Ag Official Lobbies For Hemp As Cash Crop Of The

Champaign, IL -- Jeff Gain wants the government to consider a crop he says can be used in products from rope to car bodies and food to clothing, that could give tobacco farmers a healthful alternative and that grows just fine without pesticides.

Sound like a pipe dream? The product is hemp, and before you get visions of stoned farmers dancing in your head, Gain wants to make one thing clear:

``Industrial hemp and marijuana aren't the same thing,'' he said at a recent specialty crops conference in Champaign. ``The active ingredient, THC, was removed in the 1930s. ... It's a non-issue.''

He said hemp is grown legally in 30 countries, including Canada. It was even grown in the United States during World War II to provide raw material for rope and other products. But current U.S. law does not distinguish between industrial hemp and marijuana.

Gain, who formerly worked for the Illinois Farm Bureau and the National Corn Growers Association, has hit a roadblock trying to convince federal officials that hemp could fit well into farm rotations and could give tobacco farmers facing an uncertain future for their crop a new lease on life.

Gain, who is chairman of the board of directors of the U.S. Agriculture Department's Alternative Agricultural Research and Commercialization Corp., said agriculture is changing, and so are national priorities.

``There are concerns about the environment,'' he said. ``We won't be able to grow corn, soybeans and wheat like we have since the early 1950s. We must have diversity, crops like hemp that grow without pesticides.''

Gain said establishing the infrastructure to process hemp would give economies in the Midwest a boost.

``You have to chop up the fiber close to where it grows. We'd need a new generation of cooperatives, joint ventures to share the risk,'' he said.

John Roulac, president and founder of Hemptech of Sebastopol, Calif., said hemp seed can be processed into hundreds of foods and body care products.

The dehulled seed, he said, tastes like sunflower seed, looks like sesame seed and is more nutritious than soybean seed.

Roulac said the seed is a little lower in protein than soybeans, but the protein is more available, and it's high in essential fatty acids.

``We have an amazing resource here, but because of federal government obstacles, manufacturers are hesitant to advocate the legalization and growing of hemp,'' Roulac said.

He said hemp will grow anywhere that corn and soybeans will grow, and it requires about the same fertilization as corn but it doesn't need pesticides because it outgrows even persistent weeds like Johnson grass.

Even the conservative Illinois Farm Bureau in 1997 got into the hemp issue, passing a resolution supporting research into the crop's economic and production potential. Delegates reaffirmed that resolution last December.

Copyright 1999 Associated Press

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