WINNIPEG – During the recent Straw to Gold conference, local news headlines couldn’t have been worse for three participants promoting the use of hemp fibres.
RCMP made one of their biggest busts ever on a marijuana-growing operation on a farm outside of Winnipeg.
But Geof Kime, Martin Moravcik and Jeffry Stonehill refused to be fazed. Moravcik, a Winnipeg distributor of hemp clothing and products, said people at the conference showed “a willingness to generally look at alternative industries and even a willingness to look at hemp, despite the stigma attached to it.”
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“We’re going to have to have education so people can get over the hang-up of it being related to a narcotic,” said Kime, an engineer based in Ontario’s tobacco country who does research hemp processing.
Little presence of drug
Hemp is a strain of Cannabis sativa, and is related to marijuana. But hemp contains only traces of the drug, and is harvested for the fibres in its tall stalks.
The trio were impressed that many of the graphs and slides used at the conference charted the strength and length of hemp fibres as well as those of wheat straw, flax and other more traditional fibres.
Hemp is easy to grow, Kime and Moravcik said, and can reach 12 feet in 70 days. In 1994, Kime’s company Hempline grew the first hemp crop since the Second World War.
And Manitoba’s agriculture department worked with Moravcik on a 10-acre project this summer to determine what varieties work best and what soil types are most suitable. Aside from one plot, which was besieged by Bertha army worms, Moravcik said the crop did well.
There are problems though. Processing needs to be refined and the federal government must develop a commercial licensing system so farmers can grow the crop. As well, the industry needs capital investment, which Kime said he’s confident will happen. If everything comes into place, he thinks hemp could be in farmers’ rotations starting in 1997.
Stonehill, from the United States, said while people are becoming more open to hemp, the U.S. government is not.
“We should work towards trying to maintain the lead that we have and not get caught in a typical Canadian scenario where we just kind of see something that’s great and don’t do anything about it,” Kime said.
