Up in smoke?
Federal water rules may pose impasse for hemp and pot growers
EL CENTRO – Although California Proposition 64 in 2016 legalized the growth of both recreational marijuana and industrial hemp in the state, the Imperial Irrigation District is precluded by federal law from delivering water to most fields where such crops are grown.
“IID receives its water from the United States Bureau of Reclamation … a federal agency subject to federal law including the controlled substances act,” Attorney Joanna Smith-Hoff, who works for IID, told the Board of Directors during their regular meeting on Sept. 11.
“Both cannabis and industrial hemp are schedule 1 substances, which means that they are prohibited from being cultivated. IID’s water orders are approved by the Bureau of Reclamation and are delivered through Reclamation facilities, including the All American Canal. While there are different laws at a state level, IID is subject to federal law because of this water being federal water.”
If IID were to knowingly deliver water to fields where such crops are grown, they could be penalized by the federal government. With that in mind, the Board of Directors have directed staff to put together a policy to address the issue. Such a policy is expected to be put together and brought before the board for official adoption within the next month or two, according to Frank Oswalt III, IID general counsel.
“We know the pressure is going to come from growers who want to grow it, and we need to have a definitive position on it,” Oswalt said.
“We need to put the onus on the grower to tell us because I don’t think we have the ability to go out and look at every crop in the Valley and take tests on what is grown to determine whether or not it is prohibited.”
Imperial County has adopted a code — Title 14 — authorizing cultivation of cannabis and industrial hemp in unincorporated areas of the county, Smith Hoff noted.
“They have various requirements depending on the location of where that is,” she said. “There has also been a workshop done by the Imperial Valley Research Conservation Center focusing in on industrial hemp projects related to research projects.”
Research exemptions
IID is allowed to provide water to industrial hemp research growers who are exempted by federal law through an extensive permitting process.
“There are various requirements that you have to qualify for to fall within that exemption, but there is an exemption for industrial hemp,” Smith Hoff said. “This is being presented to the board in light of what is occurring. We do anticipate at some point that there will be requests for water delivery by IID, and we would like board direction as to the next steps to address this issue.”
The Imperial Valley Conservation Research Center, located at 4151 Highway 86 near Brawley, recently concluded a study of industrial hemp allowed by federal law. About 35 acres of industrial hemp was grown during the study. The experimental grow was sponsored by Farmtiva.
The 2014 Federal Farm bill made the cultivation of hemp legal in accordance with state laws. California’s allowed industrial hemp permits for cultivating hemp for the legal sale of seed, oil and fiber legal, although THC levels must be below 0.3 percent, according to Farmtiva.
Agricultural hemp can be grown for food, fiber, construction materials, and for Cannabidiol, on as little as one acre of land. Cannabidiol, more commonly referred to as CBD, has been approved by the FDA to treat two rare forms of childhood epilepsy.
California is a premier location to cultivate hemp — with one of the best and largest state farming infrastructures in the United States — to supply the estimated $1 billion dollar hemp products market, currently being supplied by imports from Canada and China, and by other U.S. states.
“The forecast of potential revenue for the county growing industrial hemp and the job creation is quite impressive,” Chris Boucher, Farmtiva CEO, said during the IID meeting. “If you look at the entrepreneurial spirit of the Imperial Valley, farmers could probably capture about 15 to 20 percent of the national and global market. That is about a $600 million to $800,000 million global market. Forbes magazine predicts industrial hemp to be up near almost $1.9 billion by 2022, so it is really on an upward trajectory, and it has become really popular.”
Industrial hemp be a shot in the arm for the local economy, Boucher said.
“You can see what is happening in the explosive growth in Kentucky, Colorado, Tennessee, New York and Oregon. Currently hemp is an $800 million per year industry in U.S.,” he said.
There is great potential in Imperial Valley for large-scale hemp growth with respect to climate, scale and distribution.
“We believe two crops a year in IV grows better in early spring, and we are experimenting with a winter crop,” Boucher said. “Some varieties will grow in the intense heat.”
The industrial hemp grown during the recent study grew about 1. 5 inches per day on the hottest summer days.
For more information about the grow, visit https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=pGPbN4jb5DQ&feature=youtu.be
For more information about Farmtiva, visit www.farmtiva.com
Storied history
The farming of industrial hemp in Imperial Valley was common before federal law prohibited it.
“When I was a young man, they grew hemp all over this valley,” Director Bruce Kuhn, IID Division 2, said during the meeting. “When they leveled fields for the very first time, since the old world was created, the first crop they put on was hemp. The stuff would grow 10, 12, 14 feet tall and then they’d disk it into the soil to start making humus. That was just a standard practice, but then all of a sudden it got popular with people that smoke it … and they wouldn’t let you grow any of it and the whole thing went to pot. It destroyed an industry. The stuff grew everywhere, and no one was smoking rope.”
The story of hemp in Imperial Valley stretches back to 1916, with the release of USDA Bulletin 404. The bulletin stated that hemp hurds — the woody inner portion of the hemp stalk, broken into pieces and separated from the fiber in the processes of breaking and scutching — were useful as a material to make paper.
At about that time, George Schlichten, a 50-year-old German immigrant living near San Diego, was putting the finishing touches on an invention that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, leaving the pulp behind. He called it the decorticator, according to historian Don Wirthshafter.
Schlichten’s desire was to stop the felling of forests for paper, which he believed to be a crime.
Henry Timken, a wealthy industrialist and inventor of the roller bearing, learned of Schlichten’s invention and went to meet the inventor in February 1917. Timken saw the decorticator as a revolutionary discovery. He proposed that Schlichten grow 100 acres of hemp on his ranch in the Imperial Valley so the decorticator could be tested.
Timken later met with the newspaper tycoon E.W. Scripps, and his long-time associate Milton McRae, at Miramar, Scripps’ home in San Diego. Scripps, then 63, had accumulated the largest chain of newspapers in the country, according to Wirthshafter.
Timken hoped to interest Scripps in making newsprint from hemp hurds. Turn-ofthe-century newspaper barons needed huge amounts of paper to deliver their swelling circulations. Nearly 30 percent of the 4 million tons of paper manufactured in 1909 was newsprint, according to Wirthshafter.
By 1917, the price of newsprint was rapidly rising. In May, after further meetings with Timken, Scripps asked McRae to investigate the possibility of using the decorticator in the manufacture of newsprint, according to Wirthshafter.
Schlichten anticipated making 50,000 tons of paper yearly at a retail price of $25 a ton — less than 50 percent of the price of newsprint at the time, according to Wirthshafter. And, every acre of hemp turned to paper, Schlichten added, would preserve five acres of forest.
By August, after only three months of growth, Timken’s hemp crop had grown to its full height of 14 feet. By September, Timken’s crop was producing 1 ton of fiber and 4 tons of hurds per acre, and he was trying to interest Scripps in opening a paper mill in San Diego, according to Wirthshafter.
McRae and Chase traveled to Cleveland and spent two hours convincing Timken that, while hemp hurds were usable for other types of paper, they could not be made into newsprint cheaply enough, according to Wirthshafter.
The decorticator resurfaced in the 1930s, when it was touted as a machine that would make hemp a “billion dollar crop” in articles published in Mechanical Engineering and Popular Mechanics. But, once again, the burgeoning hemp industry was halted, this time by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, according to Wirthshafter.
“In 1937 the Marijuana tax act was passed, and it outlawed all forms of hemp,” Boucher said.
Racially influenced
“The main issue was racially influenced,” Boucher added. “Mexicans and blacks where seen as dangerous on cannabis. At one point in the early 1930s, “the Chief of the Bureau of Narcotics, Henry Asslinger came up with a plan [to arrest] all black jazz players because they all smoke marijuana and the jazz music was making white people dance. He thought jazz was brainwashing white people.”
At the same time hemp competed with paper, cotton, plastics, nylon and petroleum products — “everything you can make from hemp you now could make from petro refining,” Boucher said.