Let's set the record straight - hemp is not a miracle crop

In March of this year, the US state of Colorado opened registration for the first legal hemp crop in the USA in 56 years, the first among the 10 states where hemp has been made legal to do so following a landmark federal farm bill in January. Hemp advocates countrywide rejoiced - and boy, there sure seems to be a lots of these advocates. Just take a quick look at social media and you'll see things like this facebook page with over 125,000 likes and this twitter account with over 58,000 followers all dedicated to the hemp plant. It's hard to imagine that if for some reason other bast crops such as flax or jute were prohibited we'd see this many people dedicated to their legalization.

Of course, the reason so many "activists" have rallied to the cause of this humble fiber and grain crop is its association with its narcotic cousin, cannabis. Because of this, the pro-hemp movement is made up largely of free-spirited folks with little to no agricultural knowledge who are prone to hyperbole when it comes to extolling the virtues of Cannabis sativa. Namely, some ideas that get thrown around a lot are the notions that hemp is a miracle crop and that legalization of hemp will save the world. These are talking points which are being reiterated by fairly respectable American liberal publications over and over again.

Pictures like this can be found all over social media. It should be clarified that hemp has not been proven to be effective medicine and it cannot produce plastic - there is however plastic fiberglass which uses hemp bast fiber as filler. For example BMW's new i3 electric car uses hemp-based fiberglass in its interior paneling

And I'd just like to break it to any hopeful Americans - hemp is no miracle, and it won't save your country.

Here in Canada we had the sense to legalize this harmless crop way back in 1998. Canadian farmers have been seeding hemp for 16 years now - long enough that I can remember biking past a few hemp fields as a kid in Hastings County. Over the years total hectarage has varied widely as farmers experiment with this new crop, but so far its peak was in 2006 with 19,458ha, the majority of that being in Manitoba's Parkland Region where there is a hemp cooperative focused on grain production.

19,458ha is not a lot. Consider that in 2006 Canadian farmers seeded 807,975ha of flax, a similar crop also grown for both its grain and bast fibers. And flax is by no means a major crop in Canada itself. Contrast those two crops to canola, Canada's most popular oilseed, which saw well over 5 million hectares seeded in 2006.

So why hasn't hemp farming taken off as expected here in Canada? A few major reasons.

Firstly, grain hemp has a fairly narrow range of uses, since its oil has too low of a smoking point to be useful in frying. Hemp nut and hemp oil have been limited mainly to use as a food grain and as a dietary supplement respectively, mostly for sale to that same crowd who love hemp for its association with cannabis and supposed miracle health benefits. Hemp is by no means a staple food, the market for it is niche and thus small.

Secondly, there has been a lack of a domestic market for fiber hemp. Prior to 1998 Canada was without any major facilities for the processing of bast fibers. The production of flax, at the time the only bast crop grown in Canada, had always been oriented towards grain due to the low value of flax bast fibers. The price for flax straw has been so low for the past few decades that farmers in the prairies have simply taken to burning any remaining straw in their fields after grain harvest rather than waste money baling and transporting it. Even today given that hemp bast fiber is a niche market in North America with only a handful of fairly small-scale manufacturers as buyers, and that the process of separating bast fibers is quite intensive and requires multiple expensive pieces of equipment, the industry remains at a standstill.

At the moment the only existing processor of fiber hemp in the country is Kenex Ltd. in Chatham-Kent, which focuses mostly on grain hemp but also buys low-grade hemp straw and processes it into bast fiber for export to the USA. The operation is fairly small. When interviewed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1999 after the first major harvest of Canadian hemp, Kenex Ltd.'s general manager had this to say of the year's minuscule 1,021ha Ontarian hemp crop,

"It’s given us one hell of a glut of grain and fiber. There’s been a major overestimation of the market that’s out there."

Not very encouraging words for the budding industry. Since then, through trial and error, farmers and processors have learned where the market is for hemp and adjusted accordingly - away from fiber and dual-purpose production and towards grain production.

And, thirdly, hemp harvest is a difficult ordeal. Hemp was initially used mostly for the production of rope, and attempting to reap a hemp crop is a lot like trying to mow a field of rope. It wreaks havoc on harvesting equipment intended for use on much more tender crops. Even the best sicklebar mowers used for fiber harvest clog frequently, and combines are often slowed to a halt during grain harvest when bast fibers make a mess of headers.

France is Europe's largest hemp producer and the second
largest producer in the world after China, with segmented
fibre production for the manufacture of cigarette paper
comprising over 70% of the total 11,637ha crop in 2012.
Despite being a world leader in hemp production with the
majority of European hemp hectarage, hemp accounts for
only 0.0004% of total French farmland, which goes to
show the small size of the global market for hemp
(Image: hectares of hemp by département, CETIOM)

Studies coming out of Europe have highlighted a lack of adequately suited harvesting equipment for hemp, especially for fiber. And that's in a region where hemp production has never faced prohibition and there are several major producing countries of hemp, such as France. Though some specialty harvesting equipment exists in Europe for segmented fiber hemp, as of yet the only method for whole-stalk harvesting of fiber hemp is the use of sicklebar mowers intended for grassland operations, followed by repeated tedding (fluffing up the crop with a rake to speed up the drying process) and windrowing (pushing mowed crop into neat rows which can be easily collected by a baler).

This harvesting process is labour intensive, produces only fiber of moderate to low quality, and ultimately nets a low price for the farmer compared to many crops of equivalent soil requirements such as winter wheat. Until a harvesting system is developed that allows harvest in fewer passes and greater control over retting (a process by which the fibres are separated from the stalk's woody core, usually performed in the field), fibre hemp will continue to be very infeasible for farmers in North America.

So while I applaud those adventurous farmers in Colorado who have seeded 1,273 acres this first year of legal harvest of a crop which should have never been prohibited, I'd like to ask advocates to tone down the "miracle" rhetoric and not to expect American hemp to become anything other than what it has achieved here north of the border - a niche crop with a whole lot more hype than real market opportunity.