CANADIAN HEMP ISN'T GOING TO POT

PAIN COURT, Ontario - The cannabis sativa plants rise tall and sunward
under a blue Canadian sky. The plants sway wheatlike in the wind, hundreds
of thousands of plants, acre after acre of professionally grown cannabis,
so thick you can't walk through the fields.

"I'm very pleased with this crop," says farmer Jean-Marie Laprise, who is
Ontario's largest grower of cannabis and Brussels sprouts. His brother
starts a big John Deere combine, ready to harvest a cannabis field just 15
miles north of the U.S. border.

And it's all legal - for the first time since 1938.

In a new policy being closely watched by farmers and law enforcement
officials in the USA, Canada is letting farmers grow cannabis sativa, best
known as the source of marijuana. By the end of October, 251 farmers will
have harvested 5,930 acres of cannabis for its ancient use as hemp, a
source of fiber and food oil.

This cannabis hemp can't get a person stoned. It's bred to have too little
THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, to produce a high, no matter
how much is smoked. Some disappointed locals have tried.

But the Canadian hemp crop could reshape the contentious debate over
whether farmers should be allowed to grow hemp in the USA.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) bans growing hemp, saying it
would make enforcing drug laws harder because hemp and marijuana look
alike. The White House and its drug czar support the ban.

Hemp and marijuana are essentially varieties of the same plant. It would be
impossible to tell them apart, outside of a chemical analysis for THC
content, if they were not bred and cultivated differently. Hemp is grown
densely - 300 plants a square yard - for low THC, high fiber content and a
minimal amount of branches and leaves. Marijuana is grown one or two plants
a square yard to be rich with branches, leaves and THC.

The DEA and the White House have found themselves increasingly isolated in
their refusal to grant licenses for low-THC hemp.

Since 1990, hemp has been legalized in most of Western Europe, including
Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Australia joined Canada in
legalizing hemp this year.

In the USA, hemp has gone mainstream, too. Originally pushed by marijuana
legalization activists, hemp has won growing support from farmers,
agricultural researchers, environmentalists and large corporations. They
say hemp is an environment-friendly fiber that could reduce demand for
timber and synthetic fibers.

Farm bureaus in 17 states now support hemp. A cooperative of Kentucky
farmers has sued the DEA in federal court over the issue.

The North American Industrial Hemp Council's board of directors includes
executives from 3M, the giant materials manufacturer; Interface, a large
carpet maker; and the former head of the National Corn Growers Association.

Since July, agricultural experts at three universities - North Dakota State
University, Oregon State University and the University of Kentucky - have
completed studies of hemp that reached the same conclusion: Hemp can be a
valuable niche crop.

"Among people in agriculture, the myth of its being the same thing as
marijuana is long gone," says North Dakota state agricultural economist
David Kraenzel, who did a study for that state's Legislature. "You'd croak
from smoke inhalation before you'd get high on hemp."

Hemp excites farmers mostly as a crop that can be rotated with plants such
as soybeans, wheat and potatoes. They say hemp's deep roots aerate the
soil. After the harvest, its roots and discarded leaves replenish the soil
with nutrients. Its early growth and thick canopy choke off weeds, and it
breaks disease cycles that reduce the yields of other crops. It also can be
grown largely without pesticides and herbicides.

"North Dakota desperately needs a good rotation crop," Kraenzel says. "Even
if hemp isn't profitable itself, it is profitable as a rotation crop.
Farmers need to take some money off the land in years when they can't grow
wheat or potatoes."

North Dakota potato farmers take fields out of production every few years
because potatoes, while exceptionally profitable, drain nutrients from the
soil. Farmers plant tall grass or sunflowers to improve the soil. But tall
grass produces no revenue, and sunflowers only break even. Hemp would turn
a modest profit of $73 an acre while improving the soil better than either
tall grass or sunflowers, the North Dakota study predicts.

Hemp opponents maintain the crop is a loser both economically and
politically. White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey says that the push to
grow hemp is "a subterfuge" for efforts to legalize marijuana and that hemp
is unlikely to be a profitable crop anyway.

"Legalizing hemp sends the wrong message about marijuana," says David Des
Roches, an aide to McCaffrey who specializes in hemp. "These poor farmers
are being conned by the marijuana legalization groups. If hemp were a
viable crop, we'd have a harder time putting forward our agenda.
Thankfully, it's not."

The critics note that world hemp production has fallen from 1 million acres
in 1960 to 250,000 acres today. The traditional big growers - China,
Romania, Hungary - have always relied on cheap labor for a profitable crop
while the new Western European farmers depend on government subsidies worth
$222 an acre in 1998.

But Canadian farmers operate much as U.S. farmers would: They are heavily
mechanized, unsubsidized and are building a processing industry from scratch.

The success of the crop won't be known for five years, Canadian farmers
say, but this year's crop looks profitable.

Neil Strayer, who farms 1,000 acres in Saskatchewan, says his 40 acres of
hemp will return double the $200 to $300 Canadian ($128 to $192 U.S.) an
acre he makes on barley. He was thrilled by the hardiness of his Finnish
dwarf hemp, which grows 4 feet tall: "The hemp came through beautifully
despite many obstacles."

Strayer's government license was delayed, so his crop wasn't planted until
July 1, late in Saskatchewan's growing season. The spring weeds had already
come in, a problem for Strayer, an organic farmer who doesn't use herbicides.

"Lo and behold, the hemp came in right on schedule - 70 days," he says. His
hemp will be turned into oil and sold mostly in U.S. health food stores. He
plans to plant 600 acres of hemp next year.

To get a hemp license, a clean police record is required. A farmer pays $25
(about $16 U.S.) for a check.

The farmer provides the location of hemp fields to the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP), who may inspect in person or by helicopter. Hemp
fields must be at least 10 acres for easy identification.

Hemp must have a THC content of less than 0.3% - the same requirement as in
Western Europe and about one-tenth that of average marijuana. Health
Canada, the government health ministry, conducts random audits of THC levels.

In Canada, the hemp program has been largely free of controversy. The
agriculture ministry spent $500,000 ($321,000 U.S.) to research the crop
before it was legalized.

The Mounties raised no objections. "It's Health Canada's decision, not
ours. We enforce drug laws. We don't make them," says Corporal Gilles
Moreau, spokesman for the RCMP.

Jean Pert, hemp project manager at Health Canada, says no problems with
illegal marijuana have been reported.

The Canadian farmer taking the biggest risk on hemp is Laprise, whose
family has farmed in Pain Court for 145 years. The 44-year-old entrepreneur
has invested $4 million ($2.6 million U.S.) in hemp, including money for a
new processing plant, research and a breeding operation.

Laprise's 1,500-acre farm has a 9.5-acre greenhouse that is one of the
region's biggest suppliers of vegetable transplants. His plant breeding
operation generates sales of $65 million ($42 million U.S.) a year,
one-third of his farm's revenue. He expects to be a major hemp seed supplier.

In addition to hemp, Laprise harvests corn, soybeans, sugar beets and 8,500
tons of tomatoes a year for Heinz ketchup.

He's not an organic farmer, but he became interested in hemp in 1995 when
Claude Pinsonnault, a farmer he works with, read an article about hemp in
Earthkeeper, an environmental magazine.

"The first thing I thought is: what a great rotation crop," Pinsonnault
says. "Farmers are getting killed by soybean cyst nematodes (small worms
that attack the plants). You see fields where the yield has gone from 50 to
15 bushels an acre. Hemp breaks this disease cycle."

The two farmers began researching hemp on their own, including several
trips to Europe to visit hemp farms.

They got permission to test (but not sell) a hemp crop: one-tenth of an
acre in 1995, 15 acres in 1996, 122 acres in 1997.

This year, Laprise grew 300 acres of hemp and contracted with 50 local
farmers to grow another 2,000 acres. He hopes to double that next year to
supply his processing plant.

Laprise smiles at the suggestion that he's being manipulated by marijuana
activists.

"It's a different crop. Any farmer knows that," he says. "The plants are
bred differently, grown differently, used differently."

Cannabis pollen is light and blows freely in the wind, giving this area the
distinctive smell of cannabis on a breezy day. Laprise requires that hemp
fields be 3 miles apart so different varieties do not contaminate one another.

Pollen from marijuana bred for high THC would damage his low-THC hemp bred
for thick stocks, and vice versa.

"To put a marijuana plant in a hemp field would be ridiculous: First,
because we told the RCMP where it is, and second, because it would hurt the
hemp crop," he says.

He expects hemp to be unusually profitable in the next few years, partly
because the U.S. ban on growing it gives Canadian farmers an edge.

But long term, he predicts, hemp will become a niche crop - about 100,000
acres a year in Canada - and produce profits similar to corn and soybeans.

"It's a new market," he says. "But, hey, somebody started growing soybeans
just a few decades ago, and now it's our second-biggest crop."

Checked-by: Pat Dolan