HARVESTING A FUTURE IN HEMP
Man on a mission to educate people about the plant
When Rod Flaman EDENWOLD first started growing hemp, all his neighbours thought he was crazy.
“I’ve been growing it for 10 years. Not one of my neighbours grows hemp; not one,” Flaman said, sitting at his dining room table in his farmhouse.
Flaman started farming in 1981, taking over the family farm from his father. For years he grew wheat, even serving as a director for the Canadian Wheat Board. But he realized over time he wasn’t going to make money growing wheat, so he looked into specialty crops and came across hemp.
In 1998, commercial hemp production was legalized in Canada and Flaman took his first try at growing the crop.
“The market was very, very slow and within a couple of years the farmers that were growing it overproduced for the market that was there. People were ending up sitting on their harvests for two, three years. So we gave it up,” he said.
The monetary aspect drew him back years later and since then he has grown the crop every year. Last year, Flaman sold his hemp seed for $1 per pound with a harvest of 1,100 pounds. Feed barley was selling for 21 cents per pound and Canada Western Red Spring Wheat for 11 cents per pound.
“The input costs are similar (to other crops). I spend a little more money on seed and a little less money on herbicides because there’s nothing registered to spray on hemp,” Flaman said.
Hemp has become a staple in Flaman’s crop rotation with him seeding 360 acres this year of hemp, but he still finds himself having to explain the crop to people.
The history of hemp in Canada is intertwined with that of marijuana. In 1938, hemp production was outlawed under the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act. Governments around the world were trying to stop the abuse of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other controlled substances, and hemp was misguidedly included.
During the Second World War, when traditional sources of fibres weren’t available, regulations around hemp were relaxed but following the war, hemp was made illegal again. In 1961, Health Canada began allowing limited hemp production for scientific research proposes.
During the 1980s and 1990s interest started to grow in hemp as a way to create jobs in the agriculture industry. As well there was an increased need to develop alternative fibre sources.
Between 1994 and 1998 hemp was researched to show how it could be successfully grown separate from marijuana. On March 12, 1998 the Industrial Hemp Regulations came into effect, which made hemp production legal in Canada.
Hemp may be a different plant than marijuana but the two are still members of the cannabis family, which makes drawing the line between the plants difficult.
“(Hemp is) the same genus and species as marijuana, so they’re virtually identical in terms of how they look,” said Eric Johnson, a research assistant in the Department of Plant Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan. Johnson is the only researcher at the U of S who studies hemp.
Hemp and marijuana differ, however, in the THC amounts found in the leaves of the plants. Hemp has a THC content of less than 0.3 per cent, which means you won’t get high from smoking it. A study completed by the University of Mississippi in 2009 showed marijuana, on average, had a THC content of 8.53 per cent.
“When we grow our stuff under licence we have to check the THC levels and most of them are much lower than that, like even 0.03 per cent,” Johnson said.
Hemp regulations fall under Health Canada. To grow hemp producers must apply for a licence annually and include a criminal record check and GPS co-ordinates of the fields where they plan on growing it.
Once the hemp is grown, there are restrictions on what parts of the plant can be harvested. Producers are only able to sell the seeds and must destroy the leaves and flowers. Mature stocks from the plant, with the leaves and flowers removed, can be kept and sold for fibre.
Even though hemp production was legalized partly for the fibre potential of it, the market hasn’t really caught on. According to the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance (CHTA) the health foods sector is currently 85 to 90 per cent of the hemp market in Canada.
“When we started, people would have never ate hemp seed and now you can find it in Costco and it’s very popular really,” Johnson said.
Hemp seed contains oil, which is used in cosmetics production and cooking. The oil is low in saturated fats and contains a mixture of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids as well gamma-linolenic acid, which is a nutraceutical compound used to treat certain skin conditions.
While the health food industry is growing, the hemp fibre industry, however, has never really taken off.
Garry Meier, the president of Hemp Production Services, has been involved with the hemp industry since it was first legalized. Over the years, he has witnessed rises and falls in the industry.
“In my career of farming I think I’ve been through five different ag fibre ventures and it all comes down to unless there’s some kind of incentive, public funds or policy, the market just doesn’t support ag fibre at this point in time with the exception of cotton,” he said.
The problem with hemp fibre is that it is costly to process, which has made it hard to attract processors to the industry.
In Saskatchewan the hemp industry has grown over the years.
“I think that this group of growers in the hemp industry are very good (at helping develop the industry) and excellent people involved in that and I just see good things for (hemp) in the future,” said Dale Risula, a provincial specialist with the crops and irrigation branch of Saskatchewan Agriculture.
Last year, Health Canada granted 272 industrial hemp licences in Saskatchewan. In 2015, there were about 40,000 to 45,000 acres of hemp insured under Saskatchewan Crop Insurance.
The areas of the province growing hemp have become more spread out with the most popular areas in northern Saskatchewan. There are dark brown to thick black soil zones there, in which hemp is better suited to grow.
Some areas of the province aren’t as well suited for hemp. In the southwest portion of the province where there are drier conditions and heavy clay soils, hemp doesn’t grow well. As well, the crop doesn’t do well with drought, flooding, or in saturated or saline soils.
The close relation visually to marijuana has led to problems when it comes to identifying hemp.
When hemp was first legalized, Johnson was working for the provincial government in North Battleford. A farmer near the community decided to try to grow the newly legalized crop.
“Just about every second day somebody was pulling a plant from the field and bringing it into the office saying, ‘What is this person growing?’ ” Johnson said.
The workers quickly got used to explaining hemp and its differences from marijuana.
As well, the RCMP has run into cases of mistaken identity.
In August 2015, the Fort Qu’Appelle RCMP detachment received a call from a person who was concerned about a field of what looked to be marijuana growing southeast of Abernathy.
The officer who attended the call wasn’t sure if the plants were marijuana or hemp, so the RCMP Integrated Organized Crime Unit South was called in to investigate. Between 200-300 plants were found in the field, but tests later revealed the plants were hemp.
RCMP checked the record of hemp licences, but couldn’t find one for the field. The landowner had rented out the land to a seeding company and suspected hemp seeds had gotten mixed in with the company’s other seeds.
At the time Cpl. Drew Wagner said it was possible for illegal marijuana plants to be mixed in with a licensed hemp crop, but that wasn’t something the detachment had come across.
The association with marijuana may help hemp move into the future. With recreational marijuana to be legalized by Canada Day next year, the hemp industry views the change as an opportunity.
The non-profit national organization CHTA has been lobbying for modernization of the hemp industry since 2003 and with the upcoming legalization, the group has a clear picture of the changes it would like to see.
“We don’t have an issue with being under the new cannabis (regulations) but we want to be treated differently within those regulations,” said Kim Shukla, executive director of CHTA.
For years now CHTA has lobbied for producers to be allowed full use of the hemp plant. The organization sees a significant economic opportunity for hemp in the pharmaceutical market. Cannabidiol, found in the leaves of hemp, can be used for medical treatments, including those for epilepsy.
“We’re not able to capture any of that, but yet the licensed producers out of the medical marijuana side are able to. So we’re saying that’s an unfair playing field,” Shukla said.
The organization would also like to see the annual criminal record checks and THC level testing removed for farmers.
“We don’t want to get lost in that big wave (of marijuana legalization) because we’re only a very small, probably not the most obvious component of the whole legalization of the cannabis,” Shukla said.
Flaman views his role in the evolving industry as an educator.
“Part of my mission at the Farmers’ Market is just educating people, just eat more hemp. I want everybody to eat three tablespoons a day, every day. Because when we get enough hemp seed consumption then we can move on and develop a fibre industry,” he said.
Last year, Flaman started attending the Regina Farmers’ Market to sell hemp seed. The hemp industry was oversupplied and Flaman hadn’t been able to sell his crop in traditional markets, so he turned to his own marketing opportunities.
“We price similar to Costco and people like to buy local. We try to give everybody a little taste and I say it’s fresh,” he said.
At the farmers’ markets he spends his time telling people the history of the industry and the nutritional benefits of the seed. Even though hemp has become more popular, the farmer knows there is still a ways to go for the industry.
“We’ve forgotten everything about hemp, the fibre, the pharmaceuticals, the food. So you’ve got to build this entire industry from square one and it’s a slow process reinventing an industry that has been non-existent for 80 years.”
The stigma and close association to marijuana may be gone, but the legacy of hemp being illegal for 80 years still lives on.
In my career of farming I think I’ve been through five different ag fibre ventures and it all comes down to unless there’s some kind of incentive, public funds or policy, the market just doesn’t support ag fibre at this point in time with the exception of cotton.