GWYNNE, Alta. – Got a hankering for a hemp diversification project? Make sure you’ve got a quarter section full of patience.
As Val and Morley Blanch discovered, growing hemp isn’t a problem. It’s wading through bureaucracy that’s a trial.
It was a “nightmare,” said Val. The couple estimates it took about six months and 200 hours worth of faxes, phone calls, letters, licences and wrangling before they were allowed to plant hemp in a 1Ú3 of an acre research plot beside the farm house.
While it was ignorance at the beginning that got them started on the project, it was perseverance that kept the pair of pedigreed seed growers pursuing the licence.
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“We got part way through the project and got stubborn,” said Val.
The pair aren’t a throwback to the Sixties with a yearning to grow the illegal type of hemp. But their interest was piqued as they read a few books and articles over the years.
Hemp is made from the tall herb plant cannabis sativa, which also produces the drug marijuana. But THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its hallucinatory powers, ranged from 0.009 to 0.023 percent in the Blanch’s crop. In marijuana, THC levels reach from 12 to 28 percent.
“The regulatory hurdles are immense yet there may well be a demand for a new source of fibre and hemp may fit in as the fibre source,” said Morley.
In Alberta, the pulp and paper industry is booming. Acres of trees are being cut down to feed the growing demand for lumber, pulp and paper. The Blanches wonder with more research whether hemp, with its tough fibres, could fill some of that demand.
Their plot produced 12 tonnes per hectare of dry material, or about five tonnes per acre of fibre suitable for paper, fibreboard and textiles.
And the plant grows at an incredible rate.
Eventually, when the couple managed to secure all the proper licences, Val and Morley seeded the plot last May 24, with help from Val’s father John Toogood, a retired head of soil science at the University of Alberta. Four weeks later the hemp was half a metre high and still growing. In July, they estimate the crop grew 45 centimetres a week. By fall, the plants were more than 3.5 metres tall.
“It was like being in a tropical jungle,” said Morley.
Because the fibres are almost indestructible, they used a special Japanese pruning tool to cut the metre square samples from the plot. Once those were taken, a disc binder, resembling a giant metal whipper snipper, was used to cut the rest of the plot.
Then came the evaluation.
“It was an interesting project for one year, but we couldn’t keep on because there’s nothing in it,” Val said.
According to licences, they are not allowed to sell hemp from the plot.
But now that Val and Morley are familiar with the crop, they plan to stay involved in the industry.
“We want a low-tech application like growing it as a windbreak while waiting for it to become commercially viable,” said Val.
And it looks like hemp could have a potential for quick-growing windbreaks, said Val.
A relative of Val’s is also interested in growing the crop in southern Alberta in the brown soil zone as a quick-growing snow trap.
As well, an Edmonton woman involved in the licence is able to make paper from the hemp, but not allowed to sell the paper because of the THC content.
