his successful
line of hempseed food products. These "other" improved varieties are
readily available to Canadian hemp grain farmers, but will likely produce
somewhat higher levels of THC, at maturity, than Health Canada drug content
guidelines for the Canadian hemp industry allow (10 parts per million THC for
oil, 0.3% THC for the growing plant). Switzerland permits up to 50 ppm of THC in
their domestic hemp oil, but there are, as yet, no international standards in
place that govern THC in edible oil destined for human consumption. The sooner
such international standards are in place, the sooner these problems will be
resolved. Cannabinoids tend to accumulate within the vegetative parts of Cannabis
cultivars when grown in Canadian latitudes, but as Mr. Rose correctly points
out, this does not, in any practical way, affect THC levels within the seed or
de-hulled meal derived from them. Furthermore, when properly cleaned of leaf and
flower dust particles at a licensed facility before export, hempseed will show,
upon testing, THC levels well below Health Canada requirements.
Ontario-grown hemp fibre has not shown the same significant
market advances as the hemp grain sector, and some of last year's harvest of
baled, dried hemp stalks are still in storage. Lack of hemp processing machinery
and a shortage of skilled labor are the chief difficulties facing our new hemp
fiber industry. The hesitant "wait-and-see" attitude within the North
American vegetable fibre market is another hurdle that has to be overcome in
order to attract long-term contracts to justify far greater expansion of hemp
fibre production in the province of Ontario. Kenex, with substantial hemp farms
near Windsor/Detroit, is growing about the same amount of hemp in 1999 as last
year, approximately 800 ha. Hempline is growing slightly more hemp this year
(approximately 400 ha) than last year near London, Ontario. Jeff Kime of
Hempline verifies the importance of hemp's crop insurance qualification as a
potent motive for even more hemp to be cultivated next year. Kenex aims to sell
their future hemp fiber to major American automotive industry clients; while
Hempline, the pioneer Ontario hemp company, continues to seek even larger
purchase orders from American-based carpet mills.
In the meantime, both Kenex and Hempline have each introduced
their own house brand of home-grown baled hemp chips for use in horse, chicken
and other livestock bedding. This "all hemp" animal bedding is
demonstrably superior to traditional animal bedding based on wood shavings and
sawdust as Cannabis hemp is easier and cleaner to apply, more absorbent
(thus more sanitary), much longer lasting and somewhat neater to dispose of than
expensive wood waste-type bedding. These offerings of Canadian-grown hemp chips
arrive on the New World animal markets in convenient, dust-free and compressed
100 pound bales- at about the same price as conventional wood shavings. The
recent arrival of Ontario-grown hemp bedding in Kentucky, the state known for
its fine hemp and horses, was a potent motivation for their local farmers to
further press the American government for the privilege of growing Cannabis
once again.
Even though oilseed hemp does not produce the same yields of hemp stalk as
conventional fibre-producing varieties grown for that sole purpose, the former
stalks are completely suitable and attractively priced for smaller scale paper
manufacturers seeking to develop super virgin hemp paper for export niche
markets. As a direct result of hemp’s successful reintroduction into the
Canadian agricultural milieu, some cautious fine paper mills in Southern Ontario
and Quebec are finally expressing interest in buying these "waste"
hemp stems, after the seeds have been harvested. This industrial gesture towards
experimenting with hemp-derived paper pulp is perhaps the most important advance
for modern hemp in recent years. To a nation like Canada, who derives a large
part of our economic livelihood by cutting down trees and cooking them up into
paper to feed the printing presses of our planet, even a small shift towards
utilizing domestically produced hemp in this enormous industrial process will
have a significant favorable impact upon the fortunes of our promising new hemp
industry.
Newfoundland | (none) |
Nova Scotia | 350+ |
New Brunswick | 100+ |
Prince Edward Island | 20 |
Quebec | 100 |
Ontario | 3,500+ |
Manitoba | 12,000 |
Saskatchewan | 4,000 |
Alberta | 300 |
British Columbia | 1,000 |
____________ | |
Total | 21,370 acres * |
* Does not include
figures from: - first time experimental licensed farms - First Nations Native hemp initiatives - commercial non participants in survey - late license applicants - unknown license holders - agricultural research stations |