Lexington, KY - In the fall of 1995, two Canadian farmers, with special permission from the Drug Enforcement Agency, crossed the U.S border hauling 5,500 pounds of Canadian-grown industrial hemp stalks. They were headed to Lexington. The idea was to show farmers and business people the fiber-rich stalks grown in southern Ontario and explain the potential of it for Kentucky and beyond in the United States.
The farmers were Geof Kime and the late Joe Strobel. In 1994, the Canadian government awarded them Canada's first hemp research license, making their industrial hemp crop the first one grown in North America since the 1950s. They were invited to Kentucky by Joseph Hickey, then executive director of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative, an organization reinstituted to help regulate the hoped for reintroduction of hemp into Kentucky agriculture. The Co-op toured the bales of hemp stalks for curious farmers and agricultural researchers and then portioned it out to various agricultural and commercial research institutions.
Hemp had an illustrious history in the 1800s in Kentucky, as documented in the book, A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky, by James F. Hopkins. A revival of the crop during WWII saw the cultivation of 100,000 acres of hemp in the United States, with a good portion of that in Kentucky. Then the U.S. government cancelled permits for hemp farming. During the 1990s, hemp appeared poised for another revival. In 1994, Kentucky Governor Brereton Jones established a task force to study industrial hemp for Kentucky agriculture. That task force concluded that the prohibition of any hemp cultivation was too great an obstacle. With the passage of Kentucky House Bill 100 in 2001, if the federal prohibition of industrial hemp is lifted, Kentucky will be ready to reintroduce industrial hemp. Hickey says that the KHG Co-op is on mothballs but can be reactivated as soon as hemp cultivation is legal. Canada has a different story.
"In the last two or three years, the idea of using plant-based materials to replace oil-based products and energy intensive materials has become pretty topical and important," said Kime. He's also an engineer and president of Stemergy Renewable Fibre Technologies. In 1998, Kime oversaw the building of a pilot plant in Delaware, Ontario, for the extraction and processing of fibers from hemp stalks for their applications in varied products in the marketplace.
"We've developed machinery, technology, processing systems, quality assurance mechanisms, a whole lot of know-how, trade secrets, different levels of intellectual property," said Kime, "that allow us to take plants, different plant feed-stocks, and convert them into finished products that can go into a broad range of applications." Along the way, Kime and company realized that hemp was not alone as a good source for useful plant fibers. Flax, kenaf, wheat straw, corn stover, perennial grasses, soy and legumes are among plants that yield useful fibers, all of which the Stemergy technology can process and make product-ready. He says end-products for plant fibers include animal bedding; mulch; plastic and cement filler and reinforcement; building materials, such as panel boards and insulation; fiberglass replacement for sporting goods; paper; non-woven textiles; and spun textiles. Composites made with plant fibers are finding established use in the automotive industry.
"Hemp does have material properties that are very unique," said Kime, "particularly the bast fibers, the long slender fibers on the outside. They are very strong. We can produce them at very top qualities that can go into high-end composite applications."
Kime envisions Stemergy building plants in key locations in North America to receive regionally grown agricultural residues for conversion into fibers ready for product manufacturing.
But fiber is only part of the Canadian hemp story. Western Canada's hemp agriculture is focused on the grain for the production of food and cosmetic products, and that industry has seen rapid growth, as it doesn't have the barriers of intensive capitalization as needed with the fiber side. In 2003, according to the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance, over 6,700 acres of hemp were grown across Canada.