Hemp Bound (17 page)

“Ditch weed teaches us that,” I agreed. “Seventy-seven years of eradication and it's still here.”

For his next demo, Loflin reached a few rows deep into the fiber cultivar crop and gave a five-foot-tall male a vigorous shake. “Check this out,” he said as a pollen cloud emerged that obscured the light for several seconds.

After I spent a few more minutes marveling and playing hide-and-seek with my prairie dog kids, Loflin directed my attention to a seed he was trying to pinch from the ice cream cone of a female flower on the oil side of the two crops we were straddling.

“This one's ripe,” he said, hunched like a jeweler examining a gemstone. From a cluster of what appeared to be at least a hundred seeds in that one flower, he extracted the coconut-colored individual, a quarter of the size of an orange pip, and squeezed its already opening calyx. A lacy white seed cake emerged like a prize, floating in an oily emerald pool.

“That's where the omegas are,” I observed, drooling,

“That's where the money is right now,” Loflin observed, drooling. “The billion-dollar protein that's driving the market.”

As the sun set, I shot video of row upon row of industrial cannabis plants that seemed to be maturing almost visibly. Mosquitoes were devouring humans and prairie dogs alike, but I for one didn't mind or indeed even notice my own bites until the coyotes were going off that night outside my family's campsite, a hundred miles away. I was that Revolutionary War–era Vermonter again: I was reading the news sheet in shocked bliss. I felt like I was seeing a bright economic future for my country, family, and planet for the first time in a long time.

On the planetary side of things, Loflin told me he was trying to prove via year-by-year nutrient comparisons whether industrial cannabis really helps heal drought-damaged soil. He was already demonstrating that it will grow in it.

“I'm sending off one of this year's soil samples next week,” he said. “I can't wait to see how these compare to future years.”

And so we were back, as all conversations in the western plains eventually return, to the encroaching Sahara issue. I broached the topic delicately, since Bowman had reminded me that folks in these parts consider themselves the caretakers of the land. But no one is denying that the Dust Bowl is getting real again here, in the same place it struck seventy years ago, right about when hemp got stifled. That Dust Bowl is in the collective memory here. It's also in the official memory. In fact I saw a photo from a 1935 dust storm in my previous night's campground, and it looked exactly like the one Jillane Hixson sent me that trapped her and husband Dave in their home for fifteen hours.

“How much do you think climate change plays into this ag crisis?” I asked Loflin.

“The land is not producing as it was ten years ago and prior to that,” he said. “Because of the lack of rain. Nutrients are not being delivered. They're gone. But this is cyclical. This topsoil can come back, and I have no doubt hemp will help the process.”

I and my Sweetheart had started gathering up children and hats and the group moved slowly back toward Loflin's truck, each of us shredding first trails through the cannabis farm. When we reached a spot beyond the hemp field's boundaries, Loflin pointed to a patch of altogether more desert-like dirt than what we'd been mucking through in the field. “This year's crop is already clearly stabilizing the soil, which is another thing I'm trying to show my neighbors. That and the good news about the water.”

“What's the good news about the water?”

“The hemp's wanting about a third to half the water of corn, which is the dominant crop here now,” he said. “Twelve to fourteen inches for hemp, versus twenty-four to thirty-six for corn.” This was big news for farmers watering from the declining Ogallala Aquifer underneath us. “Everyone knows how much their well can produce—folks could dryland-crop hemp.”

Dusk was coming on fast. “Any other advice for farmers moving to hemp next season and in coming years?” I asked.

Loflin stopped at his truck door. “Farming is farming,” he said, sounding exactly like Grant Dyck, the Manitoban hemp farmer. “Every new crop is definitely a learning curve. Realize that, do your research, and you might have a little fun along the way.”

Yes, this makes about half a dozen sources in this book who have included “have fun” in their entry-level business advice. Still, driving back from the field, I remembered Dyck's combine fires. “Are you ready for harvest?” I asked.

Loflin rolled his eyes and fidgeted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. “I'm consulting with Anndrea Hermann,” he muttered. “I know with the oil crop we have to consider moisture contact at harvest, plus aeration during storage. Just more parts of the process to learn. Anyway, Anndrea's coming down here at harvesttime.”

“Smart move,” I said, speaking as a hemp journalist.

“We were just talking today about whether to turn off his irrigation now or later,” Hermann told me when I called her to ask for an assessment of Loflin's effort. “I told him I thought he could keep watering for a bit. And I saw samples of the seeds—they look like they're forming well. I think he'll do fine.”

One detail that Hermann found interesting, from observing one of Colorado's first-ever hemp fields: “The crop's growing like we see on the high plains of Alberta.” That might help farmers choose cultivars to use or hybridize in future years.

Add Loflin to the list of Americans grateful for Canada's hemp know-how. After all, how could he know what to do? Forget about being Colorado's first hemp field. Almost no one has cultivated the plant south of the forty-fifth parallel in more than half a century. Billion-dollar industries have to start somewhere.

And Loflin did believe he was in on the ground floor of such an industry. In fact, he was happy to get off the topic of harvest, which appeared like it might be causing him to lose a little sleep. “Two years from now we'll already be talking about the development of a major commercial industry that's well under way, from these seeds,” Loflin predicted. “Between the construction industry, seed oil, and building America's seed bank, Colorado is going to be leading the hemp revolution.”

While my sleepy kids were wiggling into their own car seats back at the Loflin farmhouse, Ryan disclosed that he was “a little apprehensive” about the lingering federal law quagmire. “I don't think they'll bother us. Not with drug cartels coming up from Mexico. If they do they'll look pretty foolish.”

If the DEA's evolving public statements were any indication, he was probably right. Notice the considerably less bellicose tone in the second of these two quotes from the same agency, in major media six months apart.

It really doesn't matter whether it looks different or it looks the same. If it's the cannabis plant, it's in the Controlled Substances Act and, therefore, enforceable under federal drug law.
—DEA special agent Paul Roach, threatening Michael Bowman on NPR's
Morning Edition
, January 28, 2013

Hemp farmers are not on our radar
. —Denver DEA spokesman, in a
New York Times
article about Loflin, August 5, 2013

This essentially reflects America's widespread and growing support for hemp. Pulling a leaf from his own field off the skier on his shirt, the last thing this technical federal felon told me was, “I want to build an industry for America—something my kids and their kids can rely on.” Then he gave me a gallon jug of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap (peppermint) as a parting gift. As I loaded it into my rig, I thought,
Next bottle: American-grown
.

Periodic bolts of violet lightning on the southern horizon reminded me that this year at least promised to be a wet one—an auspicious rainy season for the inaugural modern hemp crop, from which it's possible much of the early American commercial seed market will descend.

Just as I was starting my engine, Loflin waved to a neighbor driving by in front of the property. He knew everyone in Springfield. This of course matters in a small town, and reminded me to investigate whether Springfield, Colorado shared Byers, Colorado's readiness to grow hemp en masse
.
Which is to say, in large enough quantities to support a local processor.

So instead of pulling out of Springfield, I backtracked and stopped in at Pappy's BBQ (get the fried okra) in the part of town that still had its original 1886 edifices. There, on a Tuesday evening, I was able to confirm Loflin's sense that the town was on board the hemp train.

“I don't got a problem with it,” said lifelong resident Jack Carson, sixty-one, from a booth he shared with his wife, Debra. Along the wall above them was a shelf filled with photos of Baca County veterans who had served in long-ago and current conflicts. “It's a cash crop for farmers, and Lord knows we need it.”

“I know the Loflins,” Debra chimed in. “Ryan went to school with my daughter. They're good people.”

Another family expressed the same view while I waited for my own clan's order. It stuck me viscerally that hemp fit right in in Baca County, Colorado. It fits right in in the heartland.
God bless America
, I thought, aiming the rig southwest and home.

Acknowledgments

A
s I wistfully finish this project, I'm sending out heartfelt thanks to all the hemp experts and consultants who gave freely of their time and info during its research: Anndrea Hermann, Bill Althouse, and Michael Bowman, in particular, went beyond the call. Also incredibly helpful were Ian Pritchett, Adam Eidinger, Michael Carus, John Hobson, Tim Callahan, Greg Flavall, Kelly and Bob King, David Bronner, Grant and Colleen Dyck, Agua Das, Simon Potter, Farhoud Delijani, Ryan Loflin, Don Wirtshafter, Steve Levine, Jillane Hixson, Dave Tzilkoski, Adrian Clark, Norm Roulet, Ellen Komp, Shaun Crew, Danielle Schumacher, and, well, everyone you just met in this book.

My biggest thanks, as always, goes to my superlatively supportive family, who milked the goats while I was jamming on deadline (endless hug payback already on its way). Gracias also to Mike Behar for seeing the potential of this project after discovering his own toddler reading a review of my previous book on the potty, and to Markus Hoffmann, for his usual kindness and professionalism. And thanks to Leigh Huffine and the Chelsea Green team for help with the live events. My editor, Brianne Goodspeed, was terrific to work with. Also, I'm beaming intercontinental appreciation to Michel Degens and Derrick Bergman, who set up several of my European site visits.

And, finally, thanks to the initial fellow or lady who, probably after watching the local animals munch it, first snapped off a branch of
Cannabis sativa
and thought,
Ya know, this'd make a great roof/sandal/basket/food/rope/medicine/party gift
—and then two weeks later had a follow-up thought:
This is, like, the King of Plants, in terms of usefulness. Hey, pass the mastodon burgers
.

Notes

1
. This after Colorado voters amended their constitution to allow all forms of cannabis on November 6, 2012. Hemp was explicitly specified in that Amendment 64.

2
. For fans of obscure government regulation, there's some indication that this might have already happened for non-edible (fiber, rather than seed) versions of hemp, back in 2003. According to Kentucky attorney Luke Morgan (a white-shoe Bluegrass State lawyer, he used to work in the state attorney general's office), quoted in the Kentucky publication
The Lane Report
on August 6, 2013, Drug Enforcement Agency Final Rule (FR Doc 03-6805) “Exemption From Control of Certain Industrial Products and Materials Derived From the Cannabis Plant” frees cannabis-plant-derived industrial products and feeds not intended for human consumption from federal control under the Controlled Substances Act.

3
. “Hemp: A Confusing, Historical, and Fascinating Plant,” Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance, accessed October 18, 2013, 
www.hemptrade.ca/index.php
.

4
. West told me he learned this tale from James F. Hopkins's
A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky
, a 1951 book reissued by the University of Kentucky Press in 1998.

5
. In fact, as I send this book to my publisher, a source close to the FARRM Bill negotiations has emailed me to say I will come off like a prophet if I predict that the final hemp amendment wording therein will wind up allowing even stronger cultivation allowances than the “university research” wording that passed the House in 2013. Key Republicans and Democrats have agreed to present it as a states-rights issue, my source told me. “We're talking about full legalization,” he said. Well, prediction is free, so, OK, I hereby predict that.

6
. Hemp as an industrial-scale tree-free paper option today is promising enough that International Paper Corporation has looked into it. The good folks at my publisher, Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction, Vermont, perhaps in response to my nonstop ranting on the subject, pulled out all the stops—including pursuing sources in Canada and China until the eleventh hour—in trying to print the first edition of
Hemp Bound
on hemp paper. It was, my editor reported to me with deeply furrowed brow, simply not cost feasible (YET!) on a mass scale. Stay tuned.

7
. President Obama already wore a Colorado-made hemp scarf on a campaign stop in 2012. He knows the deal.

8
. The cannabis plant actually has three main varieties:
Cannabis sativa
,
C. indica
, and
C. ruderalis
. In Canada, the government says you can cultivate any of these industrially, provided that “the leaves and flowering heads . . . do not contain more than 0.3% THC” (Industrial Hemp Regulations, SOR/98-156, Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Government of Canada, last modified October 1, 2013, accessed October 18, 2013, 
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-98-156/FullText .html
). THC: That's the substance that allowed Woodstock, and that
not more than
0.3%
of it will be our definition of hemp and industrial cannabis in this book.

9
. Some varieties of hemp might also possess many of the medicinal and health maintenance properties that psychoactive cannabis has, only without the psychoactive elements. This might very well prove a lucrative market for industrial cannabis, but one into which, having discussed it at length in
Too High to Fail
, my previous book, I won't delve in these pages.

10
. Ernest Small and David Marcus, “Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America,” in
Trends in New Crops and New Uses
, eds. Jules Janick and Anna Whipkey (Alexandria, VA: ASHS Press, 2002).

11
. Beverly Fortune, “Advocates of Industrial Hemp Point to Kentucky's Past as Top Producer,”
Lexington Herald-Leader
, January 1, 2013.

12
. Governor Brown finally signed hemp legalization into California law on September 25, 2013.

13
. Renée Johnson, “Hemp as an Agricultural Commodity” (working paper, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, July 24, 2013).

14
. Agua Das and Thomas B. Reed, “United States: Biomass Fuels from Hemp—Seven Ways Around the Gas Pump,”
restore's blog
(blog),
Hemp News
, October 14, 2011, 
www.hemp.org/news/content/biomass-fuels-hemp
.

15
. This is actually the easiest time in history to cover U.S./Canadian business issues, because in 2013 as I write these words the two nations' dollars are worth about the same.

16
. Erin M. Goldberg, Naveen Gakhar, Donna Ryland, Michel Aliani, Robert A. Gibson, and James D. House, “Fatty Acid Profile and Sensory Characteristics of Table Eggs from Laying Hens Fed Hempseed and Hempseed Oil,”
Journal of Food Science
77 (2012): S153–60. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2012.02626.x.

17
. Of which sixteen million dollars went to farmers in 2012.

18
. “List of Approved Cultivars for the 2012 Growing Season,” Health Canada, last modified October 15, 2012, accessed October 21, 2013, 
www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/pubs /precurs/list_cultivars-liste2012/index-eng.php
.

19
. 
www.hemptechnology.co.uk/agronomy.htm
.

20
. Agua Das and Thomas B. Reed, “United States: Biomass Fuels from Hemp—Seven Ways Around the Gas Pump,”
restore's blog
(blog),
Hemp News
, October 14, 2011, 
www.hemp.org/news/content/biomass-fuels-hemp
.

21
. Though this is projected to change in coming seasons, today Canadian hemp farmers overwhelmingly grow for seed oil only. Some bale their hemp straw and sell it locally for animal bedding.

22
. “Hemp's Future in Chinese Fabrics,” International Year of Natural Fibres, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed October 18, 2013, 
www.naturalfibres2009.org/en/stories/hemp.html
.

23
. This is a yield the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance trade group says is rising as farmers like Dyck get out those kinks.

24
. Technically, industrial cannabis isn't illegal: The DEA can issue hemp cultivation permits. Exemptions from the Controlled Substances Act, essentially. Good luck. It's happened a handful of times during the drug war, including for West's research plot in Hawaii. Most efforts have been stifled. Alex White Plume, believing he lived on sovereign territory not subject to U.S. federal law, tried to grow a hemp crop on the Oglala Lakota Nation (Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota). After being raided by armed DEA agents who destroyed the crop in 2000 and 2001, in 2002 Plume got a harvest to market, though on the morning of harvest he was charged with eight federal civil violations, according to the documentary
Standing Silent Nation
. The North Dakota saga Goehring referred to involved the effort by state Republican lawmakers, farmers, and the state's then agricultural commissioner to acquire DEA hemp cultivation permits in 2007. They were ignored by our federal public servants for three years, even after they sued for an answer. A federal court finally ruled that they'd have to be raided before they could challenge the DEA. They decided to hold off planting.

25
. Lime Technology has a proprietary mixture spelled “Hemcrete.” We'll be using the generic “hempcrete.” You can, after all, mix hemp hurds and lime yourself if you want, or even form a company that produces it commercially.

26
. It lives under the “documents” link at eiha.org.

27
. Lynn Osburn and Judy Osburn, “Hemp Plywood Becomes a Reality,”
North Coast Xpress
, February–March 1999, 9.

28
. “World Crude Oil Consumption by Year,” Index Mundi (website), accessed October 22, 2013, 
www.indexmundi.com/energy.aspx
.

29
. I can attest to this, having driven my own truck on the local Chinese food joint's waste oil for seven years.

30
. Russ Bellville, “Could Hemp Help Nuclear Clean-up in Japan?”
Examiner
(blog), March 13, 2011, 
www.examiner.com/article/could-hemp-help-nuclear-clean -up-japan.

31
. Beverly Fortune, “Advocates of Industrial Hemp Point to Kentucky's Past as Top Producer,”
Lexington Herald-Leader
, January 1, 2013.

32
. Associated Press, “Feldheim, German Village, Powered by Renewable Energy,”
Huffington Post
, December 29, 2011, 
www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/feldheim -germany-renewable_n_1173992.html
.

33
. The plant wall's polymer, different from edible lignan.

34
. The first Levis dungarees were made of hemp.

35
. A 2013 University of Kentucky study somewhat concurred, further pointing out that even high seed oil prices could evaporate when more producers come online. The study still predicted revenue for Kentucky hemp farmers of more than $300 per acre under certain sets of economic conditions, while maintaining those earnings from conventional corn/soy farming would likely stay higher, at least initially. (Lynn Robbins, Will Snell, Greg Halich, Leigh Maynard, Carl Dillon, and David Spalding, “Economic Considerations for Growing Industrial Hemp: Implications for Kentucky's Farmers and Agricultural Economy” [working paper, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky, July, 2013],
https://www .google.be/search?q=Economic+considerations+for+growing+industrial +hemp&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a &gws_rd=cr&ei=1vGIUp7-BoTQtQbQ9YCgCw
.)

36
. “Hemp & Lime Construction,” Hemp Technology, accessed October 18, 2013, 
www.hemptechnology.co.uk/hemcrete.htm
.

37
. Hossein Shapouri and Michael Salassi, “The Economic Feasibility of Ethanol Production from Sugar in the United States” (working paper, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, July 2006).

38
.
History of the Ohio Falls Cities and Their Counties
(Cleveland, 1882).

39
. Vote Hemp's Eric Steenstra actually has an answer to that question: “Change at the state level has been crucial,” he said. “If your state has passed hemp cultivation legislation, push your state officials toward implementing it. If you live in the forty states that don't yet have legal hemp farming, push your state officials toward passing it.” He also suggested calling your federal representatives to support two congressional bills (S359 and HR525) that will fully allow hemp cultivation, which as we've discussed is stronger than the “university research” wording passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2013. “And buying hemp products is very important,” Steenstra told me. “Economic development is going to move this issue politically.”

40
. Zachary Barr, “Hemp Gets the Green Light in New Colorado Pot Measure,”
Around the Nation
(blog), National Public Radio website, January 28, 2013, 
www.npr.org/2013/01/28/170300215/hemp-gets-the-green-light-in-new-colorado -pot-measure
.

41
. At one point during my Canadian research, a local RCMP officer called Hermann to tell her a letter of approval she was seeking for another farmer's hemp crop was ready. “Law enforcement is here to help us,” she said.

42
. Tashajara Stenvall, Julian Stickley, Bryant Nagelson, Piauwasdy, Izy Mcclure, and Sarah Meanwell, “Cannabis: The Ethnobotany and Political Ecology of Hemp,”
Environmental and Food Justice
(blog), December 28, 2012, 
http://ejfood.blogspot .com/2012/12/ethnoecology-blogs-autumn-2012-cannabis.html
.

43
. As described in my
Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution
.

44
. Ernest Small and David Marcus, “Hemp: A New Crop with New Uses for North America,” in
Trends in New Crops and New Uses
, eds. Jules Janick and Anna Whipkey (Alexandria, VA: ASHS Press, 2002).

45
. Steve Raabe, “Hemp Industry Poised to Grow in Colorado with New Legal Status,”
Denver Post
, January 14, 2013.

46
. May told me he was willing and in fact planning to plant three acres in 2013, but the seed, which would have come from Bowman, didn't arrive when Bowman delayed his own farm's planting a year.

47
. On a visit to a Belgian hemp farm, Ingrid Maris, a high school teacher, told me she had begun cultivating on her family's land in economically struggling Limburg province for the same reason as Loflin: “I want to demonstrate to my neighbors, who are traditionally minded farmers, that hemp is viable, has so many applications, and, of course, is better for the soil than monoculture,” she said as we toured the idyllic Flanders countryside. “It grows very fast on its own with no pesticides and chemical additives.”

48
. He's dismantled and resold a hundred barns.

49
. Alan Haney and Benjamin B. Kutscheid, “An Ecological Study of Naturalized Hemp (
Cannabis savita
L.) in East-Central Illinois,”
American Midland Naturalist
93(1) (University of Notre Dame, January 1975).

50
. Among the roughly two dozen Colorado farmers who planted industrial cannabis in 2013, none was as open as Loflin and Bowman. The reasons for this go beyond the inclination to wait for the implementation of state cultivation regulations for the 2014 season. Chris Boucher, a founder of the Hemp Industry Association and a hempster since the 1990s, said the paced start results from a market that needs a few years to develop. At a company called U.S. Hemp Oil, where he's vice president of product development, the plans are to “ramp up production in Colorado in baby steps, to see what works at seven thousand feet on the thirty-ninth parallel.” As many as two hundred farmers will be planting in 2014, and the number could easily surpass one thousand by 2016 if enough seed is available, according to Bowman.