Hemp market idles along

Farmers Forum explores the state of the hemp nation

By Rowan Lomas

The year was 1998, the Canadian government had just announced the end of a 40-year ban on growing industrial hemp, and the industry was fairly frothing at the mouth in anticipation of hemp use expanding from just food and clothing into the automotive, plastics, pulp and paper, biofuel and insulation industries.

Canadian farmers planted about 30,000 acres of hemp in 1999, and 13,500 the following year. Now, five years later, the bales from those bumper crops sit in farmers’ barns, idle like the industry itself, which is still primarily driven by the hempseed, not the fibre. In recent years, more conservative acreage has been planted. This year saw 6,750 acres of hemp planted, 90 per cent for seed. Only 200 acres were planted in Ontario.

The problem, says Gordon Scheifele, president of the Ontario Hemp Alliance, the umbrella organization for the Ontario hemp industry, is that there was huge market production but no market development. Manitoba’s Consolidated Growers was responsible for most of the over production.

"We knew that in Canada we were no longer a textile and fibre applications industry country," says Scheifele. "But we underestimated the challenges.

"This has to go step by step. We can’t just go ‘boom’ and plant 30,000 acres right away," he says. "Consolidated Growers just went ‘boom,’ and it cost us a couple of years of hardship."

While Canadian fields aren’t overflowing with the once-revered plant-of-all-trades -- its proponents claim there are tens of thousands of uses -- those in the know say hemp is hardly ancient history. Rather, they are learning from their mistakes, biding their time, and letting demand dictate supply. In the meantime, various growers groups are trying to develop large-scale fibre processing plants that would facilitate local growing.

"If there was a market for fibre (where) trucking didn’t kill you in the equation that would help a lot," says Peterborough-area farmer Barry Staples, who is growing 55 of Ontario’s planted acres himself. Staples’ dream could soon become reality.

Out of the ashes of Consolidated Growers was born Parkland Hemp. Scheifele says they are scheduled to break ground on a Dauphin, Manitoba, fibre processing plant this fall. And just last month Hemptown Clothing announced it has been given 80 acres of industrial land in Saskatchewan where it will establish a hemp fibre production facility. Canadian Natural Fibers of Peterborough has been trying to build a processing plant there for years but Scheifele says that plant is still probably two or three years away.

John Baker, of Canadian Natural Fibres, likens it to the Seaway Grain Processors ethanol plant in Cornwall.

"How many years have they been trying to do that. There’s no question there’s a need for it but it’s a huge undertaking and it’s extremely difficult for a grower group to come up with the financing," he says. Eastern Ontario makes perfect sense, according to Baker, because the climate is right for growing, and the quality and price of land is excellent.

Recent U.S. court decisions, musings at the federal and provincial levels of government, and in the automobile and paper industries lead insiders to be optimistic, but cautiously so. Currently, there are limited opportunities for processing product in the hemp food industry, where the overproduction has been eaten up. Staples’ seed, for example, is contracted to Coolhemp in Killaloe, where it is turned into an ice cream-like non-dairy dessert. Farmers are now only encouraged to grow if they have such a contract.

Scheifele says in order for the industry to flourish it must move out of this pilot phase, and into a large-scale commercial phase. He says developments like Hemptown’s proposed fibre mill and the OHA’s research with Anka, a high seed-yielding hemp variety, should speed up the transition. Indeed, hemp may yet inch its way into the national crop rotation but for now they plod warily forward.