Copyright 1997 Sussex Publishers Inc.
SECTION: No. 162; Pg. 56; ISSN: 00271535

HEADLINE: Grown in the USA? hemp is imported from Europe while American farmers
are prohibited by law from growing it

By Andrews, David U.

Americans are used to steeping in the irrational juices of their haphazard
legal culture. A vintage crock is simmering over the issue of hemp cultivation.
Begin with a good stock of muddy history, throw a revitalized backtotheland
ethos permeating the mainstream, and you have the base for the policy dish that
is "industrial hemp." What is at stake is not whether there will be a commerce
in hemp products in the United States. That is already happening. The question
is whether American farmers will participate.

Hemp advocates and people who work with it extol the long, strong fibers of
the plant, the many uses to which its various parts can be put after processing,
and its prolific growth relative to other plants used for similar purposes.
Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Adidas already proffer hemp products, as do
Land's End and J. Peterman catalogues. Since the early '90s the number of
hemporiented businesses in the U.S. has gone from estimates of about 20 near
the beginning of 1992 to upwards of 300 and possibly closer to 500 today. A lot
of these companies are fairly small outfits, though others are notching
attentionfetching numbers, such as Sharon's Finest, a vegetarian foods company
ranked 238 on Business Magazine Inc's 500 list.

Hemp's bucking ride into the mainstream American marketplace is driven more
by economic and cultural factorsan emergent interest in natural fibers, for
instancethan in any changes in law or new discoveries or inventions that alter
the economic picture. At the same time, hemp products bolster and are bolstered
by a worldwide renaissance in the development of hemp machines from
speciallydesigned mowers to pulpers that can be fed the entire stock of plant.
Chris Conrad, who in 1989 presciently founded the Business Alliance for Commerce
in Hemp, a consortium of hemp product companies banded together to foster a more
hospitable climate for trading in hemp goods, says, "The politicalenvironmental
shift is really what's driving it."

The hitch is, all hemp products manufactured for sale in the United States
are made from hemp grown on foreign soil, in countries where it is legal to
cultivate the crop. It is estimated that the cultivation of the fiber on U.S.
soil would trim the price by 75 percent, while adding to the array of cash crops
farmers could choose from. Across the republic, farm organizations including

the the 4.5million member American Farm Bureau, are calling to legalize
industrial hemp farming. Several states have passed laws in favor of hemp
cultivation. They have generally taken the form of providing for staterun test
plots or allowing individual farmers to register as growers with the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA). And the DEA has gone out of its way to prevent the
crop from being cultivated. The agency won't say how many applications it has
turned down, nor even how many it has received. In at least two states, special
agents have actively opposed legislation allowing for hemp cultivation. The
sponsor of a Colorado bill felt an eleventhhour letter from the DEA, delivered
less than three hours before the assembly vote, killed the legislation.

The European Community has allowed the growing of hemp for years. The
process requires that growers only use seed that is psychoactively inert.
Cannabis horticulturalists measure the plant's drug potency in terms of a
percentage of the plant's THC content. Levels below one percent THC, the
psychoactive compound of primary interest to government regulators, are regarded
as the industrial variety of the cannabis plant. All cannabis grown legally in
Europe comes from seeds certified to be industrial grade, rather than
pharmaceutical grade. Recently Canada and to hemp cultivation, joining a growing
list of trading partners including Germany, England, France, China, The
Netherlands and the Ukraine. Put simply, hemp is not marijuana and can't be
transformed into marijuana any more readily than pure heroin can be extracted
from garden poppies. The linking of hemp and marijuana has more to do with old
habits of the drug war than a reasoned concern for the public welfare.

Britain boasts 10,000 acres of the sweetsmelling crop, nestled in various
secret locations throughout the balmy northern isle. (British officials don't
want the crop growing out in the open and tempting misguided potheads who would
steal the plants.) Jamaica is looking to the ofttroublesome plant to revive its
textile industry. (In a twist on the usual cannabisexport relationship, an
Atlantabased company, Alternative Import and Export, will reportedly advise the
Kingston government on the fine points of raising the precious weed.)

Domestic commerce in hemp will continue to grow with or without a U.S. crop,
says Ken Friedman, president of the nation's biggest hemp business, American
Hemp Mercantile, Inc. Valued at an estimated $ 75 million for 1995 and projected
at $ 600 million by 2001, hemp commerce involves everything from lip balm and
fanny packs to soaps, twine and clothing. American Mercantile sells mostly
twine, all of it grown and processed in Hungary. The largest trafficker in
hemp goods with almost $ 2 million in gross sales last year, American Hemp has
tripled its sales volume in the course of two years and may issue a public stock
offering in 1998.

"It's not so much that we need [U.S.grown hemp] for the existing hemp
industry but for rural economic development," says Friedman. "The people losing
out are farmers," and the people in their communities who would enjoy the
benefits to local manufacturing.

By the time a domestic supply could become available, Friedman thinks he
would have tapped out his Hungarian suppliers who may then be persuaded to share
their methods with Americans just starting out. He sees a time frame of from one
to two years before initial growing efforts get under way here, and perhaps five
years before companies like his are relying on it as a commodity. Though in the
next year one may watch the legal front for five or ten states to pass laws to
grow hemp or study its prospects. In fact, this is a process already underway

"What we're really waiting for is something out of D.C. to take it out of DEArs
hands," he says.

Marl Kane, editor and publisher of the trade magazine HempWorld, founded in
1993, concurs. Over the next year, says Kane, "There will be a lot of activity
in the state legislatures, but unfortunately it's not gonna do us much good when
the federal government steps in and says, 'No, we're not gonna let you grow
it.'"

The backlash against hemp sometimes takes amusing forms. In Omaha, the
executive director of antidrug group Pride Omaha Inc. complained, "We're seeing
more and more promotions of hemp and we're very much opposed to it." An employee
at an Omaha bank laid claim to the illegal practice of removing dollar bills
from circulation because many were turning up with the graffiti message scrawled
by George Washington's mouth: "I grew hemp." (Though in Washington's dayhemp
cultivation was akin to growing cotton, his planting diaries reflect that he
also grew a little of the plant for its drug properties, as was also common in
his time.)

Feckless drug czar Lee Brown, in a gaseous outgoing moment, upbraided Adidas
for marketing a shoe called, "The Hemp" labeling it a "cynical marketing game"
and an attempt "to capitalize on the drug culture."

Adidas president Steve Wynne replied: "I don't believe you will encounter
anyone smoking our shoes anytime soon." The company has since renamed the shoe
"Gazelle Natural," and it sells with a label declaring its hemp composition.

As it happens, the commercial and agricultural breakthrough will be one and
the same for hemp when the time comes. Northern California stationer John Stahl
of the Evanescent Press has been applying for the legal grower's permit for more
than three years, complying with every one of what he calls the "insane
regulations," just because he really wants "to crack this nut open." There may
be some encouraging news in his saga (his last government communication appears
to give him the goahead to plant a small amount of hemp), but he seems
determined to keep at the authorities as long as it takes for him to get his
permit. Of course, the same laws are blocking him from growing hemp for paper as
block any other North American paper company from getting into cannabis.

"You can make lip balm all you want but that's not gonna change the world,"
says Stahl, characterizing most hemp trade in the U.S. as "all nickel and dime,
little fanny packs....Once we start making paper out of hemp it will put
everything else in the shade." HempWorld's Kane echoes his sentiment: "Hemp
commerce can move forward without growing it...the clothing, the fashion, the
novelty items those will definitely continue, and those companies will never get
rich, but it will continue definitely."

Fortune 500 companies don't come blazing down the hillside trumpeting for
all the world to know they have become advocates of social change. But
International Paper's membership in the North American Industrial Hemp Council
places it among those who are working to legalize the growing of psychoactively
inert cannabis. In response to economic and environmental concerns, the company
is evaluating the potential of hemp and other natural fibers for making paper.
(The company already operates a mill in Colombia using begasse, a fibrous South
American plant.) Hemp stocks would never supplant wood pulp altogether, points
out International Paper spokesperson Neal Lincoln. But it won't supplant

anything if it can't be grown legally. Does the world's largest paper
manufacturer intend to shape policy? "Our involvement in the North American
Industrial Hemp Council is right now the way we're attempting to influence
policy on the issue. That's a group that's interested in legalizing the growing
of industrial hemp. To the extent we can help in that, we will," says Lincoln.
International Paper uses 50 million tons of wood fiber a year and employs more
than 50,000 people just in the U.S. If the company finds that hemp is where ifs
at, access to a domesticallygrown supply is "important," says Lincoln.

In its informationgathering efforts, International Paper wants to learn,
"What does it take to grow and harvest and use hemp? We know how to do that with
wood; we have to learn with hemp," says Lincoln.

"All paper companies in North America are looking for fibers other than
wood," says Patrick Girouard, economic analyst with Resource Efficient
Agricultural Production (REAP)Canada. Though agricultural subsidies of other
fiber crops like cotton economically militate against hemp for certain
applications, it can find a niche in the short term replacing soft woods for
paper pulp. "Over the next 20 years the world demand for paper products will
double, especially in Asia," says Girouard. He too sees cultural factors drawing
attention to hemp. "When you talk about hemp it's catchy. Just because it's
illegal, people show more interest in the beginning." This, coupled with a
global movement to remove price supports from agricultural commodities should
augur well for hemps prospects. Within a few years programs in British Columbia,
Saskatchewan and Ontario will begin to yield the data to run bona fide economic
analyses, he says.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson calls hemp a good fiber, but
"institutional constraints" pose "overwhelming" obstacles to studying it.

USDA's Jeffrey Gain, chairman of the board of the Alternative Agriculture
Research and Commercialization Corp., has said, "Anybody who comes to the
conclusion that hemp is not viable is probably not fully aware..."

The state of Wisconsin angered regional drug warriors last spring by
organizing a conference on the commercial cultivation of hemp. Erwin Sholts of
the state's Department of Agriculture figured hemp acreage to be worth "in the
neighborhood of a couple hundred dollars more than corn." And its root system is
"good for fragile soils," he said.

Hemp roots, nine to fourteen inches long, condition the soil and provide the
plant good water access. It is highly pest resistant and the crop requires
minimal treatment with farm chemicals. Advocates of hemp commerce look to the
day when hemp grown in the U.S. can support valueadded economies in rural
areas, where the commodity will be grown, processed, and sold in the same
community, providing jobs and supporting the local tax base. They refer to this
concept as "bioregionalism." It should sound familiar to patrons of firmers
markets and organics enthusiasts.

Bioregionalismconveniently, if coincidentallyshortcircuits one of the
primary federal grounds for interference with the hemp trade, namely the issue
of interstate commerce. Though federal law regulates the cannabis plant as a
schedule one narcotic (thus setting up the DEA as the gatekeeper for growers
permits), other federal statutes only come into play when the product is moved
between states. If it always stays in the state, there's no issue.

Bioregionalism is also plain sound economics. It's what makes access to a
domestic supply a crucial developmental issue for International Paper.

Interestingly, this movement toward a more traditional agriculture, as
hemp proponents tend to position themselves, makes skillful use of modern media,
principally the World Wide Web. Almost all of the major hemp organizations have
Internet addresses, and product labels and political brochures will direct you
to them. The effect makes for a coherent web presence. The success of this
strategy at educating the public about the potential benefits of hemp
agriculture may well determine whether the political climate can support changes
in the law to make it possible.

Every season brings its crop of hemp conferences, internationally and within
North America. Past conferences have provided opportunity for growers and
manufacturers to meet each other, and for people in similar businesses to
troubleshoot together, just as happens at producer and manufacturer conventions
for any other commodity. As the hemp industry matures, these gatherings assume a
changing significance. A hemp symposium that took place in February in
Vancouver, partially bankrolled and publicly supported by the Bank of Montreal,
began the process of hooking up hemp entrepreneurs with sources of capital. As
hemp commerce becomes more recognizably part of the mainstream economy, it will
be easier to push for the political reforms necessary for people to grow it.

Meanwhile people are getting experience. In the United States that will mean
continuing to sell and develop products that consumers will like and buy and
show off. Elsewhere that means actually growing and processing it. Marcel
Hendriks, director of HempFlax, a European pioneer in working with hemp fibers,
grows 3,000 acres of hemp in The Netherlands. (Ironically, he points out, the
outdoor growers of pharmaceutical cannabis complain about the fertilization of
their plants by his industrial hemp fieldsfemale plants must remain separated
from male pollen to produce the potent, psychoactive flowering tops.) "We were
fortunate to have people who already knew about handling fibers; flax is as near
as you can get to hemp," says Hendriks. The tide of recent years has been
flowing with hemp. When he established the company in 1994, natural fibers were
drawing a little attention, but very little was going on with hemp in
particular. "Now every car company in Europe is doing tests with natural
fibers," says Hendriks, who has processed hemp for Mercedes though the car
company is not yet a regular client. Conrad explains the utility of hemp in
autos: "Glass shatters, fiber bends."

Hemps emergent popularity fits with other national trends in support of
ecofriendly commerce generally, wherein the market for organic foods is doubling
every three years or so. "I think we need to be a part of that movement," says
American Hemp's Friedman. "It's part of the same kinds of consumers."

According to Frank Riccio Jr., president of Danforth International, the
global leader in nonwood pulpsupply, cultural faddism "accounts for a big part
of [the national interest in hemp]." In terms of the global market for pulp
alternatives to wood, however, there are other places to turn than hemp.
REAPCanada's Girouard says switchgrass, staple of the historical bison and
welladapted to marginal land, "will take off before hemp."

Riccio emphasizes the unexhausted potential of what we already grow "What
we're underutilizing is ag residue," explains Riccio. In economic terms,
reclaiming all the lost fiber of castaway leavings from corn, wheat, and
flax makes more sense than looking to hemp as a new fiber crop.

No doubt, American industry neglects the utility of agricultural
byproducts. But International Paper has eyed the same economic landscape as
Riccio and decided that hemp is worth a good look.

Murky waters lie between hemp advocacy and a politics associated with
liberalizing the marijuana laws. Many of those in favor of allowing farmers to
grow hemp want nothing to do with pot politics. "Hemp is absolutely separate
from the marijuana issue," says Sholts.

While Conrad salutes the efforts of Sholts and others for whom the
separation is mandatory, in his view, "We're stronger when we work together.
Part of the process of the federal government is dividing and conquering. It's
better for us to recognize commonalties [and to] resist convoluted
methodologies."

For hempsters, the postProhibition marijuana reforms were a backdoor method
of securing the fortunes of petrochemical and timber interests (DuPont and
Hearst), who wanted hemp out of the way. It is these and not drug laws
acrosstheboard they wish to undo.

Though President Clinton has yet to weigh in on the industrial hemp issue,
he signed an executive order a year and a half after taking office setting
national defense priorities for "the production and allocation of 'food
resources' (which is defined to include hemp)."

At the end of the day, the development of a new hemp agriculture in this
country will depend more on consumer demand than some economic imperative that
the United States become a hempen kingdom. There is perhaps too much ease with
which its supporters refer to the wellknown environmetual degradations of
cotton. (There's a reason they call it King Cotton.) Inasmuch as some people
want to point to hemp's rich history in the life of the nation, cotton's is
richer and it's not forgotten. Domestic cotton production topped eight billion
pounds last year. Likewise with trees; it may be good to throw hemp into the mix
of pulp sources for making paper but virtually no one believes that forestry's
epitaph will be written on hemp paper.

In the coming year one may anticipate the continued development of hemp
commerce in the United States and some political waves on the state level.
Hemp organizers plan for about ten states to pass prohemp laws in the spring
and fall but readily concede it won't matter practically as long as the DEA is
given final say. Politically, the prospects for a domestic hemp agriculture rest
with Washington. Unless the DEA shifts its stance, either the White House must
issue an executive order, or the Congress must pass a special law, for hemp to
be grown in this country. Theoretically, the DEA leaves open the possibility
that it will actually approve one of these registration applications.
Theoretically, time moves backwards if you run fast enough.

As consumers demand natural fiber products, and business people and farmers
learn how to grow, reap and process such fibers, the diverse marketplace of the
future will take form. But there is nothing inevitable here, no "Hemp is coming"
skywriting to descry on the far horizon. If and when hemp happens, it will be
becauseas a nation we made it happen.