HEMP HUBBUB

Oregon's Potential As A Crop-Growing Hub Excites Some

SALEM ­ Oregon is about to become the first Western state to permit
its farmers to grow industrial hemp.

But there are a couple of problems to be confronted before Oregon
becomes a Hemptopia by the Pacific:

It's still an illegal crop, according to the federal government.

Oregon wasn't an ideal place to grow hemp the first time it was
legal. And it won't be the next time, either.

That's not bringing Dena Purich down, though. The owner of a business
that makes hemp-based clothing, Purich is excited about the
possibility that the supply chain is one step closer to running from
Oregon farmers to her Eugene-based Earthbound Creations. Right now,
she and her two employees design and assemble men's sports shirts,
women's skirts and other garments from hemp that's grown in China,
woven or knitted there into 100-yard bolts, and shipped across the
Pacific Ocean.

It would be awesome to keep everything in Oregon," she said. "That
would be great not only for our local economy, but for businesses like mine."

Local enthusiasm for hemp's possibilities also was evident at a
three-day Emerald Empire Hempfest, featuring music, speakers and
other entertainment, that wrapped up Sunday at Eugene's
Washington-Jefferson Park.

A spokesman for Gov. Ted Kulongoski said he plans to sign Oregon's
new hemp legislation, Senate Bill 676, into law. When that happens,
Oregon will become the seventh state to allow farmers to grow hemp.
And it will be the only one in the continental United States west of
the Rockies. Hawaii's governor signed a similar law this month, and
Maine's governor did the same in June.

State Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat who championed Oregon's
hemp bill, did the same thing every session going back to 1997. Just
as the issue moved from the fringes to the mainstream in Salem,
Prozanski said he thinks recent action in statehouses, along with
growing public acceptance of hemp as an industrial resource, will
help compel Congress and the Obama administration to follow suit at
the federal level.

All that will have a very positive impact on getting things shifted
and changed at the federal level," Prozanski said. "I expect to see
things change there within the next two years."

A bill introduced this year in Congress with bipartisan sponsorship
would make it legal for American farmers to resume growing hemp. An
act of Congress would be unnecessary if the Obama administration
decided to rule that industrial hemp no longer should be considered a
Schedule 1 controlled substance, as it has been since 1970. Advocates
of such a move, including Prozanski, say that's the most sensible approach.

Hemp is related to marijuana ­ both are varieties of the cannabis
sativa plant. But industrial hemp contains only trace levels of the
psychoactive THC that makes marijuana an effective recreational and
medicinal drug.

So how well would hemp grow in Oregon? According to a 1998 research
paper by an Oregon State University crop and soil scientist, hemp is
unlikely to become a major commodity in the Pacific Northwest.

For all the precipitation that befalls Oregon, not enough of it rains
down during hemp's summer growing season, wrote OSU's Daryl Ehrensing.

Before federal drug laws and the advent of synthetic materials like
nylon and petroleum-based plastics doomed hemp, it flourished in such
Midwestern states as Kentucky and Wisconsin.

The same pattern has been playing out in Canada, where farmers have
been legally growing hemp since 1998. Canada's breadbasket provinces,
Manitoba and Saskatchawan, have produced 81 percent of that country's
hemp crop. Westernmost British Columbia, with growing conditions more
similar to Oregon, has produced 2 percent of Canadian hemp.

The old rule of thumb is that you can grow good hemp where you can
grow good corn," Ehrensing said. "Look around the Northwest. How much
corn do you see growing? Not much. There's a reason for that, and the
same would be true for hemp."

But Ehrensing allowed that as long as growers in Oregon are willing
to test the marketplace, hemp could prove a successful niche crop ­
especially for those with land with access to irrigation water in the
Willamette Valley and in the Columbia River Basin.

Eugene's David Seber, a veteran of Oregon's industrial hemp movement,
said much has changed since he first started working on
particleboard, Fiberglas-like composite and other prototypes of
hemp-based products in the early 1990s. Seber started out to find an
alternative to wood-based products and reduce the need to log
Northwest forests.

Now, worries about climate change have given hemp even more cache, he
said, noting its potential as an alternative to petroleum-based fuel
and plastic, as well as the plant's superior ability to capture
carbon emissions, which contribute to global warming.

Tom Murphy, spokesman for the Hemp Industries Association, said
Oregon may prove an attractive place to grow hemp because, like the
rest of the region, it has several hubs of hemp product manufacturing
and consumption. Besides Eugene's Merry Hempsters and Earthbound
Creations, similar businesses in Portland and Ashland are
contributing to the estimated $113 million in North American annual
retail sales by companies affiliated with his hemp trade association.

The West Coast, Oregon, Washington, California, is a huge marketplace
for hemp production," Murphy said. "And having it grown near the
marketplace would be a huge advantage over growing it in North Dakota, say."

HEMP FACTS

George Washington and other founding Americans cultivated hemp.

Hemp seed was used throughout history to make paint and varnish. Hemp
fiber was used for rope and canvas.

Today, it is a source of seed oil for lip balm, biofuel and a
nutritious, nonallergenic ingredient in food products, including
breakfast cereal and alternatives to milk and ice cream.

The long, tough fibers from hemp stalk can be used to make such
products as paper, automotive door panels, homebuilding materials and clothing.

Hemp is a nonhallucinogenic variety of cannabis sativa. Congress
curtailed hemp production, starting in 1937 through the Marihuana Tax Act.

Oregon is the seventh state since 1999 to allow farmers to grow
industrial hemp, although it is still not allowed by the federal government.

Canada resumed the legal production of hemp in 1998. Its hemp exports
increased in value from $74,949 to $3.45 million (Canadian dollars)
in 2007, according to government figures.

The U.S.-based Hemp Industries Association estimates 2008 annual
retail sales of all hemp products in North America to be about $360
million. The U.S. imports most of its hemp from Canada, China and
Western Europe.