HEMP'S HIGH WEARING OFF

Miracle crop slow to catch on

KEMPTVILLE -- It was the dream crop of the 1990s, a near-mythical reputation
fanned by the media with this writer being no less guilty of generating some
of the hype.

When it came to hemp, how could we help ourselves? On paper -- one of the
products you can make out of it -- not only did hemp have all the
ingredients of a good crop, more importantly, it had all the ingredients of
a good story.

There was, for example, the pioneer indestructibility thing with hemp being
the crop of choice of our forefathers because it could be grown anywhere and
had a multitude of uses.

Those uses past, present and future, both for fibre and seeds, were
mind-boggling: Clothing, household items, construction, food additives,
wellness potions, paints and assorted other products.

And the hardiness! Hemp didn't need pesticides, hardly any fertilizer and it
could be planted where wimpier crops like corn and soybeans feared to tread.

But perhaps the sexiest part of the story was the bad rap and subsequent
redemption experienced by hemp due to the transgressions of its cousin
cannabis, more commonly known as pot.

While the two plants look much the same -- so much so that potheads have
been stealing plants out of Kemptville College's experimental hemp plot --
the tamer twin contains only minute amounts of the active ingredient THC
which provides the "high."

You can suck on hemp 'til the cows come home with the only buzz experienced
coming from lack of oxygen. Yet that didn't stop bumbling bureaucrats early
in the last century from banning hemp along with cannabis, relegating the
once-proud crop to the agricultural scrapheap.

Then, after much lobbying, hemp was legalized three years ago with a
prerequisite for growing it being a permit from Health Canada.

The media just loves a story about the downtrodden overcoming adversity and
rising to the top; and it doesn't matter if the particular downtrodden
happens to be a plant.

Hemp's redemption started a stampede, at least verbally, with thousands of
words written about hemp revolutionizing Ontario farm fields. While slower
to catch on in the east end of the province, a few hemp patches turned up
here and there.

Throughout the piece, dissenting voices were crying feebly in the
wilderness, warning that it's one thing to have a miracle crop but it's
quite another to build a viable industry around it, including lining up
reliable buyers with guaranteed markets.

For the most part, those party-poopers threatening to ruin a good story were
kept at the back of the bus. Three years later, they can no longer be
ignored because their words have come to pass.

Except for a tiny pocket in southwestern Ontario, there's still no real hemp
industry in the province with hundreds of bales in storage and no major
buyers.

Does that mean the dream is dead or that it's simply taking longer to gel
than the hemp hypesters had hoped?

Agricultural researchers like Kemptville College's Wendy Asbill says that
with harvesting techniques and equipment improving, and with markets slowly
solidifying, hope remains to stake out a sizable niche for hemp.

Meanwhile, I-told-you-so experts are blaming the media in part for creating
a degree of hype that no new crop could ever live up to.

Hey, I already said mea culpa!