Hemp Wanted: The Atlantic Hemp Industry (or lack thereof)

The Atlantic Hemp Industry is in Need of a Jumpstart.

My friend Cameron Twyford is a great musician, and a huge hemp fan. I suggest you click on this link and listen to his song "Ain't no shortage of solutions", while you read this article. Personally I'm a big fan of version 01.10. Cheers.

Wanda Beattie, President and CEO of Atlantic Healing Hemp, sits in her flagship store in Berwick, Nova Scotia. The shelves around her are lined with hemp salves, hemp balms, cold-pressed hemp seed oil and vacuum-sealed bags of crushed hemp seeds. The hemp is top quality, and Canadian grown, but it’s definitely not local.

“At the moment I’m bringing in hemp oil in large quantities from Winnipeg. That’s the hemp heartland. There was an attempt to grow hemp in Nova Scotia, back in 2000, but it wasn’t feasible because there wasn’t a market for the product. There was some amateur processing being done, but nothing of any scale.”

Hemp, after playing an enormous role in human development, was banned as a crop in Canada in 1938. The ban was wholly a result of the intentional spread of misinformation by American lumber and petroleum interest groups, which rightly saw hemp as an obstacle to their nefarious plans for world domination. Jack Herer, in The Emperor Wears No Clothes, the pivotal 1985 book, shows the clear link between DuPont’s patenting, in 1938, of the processes of making plastics out of petroleum and paper out of wood pulp, and the ban, that same year, of growing hemp.

Recently, saner heads have prevailed. In 1998, Health Canada lifted the ban. Although the crop is still highly regulated, and still illegal to grow in America, hemp is slowly reclaiming its rightful role in fields across the country. In 2009, Saskatchewan devoted 5090 acres to hemp production. Manitoba had 6015 acres. Nova Scotia had 0. That’s zero, as in absolutely none. Port Royal, Nova Scotia, was the site of North America’s first recorded hemp crop, way back in 1606. There’s a hemp history here, but presently no hemp. I ask Wanda if this is a soil-related issue.

“The issue is not related to soil at all. There is wonderful soil here in the Annapolis valley. You can grow hemp here, top quality hemp. In 2000, Nova Scotia farmers proved it could be done. There’s simply not enough of a market.”

“People in the area just don’t know about the benefits of hemp. We grew up in a generation that didn’t hear anything about hemp. Right now, we’re trying to educate people, to create a market, and of course to improve their health.”

Education is a large part of Wanda’s campaign to re-introduce hemp to the Nova Scotia diet, and landscape. She and her husband Brian offer weekly, one hour, information sessions out of the Berwick store. She also offers free presentations to Nova Scotia groups and businesses.

“Consumers are looking at our products now, and they know they have a value, because they have been used for thousands of years. Younger people are using hemp as a preventative, incorporating it into their diets to stay healthy. But others already have ailments, and we see our products being used to address specific health issues. It’s not a quick-fix, it takes 12-15 weeks of consistent use. But we guarantee you’ll see improvements.”  

Hemp oil contains all the essential fatty acids and amino acids, which are vital for good health. Essential fatty acids are proven to restore wasting bodies, boost immune systems, and have been widely studied as a means to cure a number of common, and hard to treat, ailments. In a “hemp-shell”, eating hemp seeds, and drizzling cold-pressed, delicious, hemp oil all over your favourite dish, is very good for you. Basically, you’ll live longer and you’ll be healthier.

Making use of hemp’s oils for human health is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The Hemp plant has many other uses. From textiles, to fuel, to building material, hemp is a very versatile crop. It’s easy to grow, and cuts into DuPont’s profits. I like it already. I decide to make a call to the heartlands, to see how hemp’s resurgence is faring.

What’s Happening in the Heartlands?

Travis Truso is the owner of Hemp Haven in Regina, Saskatchewan. He knows hemp as few these days do. He’s been in the hemp selling business for over 6 years, and he’s the contact for the Saskatchewan Hemp Association. I catch up with him by phone and ask him about the state of affairs in the Canadian prairies.

“I’ve talked to 100 farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and only 1 of them even baled his stalk. The rest just burned their stalks or cultivated them back into the soil. 99% of farmers are just selling their hemp seed. There is zero industry in Canada for fibre and stalk.”

The fibre and stalk of the hemp plant is extremely strong. When it is processed, separating the tough fibrous strands from the hurd, or centre of the stalk, it can serve an incredible variety of functions. Throughout history it has been used to make the highest quality textiles, ropes, and paper, among other products. Columbus sailed to the New World with hemp sails. The United States Constitution is written on hemp paper. You can build with it, and it will keep you warm in the winter. If Canadian hemp growers are wasting their stalks, it means that something bigger is going on. I smell a story. I ask Travis where he sees Canadian hemp going in the future.

“There are quite a few encouraging things going on with hemp right now. Motive is a car company out of Alberta. They just created an electric car with a top speed of 135 kilometres per hour, and the body is made out of hemp composite. The car has been reviewed really positively, and they want to commercially launch it by 2013.”

“I see hemp fibre board as being a very promising industry with lots of room to grow. Right now the government annually subsidizes the lumber industry with 1 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money. The same product can be made on a renewable basis with hemp fibre, without swathing down our forests.”

“Hemp-crete is another industry that has a lot of potential. Once the stalk is processed, the hurd can be used as a concrete substitute. It’s been tested, and it can replace traditional concrete in many uses.”

I mention to Travis that during my research I couldn’t find any Canadian hemp processing facilities.

“That’s because there are none. And that’s the problem. The floor in my store is made from hemp plywood. Its twice as strong as plywood made from wood, and will last twice as long. But I bought it imported from China. Almost every Canadian designer that’s manufacturing hemp clothing is getting their yarn from China. We grow hemp right here. We harvest the seeds, and we burn the stalks. Then we import all of the hemp cloths and yarns, all the hemp fibre board, things we could be using Canadian stalk to make, from China. I’m surprised that after 13 years of growing it, there still is no processing plant.”

“There are half a dozen fibre board plants in Saskatchewan alone that have gone bankrupt. The buildings are just sitting there. Once you get the hemp stalk into chips, there’s no difference in the process between using wood, or using hemp. They both use glue made by DuPont. All these buildings are now owned by the government, and they’re not interested in hemp. I’ve talked to every MLA in Saskatchewan. I’ve talked to the Minister of Agriculture, and his response to me was ‘What is hemp?’ There are people here that are ready go to work, but those plants stay closed.”

I ask Travis if he believes that there is a conspiracy afoot, some overriding governmental plan to keep hemp from direct competition with lumber.

“Let’s put it this way. Hemp is the only legal crop in Canada that requires a license to grow. You have to go through so much paper work. You need to have a criminal check, and you need to have your crops tested for THC content twice yearly. For a lot of farmers, the hassle is just too much.”

So, after a prohibition which lasted from 1938 to 1998, Health Canada finally succumbs to pressure to legalize hemp production. There is a quick upswing in interest, followed by a downturn in production as farmers realize that there is no infrastructure in place to make the most out of their crops. Government gives hemp the cautionary green light, and then lets the farmers sink or swim.

Seeds and oil, important industries, and incredibly beneficial to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, are allowed to prosper. But oil pressing is a niche market, and cold-pressing hemp oil from hemp seeds can use pre-existing cold-pressing infrastructure. Processing hemp stalks requires specific machinery. The machinery to process hemp stalks has not been seen, or indeed needed, in Canada for over 70 years.

Building a large-scale processing plant has been attempted, but the price tag runs into the tens of millions of dollars, which is a prohibitive sum to all but the deepest of pockets. Funding from the Canadian government seems to hinge on whatever party is in power, and whoever pulls their strings. Big oil and lumber have a lot of strings, hence Canada remains without a processing plant despite having close to 20,000 acres of land devoted to growing hemp.  I ask Travis if there have been any success stories.

“In Craik, Saskatchewan, a company called Hemptown, which later changed its name to Natural Alternative Technologies, or NAT, approached the town with the idea of building a hemp processing plant. That was in 2004. At that point we had an NDP government in Saskatchewan, and they were all for it. The NDP offered up half the capital for the plant if NAT could raise the rest. So for four years, from 2004 to 2008, NAT developed its technology, and raised its capital. Then in 2008 Saskatchewan elected the Saskatchewan Party to government, which is a far right party. In their first week of being in office they cancelled their contract with NAT. The last I heard, NAT had gone bankrupt, and had sold its technology to Haines Underwear. Haines is planning to put out a 20% hemp, 80% cotton, underwear blend next year.”

Without government assistance, hemp farmers across Saskatchewan are still keeping over 5000 acres of hemp growing. I ask Travis how they’re making it work.

“Right now it is all grassroots. None of these farmers have contracts. There are no government subsidies for hemp seed. The farmers need to go out on their own, and find all of their own contracts. At the end of the year, a lot of them still have 50-100,000 pounds of hempseed left over.”

“That’s the way that processing will get started too. There’s a company called Hill Agra in Ontario, owned by Jim Hill. He’s invented a portable fibre extractor that can fit behind any tractor. The base model sells for around eighty thousand dollars. He’s sold a few of these to Europe, and quite a few to China, but so far none in Canada. Basically you would just let your stalks lay in the field for the winter, and in the spring you’d run this extractor over your stalks, and it will decorticate your fibre and your hurds. You’d be ready to stamp fibre boards. You’d be ready to mix hemp concrete. And hemp is still illegal to grow in America, so you’d have a huge market for your product. You’d be creating a groundbreaking industry.”

Flashback to Halifax.

I spoon some of Wanda’s hemp seeds onto my Shepherd’s Pie, and it tastes better. It makes me think of clear-cut blocks, and open pit mines, and tar sands, and war, and how much I hate these things, and the rhetoric that goes into trying to convince us all that they are necessary evils of today’s society. It makes me want to call up my friends, my family, and scrounge together enough capital for ten acres of land, a hemp license, an old tractor, and one of Jim Hill’s portable fibre extractors. Ben Franklin grew hemp. George Washington grew hemp. Nova Scotia grew hemp. We can grow hemp! As Wanda Beattie’s website proclaims...

“It is this generation that will change the process of destruction and begin the environmental revolution.”