Hemp
Update
6/5/98
For the first time in 60 years, Canadian farmers are planting legal hemp in Chatham-Kent. Kenex Ltd. is a new company established to regulate the crop's production, and has issued federal permits to about 50 local farmers. Over 2000 acres of hemp will be grown for Kenex Ltd. in 1998. The Controlled Substance and Abuse Act of 1996 has opened up Canada for commercial cultivation of hemp. Bob Lecuyer, general manager of Kenex Ltd., told The Record, "There is a great demand for hemp products from the automobile industry. If the market takes off like we think it will, hemp production will boom in the coming years." Hemp is being used as feed for blue catfish at the Univ. of Kentucky. Carl Webster and Laura Tiu have been giving about 150 catfish hemp meal along with vitamins, minerals and oil and fatty acids, the bare minimums needed to survive. "They seem to like it. I think they're on par with normal growth for blue catfish. If you can feed them something straight like this, you've got a pretty good ingredient," Webster told the Lexington Herald-Leader. With hemp production still illegal in the United States, using hemp meal will not be cost effective. Soy meal makes up about 60 percent of the fish food market and costs $170 a ton. Being imported from China, hemp meal costs several times more, roughly $1,200 a ton. "We could get rid of two-thirds of the cost simply by growing it in Kentucky," said Don Wirtshafter, owner of the Ohio Hempery, to the Herald-Leader. Wirthshafter is now contracting to buy seeds from the new Canadian farmers. In Willisburg, Kentucky, Donnie Colter says that feeding his animals hemp meal gives them more energy and shinier coats. Recently he sold some of his heifers and received $13 morfor the calves who had been fed the hemp mix. At the University of Kentucky, researchers are planning to study what difference, if any, the hemp meal made. Colter originally grew hemp on his farm in the 1940's, before it became illegal. Colter commented to New York Times reporters, "We've fed it to everything from guppies on up. I've never fed it to nothing that won't eat it." In Colter's home state of Kentucky, a federal lawsuit is pending seeking to overturn the DEA ban on the crop (see http://www.drcnet.org/rapid/1998/5-15.html#kentucky).
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
