FARMERS SHOW INTEREST IN HEMP

County Official wants Government to Lift Ban on Growing Crop

With sinking prices for corn, soybeans and tobacco, the time is ripe for
farmers to consider planting alternative crops, according to county Farm
Bureau president Jane Balmer.

One of her suggestions is a crop that was grown abundantly here for more
than 200 years, providing textiles, food, oil and paper.

Trouble is, it's presently illegal to cultivate industrial hemp in the
United States and has been since a 1937 ban was imposed to eliminate
harvests of marijuana, industrial hemp's intoxicating cousin.

Balmer's hope is that state legislators and the federal government will see
fit to lift that ban and reintroduce industrial hemp as a cash crop for
farmers.

But first she wants to find out if the state's farmers are interested in
growing a crop that hasn't been cultivated here for generations, but could
be an answer to plummeting tobacco prices.

An organizational meeting to explore the viability of forming the
Pennsylvania Hemp Growers and Processors Co-op will be held April 16 from 1
to 4 p.m. at Yoders Restaurant in New Holland. The meeting is open to the
public, but seating is limited. Call 399-8369 for reservations.

The county's farm bureau board voted Tuesday night to investigate the matter
and decide if it should be grown again here.

And a number of states, including Hawaii, Minnesota and Virginia, have
introduced legislation to make the crop legal.

"There are a lot of states getting into this. I guess we're going to try to
be one of them," Balmer said.

At an estimated return of $700 an acre, hemp doesn't seem as lucrative a
crop as tobacco, which was earning more than $3,000 an acre several years
ago. But declining tobacco prices in the past two years have brought that
yield down to $1,000 an acre, with an increasingly uncertain future.

"It's a 90 to 100 day crop," Balmer said of hemp. "It needs to be planted
the same time as we plant tobacco. It's harvested at the same time. So it
would work in with same schedule as tobacco."

"We've got to do something to help these farmers," she said. "This may be a
way to help save farms the right way by helping farmers make a profit."

According to Shawn Patrick House, owner of Lancaster Hemp Co., a wholesale
distribution business, reintroducing hemp here is a natural step to
diversifying farms.

"We want to prepare farmers for the inevitable," House said. "We want to be
growing hemp here by the year 2000."

House's ambitious plans include first teaching farmers how to grow the crop
by visiting Canadian farmers that grow hemp and then how to sell it to a
burgeoning American market.

"We want to see what Canada's doing, but do it better," he said. "We're
behind now but will swiftly catch up."

According to House, in it's heyday in 1850, Lancaster County was growing 540
tons of hemp, the same amount that was imported into the United States in
1996 to meet the growing demand.

"I personally want to see Lancaster County be the first county in the nation
to grow hemp," House said. "If farmers desire to grow industrial hemp they
should be able to. We need to find out what laws need to be repealed to make
it possible."

He said there are 50,000 products that can be made from hemp, from the
heavy-duty roping made from hemp fibers, to the oil, food and cosmetics made
from its seeds.

"When you read about all of the uses, my mind wonders: Why did we ever give
this up?" Balmer said.