MURRAY, KY (wkms) – Not so many years ago in the United States, the hemp plant was widely grown for its fiber and seed. But hemp has fallen out of favor in the United States, partly due to its close relation to marijuana. Cultivating either is illegal, although that may change. Kentucky, once one of the leading hemp producers in the nations, is looking to revive the industry.

Shirts, bags, jewelry, and twine are among the hemp merchandise that Murray retail store owner Valerie Hancock sells. “I don’t pick things because they’re hemp, but I know that I have customers that come in who look specifically for hemp items or items that do contain hemp.”

Hancock says the hemp for her products is cultivated and refined overseas, in countries like Turkey and Tibet. However, legislation headed for the 2010 Kentucky General Assembly would allow Hancock to buy her hemp from regional farmers. Senator Joey Pendleton of Hopkinsville is sponsoring a measure to legalize industrial hemp. Pendleton has backed the bill before, but he says this time is different.

“Now that the federal government is saying we’re going to give it back to the states; if they want to legalize it and be able to grow it, that’s up to them.’ And that’s why I got excited about it, and I think honestly that’s the reason you’re seeing this thing’s catching on now.”

Pendleton expects the Obama administration to formally announce in November or December that it will not interfere with a state’s desire to legalize hemp. Pendleton believes Kentucky would greatly benefit from hemp production. Advocates for the plant point to its many uses over 25,000 to date according to information from to the North American Industrial Hemp Council. Those uses include cosmetics, car door panels, sun tan lotion and pressboard. As the Commonwealth focuses on a renewable energy plan, Pendleton says he’s become interested in hemp’s use as a bio-fuel.

“You make more bio-diesel or ethanol from an acre of hemp than you can from an acre of corn.”

In the past, Pendleton says he’s heard outcry from law enforcement at the proposition of legalizing hemp, but not so this time.

“But I think they’re understanding more. Now the industrial hemp doesn’t have the THC that the smoking kind has.”

Hemp leaves contain less than one percent of the psychoactive chemical tetrahydrocannabinol, while marijuana leaves contain three to twenty percent THC. But not so fast, says Kentucky State Police spokesman Trooper John Hawkins. He says the KSP still very much opposes industrial hemp. Hawkins says it and marijuana are the same species, cannabis sativa.

“It’s very difficult for us to determine by sight which one is hemp and which one is marijuana. So from an eradication standpoint it would make our job much more difficult.”

Also Hawkins says the results of cross pollination between hemp and marijuana aren’t known.

“You may get a lower THC content in marijuana, but you also may get a higher content with the hemp plant.”

Senator Pendleton says this wouldn’t be an issue because illegal drug growers wouldn’t want to take the risk of diluting their crop. According to hemp farmers, their plant is usually harvested before the buds that contain THC develop. Farmers also plant hemp close together, further distinguishing it from marijuana, where plots are spread out.

Even though the organization opposes industrial hemp, Hawkins says the KSP won’t move to block the measure.

“We just don’t do that. If the legislature requests information from the state police, we’ll provide that.”

Pendleton believes Kentucky stands poised on the frontlines of hemp production, with a growing season twice as long as Canada’s, the state’s potential rival to the north. They’ve been cultivating hemp for over a decade. Other states too, including North Dakota and Maine, are working toward their own hemp infrastructures. In Kentucky, Pendleton says the hemp issue is win-win.

“I think with the way the economy is now, the agriculture community is looking for another crop. We’re looking at biomass as to have an alternative there to corn. And then people are looking at number of people that’s laid off; this will create jobs to get factories to come here to make things out of the product.”

The 2010 General Assembly is still months ahead and there’s no way to know for sure what greeting the hemp bill will receive in the legislature. But if Pendleton and his supporters are correct, this could be one seed that doesn’t die on the Senate floor. By Angela Hatton. Source.

October 11, 2009 – Within the next three weeks, State Sen. Joey Pendleton plans to take a group of Kentucky farmers to study the industrial hemp trade in Canada where the crop has been grown legally for the past 10 years.

Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, has introduced a bill for 2010, renewing a push to legalize industrial hemp in Kentucky as a cash crop and as a source for alternative fuels.

“The timing is right,” Pendleton said. “It would give farmers another crop to raise.” Production of hemp is already legal for research purposes in Kentucky but is untried due to federal barriers.

Margaret McCauley of Versailles holds hemp fiber used to make rope. She favors the renewal of hemp production in Kentucky.

A hemp processing plant from around 1908 still stands on land owned by Margaret McCauley’s family in Versailles. She preserves artifacts from the era when hemp was legally raised in Kentucky. 

Pendleton’s bill comes at a time when federal legislation decriminalizing hemp for industrial use has been introduced in Congress and proponents are encouraged by stances taken by the Obama Administration.

In Versailles, where the remnants of an old hemp processing plant still stand on property that Margaret McCauley’s family owns, McCauley said she hopes Pendleton is successful.

“I think industrial hemp would do a lot for the farming community,” said McCauley, who has preserved artifacts from decades ago when hemp was grown legally in Kentucky.

McCauley said she hopes lawmakers won’t confuse industrial hemp with its controversial cousin, marijuana.

Although industrial hemp comes from the same plant species as marijuana, industrial hemp does not have enough THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, to produce the “high” marijuana users feel, proponents say. Hemp and marijuana look alike. But hemp is grown for fiber found in the stalk while marijuana is grown for leaves and flower buds.

Industrial hemp is used in alternative automobile fuels and in such products as paper, cloths, cosmetics, and carpet.

Pendleton’s bill would require that individuals wanting to grow or process industrial hemp be licensed by the state Department of Agriculture. The legislation would require criminal history checks of growers and would require sheriffs to monitor and randomly test industrial hemp fields.

The bill calls for an assessment fee of $5 per acre for every acre of industrial hemp grown, with a minimum fee of $150, to be divided equally between the state and the appropriate sheriff’s department.

Phillip Garnett, a Christian County farmer, said he plans to go to Canada with Pendleton to investigate industrial hemp farming as a potential “new source of income and energy.” Pendleton said he’d pay for his portion of the trip.

Garnett who raises tobacco, corn, wheat, and soybeans, said he wants to know more about the economics before he would consider raising industrial hemp. But he said “I’m always looking for alternative crops, and it sounds like it makes sense.”

Because of current federal law, all hemp included in products sold in the United States must be imported.

Federal law includes industrial hemp in the definition of marijuana, and prohibits American farmers from growing hemp.

But the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced in Congress in April by Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, would require the federal government to respect state laws allowing hemp production.

Pendleton says he sees new hope that federal barriers will be lessened, pointing to positions taken by the Obama administration.

In February, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the federal government was going to yield medical marijuana jurisdiction to states. As a state lawmaker in Illinois, Barack Obama voted for a resolution urging Congress to allow the production of industrial hemp.

In addition to production of hemp, research on hemp has been affected. A federal permit is required for industrial hemp research, Laura E. Sweeney, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, said Friday.

The University of Kentucky would probably grow industrial hemp for research if allowed in the future, said Scott Smith, dean of the UK School of Agriculture.

When UK applied for a federal permit to grow a research plot of industrial hemp after Kentucky passed the 2001 law allowing analysis, the federal government denied permission, Smith said.

Kentucky is one of eight states that allows hemp research or production.

The federal government has given North Dakota State University permission to grow industrial hemp for research purposes under strict security measures, but money has been an issue.

In Kentucky, a similar bill filed in the 2009 General Assembly by Pendleton was not given a hearing.

But for 2010, state State Sen. David P. Givens, R-Greensburg, the chair of the Senate Agricultural Committee, said he is interested in seeing new economic studies.

The most prominent studies on the profitability of industrialized hemp in Kentucky are a decade old. They reached conflicting conclusions.

A study released in 1998 included work by researchers at UK’s Center for Business and Economic Research. It showed that had hemp production been legalized at that time, Kentucky would have benefited, with farmers making profits of between $220 and $605 an acre.

The returns would have fallen somewhere between tobacco and other crops that were already grown in Kentucky, the research showed.

However, a study released in 1997 by the UK College of Agriculture did not find much of a market for Kentucky hemp.

Smith, who served on an industrial hemp study commission convened by then Gov. Brereton Jones in the 1990s, remains skeptical of the potential profits from hemp.

Givens said he is also interested in hearing from law enforcement officials, who have expressed misgivings in the past.

Christian County Sheriff Livy Leavell Jr. said additional revenue for sheriff’s departments “would be a plus” and that he hoped members of the Kentucky Sheriff’s Association would take a close look at the legislation.
Source. By Mark Cornelison.