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October 7, 1998
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

"I’m very pleased with this crop," says farmer Jean-Marie Laprise, who is Ontario’s largest grower of cannabis and Brussels sprouts. His brother starts a big John Deere combine, ready to harvest a cannabis field just 15 miles north of the U.S. border.

And it’s all legal - for the first time since 1938.

In a new policy being closely watched by farmers and law enforcement officials in the USA, Canada is letting farmers grow cannabis sativa, best known as the source of marijuana. By the end of October, 251 farmers will have harvested 5,930 acres of cannabis for its ancient use as hemp, a source of fiber and food oil.

This cannabis hemp can’t get a person stoned. It’s bred to have too little THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, to produce a high, no matter how much is smoked. Some disappointed locals have tried.

But the Canadian hemp crop could reshape the contentious debate over whether farmers should be allowed to grow hemp in the USA.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) bans growing hemp, saying it would make enforcing drug laws harder because hemp and marijuana look alike. The White House and its drug czar support the ban.

Hemp and marijuana are essentially varieties of the same plant. It would be impossible to tell them apart, outside of a chemical analysis for THC content, if they were not bred and cultivated differently. Hemp is grown densely - 300 plants a square yard - for low THC, high fiber content and a minimal amount of branches and leaves. Marijuana is grown one or two plants a square yard to be rich with branches, leaves and THC.

In the USA, hemp has gone mainstream, too. Originally pushed by marijuana legalization activists, hemp has won growing support from farmers, agricultural researchers, environmentalists and large corporations. They say hemp is an environment-friendly fiber that could reduce demand for timber and synthetic fibers.

Farm bureaus in 17 states now support hemp. A cooperative of Kentucky farmers has sued the DEA in federal court over the issue.

Hemp excites farmers mostly as a crop that can be rotated with plants such as soybeans, wheat and potatoes. They say hemp’s deep roots aerate the soil. After the harvest, its roots and discarded leaves replenish the soil with nutrients. Its early growth and thick canopy choke off weeds, and it breaks disease cycles that reduce the yields of other crops. It also can be grown largely without pesticides and herbicides.

"North Dakota desperately needs a good rotation crop," Kraenzel says. "Even if hemp isn’t profitable itself, it is profitable as a rotation crop. Farmers need to take some money off the land in years when they can’t grow wheat or potatoes."

North Dakota potato farmers take fields out of production every few years because potatoes, while exceptionally profitable, drain nutrients from the soil. Farmers plant tall grass or sunflowers to improve the soil. But tall grass produces no revenue, and sunflowers only break even. Hemp would turn a modest profit of $73 an acre while improving the soil better than either tall grass or sunflowers, the North Dakota study predicts.

(Ed. note: Just like we con people going through cancer chemotherapy into not vomiting, and AIDS patients into not starving, and MS patients into not having spasms, and glaucoma patients into not going blind. We will stop at nothing in our plot to take over the world! By the way, we also con people in the Drug Czar’s office into saying really stupid things. But that is easy.)

If hemp were a viable crop, we’d have a harder time putting forward our agenda. Thankfully, it’s not."

The success of the crop won’t be known for five years, Canadian farmers say, but this year’s crop looks profitable.

Neil Strayer, who farms 1,000 acres in Saskatchewan, says his 40 acres of hemp will return double the $200 to $300 Canadian ($128 to $192 U.S.) an acre he makes on barley. He was thrilled by the hardiness of his Finnish dwarf hemp, which grows 4 feet tall: "The hemp came through beautifully despite many obstacles."

To get a hemp license, a clean police record is required. A farmer pays $25 (about $16 U.S.) for a check.

The farmer provides the location of hemp fields to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), who may inspect in person or by helicopter. Hemp fields must be at least 10 acres for easy identification.

Hemp must have a THC content of less than 0.3% - the same requirement as in Western Europe and about one-tenth that of average marijuana. Health Canada, the government health ministry, conducts random audits of THC levels.

In Canada, the hemp program has been largely free of controversy. The agriculture ministry spent $500,000 ($321,000 U.S.) to research the crop before it was legalized.

The Mounties raised no objections. "It’s Health Canada’s decision, not ours. We enforce drug laws. We don’t make them," says Corporal Gilles Moreau, spokesman for the RCMP.

Jean Pert, hemp project manager at Health Canada, says no problems with illegal marijuana have been reported.

The Canadian farmer taking the biggest risk on hemp is Laprise, whose family has farmed in Pain Court for 145 years. The 44-year-old entrepreneur has invested $4 million ($2.6 million U.S.) in hemp, including money for a new processing plant, research and a breeding operation.

In addition to hemp, Laprise harvests corn, soybeans, sugar beets and 8,500 tons of tomatoes a year for Heinz ketchup.

He’s not an organic farmer, but he became interested in hemp in 1995 when Claude Pinsonnault, a farmer he works with, read an article about hemp in Earthkeeper, an environmental magazine.

"The first thing I thought is: what a great rotation crop," Pinsonnault says. "Farmers are getting killed by soybean cyst nematodes (small worms that attack the plants). You see fields where the yield has gone from 50 to 15 bushels an acre. Hemp breaks this disease cycle."

The two farmers began researching hemp on their own, including several trips to Europe to visit hemp farms.

This year, Laprise grew 300 acres of hemp and contracted with 50 local farmers to grow another 2,000 acres. He hopes to double that next year to supply his processing plant.

Laprise smiles at the suggestion that he’s being manipulated by marijuana activists.

"It’s a different crop. Any farmer knows that," he says. "The plants are bred differently, grown differently, used differently."

Cannabis pollen is light and blows freely in the wind, giving this area the distinctive smell of cannabis on a breezy day. Laprise requires that hemp fields be 3 miles apart so different varieties do not contaminate one another.

Pollen from marijuana bred for high THC would damage his low-THC hemp bred for thick stocks, and vice versa.

"To put a marijuana plant in a hemp field would be ridiculous: First, because we told the RCMP where it is, and second, because it would hurt the hemp crop," he says.

But long term, he predicts, hemp will become a niche crop - about 100,000 acres a year in Canada - and produce profits similar to corn and soybeans.

"It’s a new market," he says. "But, hey, somebody started growing soybeans just a few decades ago, and now it’s our second-biggest crop."

PIONEER HARVESTS HEMP IDEA INTO BUSINESS
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
October 7, 1998

The rebirth of hemp began in 1985 when counterculture activist/entrepreneur Jack Herer published his eccentric book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes.

Printed on cheap newsprint, the self-published book argued that cannabis sativa is a wonder crop that could save the world. Only a conspiracy of drug agents and powerful corporate interests had prevented this glorious plant from clothing the poor, saving the environment and helping end famine, Herer wrote.

"I had a vision about hemp in 1974 when a bunch of us were stoned," Herer recalls. "I thought when we came down, the idea would be ridiculous. Instead, I realized it was even a better idea than I’d thought."

He opened the nation’s first hemp store in Venice Beach, Calif., in 1981.

For his book, he researched hemp for 11 years, harvesting a wealth of U.S. Agriculture Department material on the wonders of cannabis hemp and a now well-known government propaganda film, Hemp For Victory, that encouraged farmers to grow cannabis for fiber during World War II. The 1942 film echoes Herer’s claims about hemp.

The Emperor Wears No Clothes has sold 600,000 copies since 1985, including 150,000 in German and French. A new edition was released Thursday.

Although still self-published, the book, subtitled The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana and How Hemp Can Save The World!, is now available in major bookstores for $24.95 and printed on high quality paper (made from trees, excluding 1,000 copies on hemp available for $100 each).

"Jack kept the idea of hemp from being lost in the dustbin of history," says David West, who has a Ph.D. in plant breeding and was one of the first agricultural professionals to re-examine hemp. "But many farmers squirm at this counterculture connection."

West says the Drug Enforcement Administration makes the same mistake Herer made in his original 1985 book: "They both see hemp and marijuana as the same thing. To an agricultural professional, this just is not so."

Herer expresses disappointment that marijuana legalization has lost its importance as hemp has gone mainstream. In their desire to separate hemp and marijuana, many farmers ignore excellent hemp that is above the legal THC limit, he says. THC is the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that causes a high.

But Herer lives to fulfill a pledge he first made in 1974 with his now deceased best friend and business partner, "Captain Ed" Adair: "We’d swear to work every day to legalize marijuana and get all pot prisoners out of jail, until we were dead, marijuana was legal, or we could quit when we were 84. We wouldn’t have to quit, but we could."