Growing Interest In Hemp Project

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Pickup trucks were the vehicle of choice lining both sides of the road near the Centreton Community Centre yesterday as about 80 farmers checked out an industrial hemp-growing project under development.

"This connects agriculture (directly) to manufacturing," Stonehedge Bio Resources Inc. president and chief researcher John Baker of Sterling told those who came to see if hemp growing might be profitable for them.

On the one side is the need to get farmers committed to growing hemp, and on the other, investors to construct the required processing facility.

Baker's enthusiasm was catching, and by the end of the meeting, 60 farmers had signed up to get more information and to indicate how many acres they might put into production this spring.

It will be about two weeks, however, until it's known whether key financing will be in place to issue the contract commitments to farmers for this growing season and to build the area processing facility, Baker cautioned.

Previously, Baker told Northumberland Today he plans to build the $20-million manufacturing facility between Port Hope and Belleville, but more private funding must be secured first. He shared this vital information with the audience. While the provincial and federal governments have been "helpful" so far, he described the process of actually getting monetary support as "constipated."

There were a few jokes about those other marijuana plans, but Baker said people could smoke an entire field of the variety of hemp plants needed for this sustainable bio-mass producing project and the "only thing they'd get is a really bad headache," he said.

In fact, Baker suggested illegal marijuana growers may be driven away from areas where hemp plants are in production because of the adverse impact on the illegal crops caused by cross pollination.

On a more serious note, the crowd was told that even though the hemp plant varieties grown for green products contain very small amounts of the significant marijuana chemical TCH responsible for getting high, each field must be tested by Health Canada before harvest at an average cost of $250.

To date, no hemp crop which has been developed from the 200-year-old seed salvaged from wild growing plants in this part of Ontario has been confiscated by authorities, Baker said.

The licence to grow hemp is free, he added.


News Hawk: User: http://www.420magazine.com/
Source: North Umberland Today
Author: VALERIE MACDONALD
Copyright: 2009 Sun Media
Contact: Northumberland Today - Ontario, CA
Website: Growing interest in hemp project - Northumberland Today - Ontario, CA