On January 10th, the nation's largest farming organization, the American Farm Bureau Federation, unanimously passed a resolution calling for "research into the viability and economic potential of industrial hemp production in the United States."
This resolution also called for the planting of test plots within the United States. That the nation's largest farming organization, representing 4.6 million members, passed such a resolution should be cause for jubilation for anyone championing the industrial hemp cause, but Joseph Hickey, Executive Director of KHGCA, has a more seasoned outlook. "I try to keep an even keel in this effort," he said. "(I try) to not get carried away by successes or let downs. We just have to keep a steady course."
Hickey is one of many dedicated people who have persisted in the effort to bring hemp back to U.S. agriculture. He credits his active interest in the concern to a chance discovery. His father, the late John Hickey, Sr., who dealt in antiques, gave his son a huge bound volume of 1940's Lexington Herald newspapers. In the summer of '93, while browsing through the yellowed PAGES, Hickey's eye was caught by an article that announced the resignation of F.G. Clay, a prominent farmer and civic leader of Versailles, from the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association. President Franklin Roosevelt had requested that Clay administer the Hemp for Victory program for the war effort. "This was the first I heard that such an organization existed," Hickey puzzled. "I couldn't believe that there had been this organization set up to protect hemp farmers, like the tobacco farmers have had."
Hickey soon learned of England's 1992 effort to establish a farm hemp program, and he started making inquiries. The British government sent him brochures describing their hemp program and the rules and regulations implemented to monitor it. Hickey put in time at the library and found through the Official Journal of the European Communities, that hemp growth an processing legislation has been in place abroad since 1969. Several European governments further upported hemp farmers with monetary aid for hemp production. Hungary, China, Romania, France and Spain are among the countries producing hemp. It became evident that a number of U.S companies are now importing either raw materials or finished products of hemp, primarily fiber for the paper and textile industries or seed oil for the health food market. He also made contact with a couple of Canadian farmers, Joe Strobel and Geof Kime, who applied successfully in the fall of '93 to the Canadian government for a permit to grow hemp in their native Ontario.
Another publication, Hemp Industry in Kentucky, offered the late James Hopkins' detailed history of hemp farming in Kentucky. Hickey tracked down Hopkins, who was living in 1993, and that led to a visit to several old Bluegrass hemp farms and hemp mills.. Along a fence line at a Woodford County farm, Hickey found a field decorticator abandoned in the late 40's. This massive machine separated the fiber from the hurd -- the inner woody part of the hemp plant. At Woodford-Spears Seed Company in Paris, sat two antique hemp fiber processing machines.. One was a circular hemp softener with grooved, heavy metal rollers designed to pound the hemp and loosen the fiber from its bundles. The other machine was a giant hackler, a carding machine with razor sharp teeth set in rows on rollers, created to separate the long fibers from the short ones. Also, at Woodford-Spears was the largest known collection of records of the hemp industry, dating back nearly a century.
In September of 1994, Hickey and his wife Susan called on Governor Brereton Jones during one of his 'Open Door at Four' sessions. They came with hemp paper in hand, numerous historical documents, and a copy of President's Clinton's Executive Order 12919, which listed hemp as one of numerous resources essential to national preparedness in time of emergency. Hickey said the governor looked over the materials, nodded his head and said that a month earlier he had come close to announcing at the Governor's Breakfast at the Kentucky State Fair the formation of a task force for studying hemp. "He then turned to Jim Claycomb, his agricultural liaison," Hickey recalled, "and said 'let's get on this, Jim'."
Less than three months later, Jones officially announced the Governor's Task Force on Hemp, catapulting industrial hemp into national consciousness. Around the same time the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association was reincorporated with the sole purpose of serving farmers in much the same way tobacco farmers are served by their co-op -- a clearing house for matching buyers with sellers. In addition, it was speculated that the Hemp Co-op could serve as a compliance vehicle to assure law enforcement and the general public that hemp crops grown under the program would be certified low THC industrial hemp.
As executive director for the KHGCA, Hickey put his career as a construction contractor on the back burner and devoted his time to the co-op. In March of last year, he attended the first International Bio-Resource Hemp Symposium in Frankfurt, Germany. Researchers, farmers and industrialists from the world over gathered to reveal the wide-spread interest in the potential of hemp and an abundance of manufactured hemp products. Later that year, he traveled to the Ukraine to view what is a centuries old hemp industry there.
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture recxntly hosted the first North American Industrial Hemp Forum. Attendees included executives from International Paper, Weyerhaeuser Corporation, Masonite, Inland Container Corporation, and Industrial Fabrics Association and researchers from various universities and institutions from North America and Europe. Hickey was there, too. The forum resulted in the establishment and funding of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, to emphasize environmental considerations and revitalize the hemp industry. After the conference, Curtis Koster, head of International Paper's research department, wrote in a memo to a Wisconsin agricultural official: "Hemp will likely prove to be the more economic fiber among several >brackets<>being investigated by International Paper< , given its yield per acre and its substantially greater range of products."
Hickey has spoken with many people including Senator Lloyd Casey (who intends to reintroduce his bill in Colorado allowing farmers to participate in the hemp industry), media magnate Ted Turner, and film actor Woody Harrelson, a proponent of alternatives to deforestation. The Turner Foundation, Harrelson, and an anonymous donor helped to underwrite the continuing endeavors of the the KHGCA.
To date, perhaps the most significant development in the struggle to legalize industrial hemp was the largest importation of raw hemp fiber into the U.S. in recent history. After receiving the green light from the Canadian government, Strobel and Kime formed Hempline, Inc. Together with the Co-op, a shipmet of 5,500 pounds of Canadian-grown industrial hemp stalks (approximately 150 square bails) was transported across the border and into Kentucky last fall. On that trip, Hickey had in his possession a letter from the Drug Enforcement Agency authorizing the transport, so long as the material contained no other parts of the plant than the mature stalk.
The Co-op provided portions of the raw hemp to various companies and research facilities. According to Hickey, promising results are already emerging. Researchers with the Wood & Paper Science Department at North Carolina State University were impressed by the 'wet strength' of hemp paper just emerging from the paper making process. The Herty Foundation in Savannah, Georgia found that with hemp they could generate an excellent pulp-grade material. Inland Container is finding hemp fiber an effective additive for strengthening recycled cardboard. Polymer scientists with Advanced Composites have reported that hemp fiber can be used to make a material superior to fiberglass
The general public may be ready to recognize the legitimacy of industrial hemp. The Survey Research Center at the University of Kentucky in conducting its Spring 1995 Poll found that 77% of Kentuckians favor the legalization of industrial hemp as a cash crop for Kentucky farmers. Politics, religion, income level, and location all had no significant bearing on a person's attitude towards industrial hemp. This public perception bodes well for the KHGCA.
"One thing that we want fellow Kentuckians to understand," said Hickey, "is that the return of industrial hemp to our farms could foster rural economic development." To prove this, he and several other business associates have revived and incorporated the Kentucky River Mills name. . They have engaged in researching industries in pulp and fabric. Their plan is to raise capital to construct a mini-mill, a small paper mill that can produce 25 to 30 tons of pulp a day. "If we had the facility operating today," said Hickey, "we could sell the pulp tomorrow. The market is definitely there." The raw materials would be a mix of available farm crops and residues, including kenaf, corn stalks, wheat grass, and, of course, hemp. Hickey also says the mill would be 100% environmentally friendly -- with none of the pollutants or stench associated with traditional wood pulp mills.
Another facility on the drawing board is a seed crushing operation. Hemp oil, made from imported hemp seeds, now sells for $80 to $120 per gallon and is used primarily in the health food industry and in cosmetics. The seed cake left behind after oil extraction can be used as a protein rich flour, as versatile as wheat flour.
The KHGCA estimates of costs and returns for fiber hemp offer what they consider to be a conservative profit per acre of $272.04. This is based on a six-ton-per-acre harvest, the volume now produced per acre in Canada. Some agriculturists believe that Kentucky land could produce as much as eight to ten tons per acre.
"It is not a question of whether industrial hemp will be produced in the U.S.," said Hickey. "It's a question of when and who will produce it. The sooner Kentucky addresses the market, the more competitive we'll be in the growing marketplace."