HEMP FARMER SITTING ON POSSIBILITIES

Grant Moorcraft can only hope, with cautious optimism, that he is
farming the crop of the future.

The area farmer grows 30 acres of hemp, a hard-to-harvest crop with
numerous applications for which he is helping develop a technology
that separates the hurd from the fibre. He recently received a
regional Premier's agricultural innovation award worth $5,000.

"(Hemp) is really tough stuff," he said.

Currently, the possibilities of hemp are greater than the technology
and marketing available for it. It can be used to make everything from
milk to clothing. Moorcraft's crop is used exclusively for a new
environmental wave; the tightly-packed bales are stacked and covered
in mortar to form the walls of straw bale houses.

Moorcraft knows he's sitting on possibilities. Hemp can be used to
reinforce recycled plastic and cardboard, but no one has paved the way
in Ontario yet. Its hurd can be used as an eco-friendly dietary
supplement. Its tough fibre can make rope and carpets. But researchers
and hemp growers themselves are still figuring out exactly how to do
that.

Moorcraft had a dairy farm on his uncle's property north of Madoc on
Moorcraft Road until 1998. He wanted to get out of dairy, but found
the rocky land poor for cash crops, and animal damage from local
wildlife wreaked havoc every time he tried. Hemp, which was newly
legalized to grow by Health Canada, was getting a lot of hype.

"I thought 'this is something new,'" Moorcraft said.

The crop proved easy to grow, but when he attempted to harvest it, he
hit a roadblock. The fibre was so tough that the usual blades couldn't
cut it, and it simply wrapped around the equipment.

"The first time I did it with the old combine, and it took four days
to combine four acres," he said. "It's the toughest plant in the world."

Moorcraft modified his equipment - part of the reason why he won the
innovation award. He and a western Ontario hemp grower are also
building a machine that will automatically separate the hurd from the
fibre by running the straw through a decorrelator.

Such innovations are welcome for a crop still finding its way in
Ontario, said Gordon Scheifele, research scientist and past president
of the Ontario Hemp Alliance. Ontario has about 55 hemp growers and
about 700 acres of the crop. Manitoba, by comparison, has 30,000 acres
of hemp.

"At the moment, we're almost out of the picture," he said. "It's my
conviction that regardless of where we are today, in the near future,
it's going to expand on a commercial scale."

With an increasing environmental movement, hemp has some "incredible
applications," Scheifele said. It can replace fibreglass when building
plastics. It can also replace fibreglass as building insulation. It
can restore the integrity of recycled paper. It can be used as
livestock feed. It can be used in non-dairy frozen yogurt and ice
creams, and hemp milk is now entering the market.

"It's one of God's greatest gifts that he gave to mankind," he said.
"It's an incredible plant in that regard."

The food market is expanding by about 30 per cent per year, Scheifele
said. There is currently "no readily available market" for the straw.
Hemp experts are encouraging Health Canada to relax the regulations it
puts on growers, because a lack of growers is producing a "chicken and
egg" dynamic, he said. Which comes first: the market or the crop?

Moorcraft, who has the crop and a new agricultural award, hopes the
rest of the world catches on.

"It's a new crop and it's not on the stock market in Chicago," he
said. "If we can play it right, and if we can grow it right so they
can afford to buy it, we'll be set."