Hemp farming is coming back in the U.S. and in northeast Minnesota, and I’m glad to see it happen. Hemp has a very complicated history. In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act made it prohibitively expensive to grow hemp, which wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the same thing as marijuana. But in the 1930’s, those who didn’t want hemp products competing with their products won out, and hemp farming went dormant. So, what products came from hemp that made it so threatening? Here are a few examples: paper, newsprint, paint and varnish, lamp oil, nutritious seeds, canvas, rope and twine, fabric, shoes, carpets, caulking, brake/clutch linings, cardboard, fiberboard insulation, cement, stucco, mortar, salad oil and cooking oils, printing ink, solvents, lubricants, granola, birdseed and animal feed. The hemp plant’s components—its stalk and the resulting bast fibers and hurds, its seeds and the resulting oil and food products, and its leaves and flowers and the resulting animal bedding and medicinal products yielded an enormous range of products. The whole plant itself could also be used as boiler fuel and pyrolysis feedstock.
Hemp was the universal crop. The U.S. Census of 1850 listed 8,327 hemp plantations of 200 acres or more. That’s 16,543,000 acres of hemp being grown in 1850. What for? At that time all flags were made of hemp fabric, all bibles printed on hemp paper, all quality paints and varnishes were made from completely nontoxic hempseed oil and linseed oil, most twine and cordage almost all ships’ sails and covered wagon covers were hemp canvas, most clothing, rugs, and diapers were made of hemp fabric, and oil lamps all burned hempseed oil until 1859 when oil was discovered in Pennsylvania. Rudolph Diesel invented the Diesel engine in 1896 to run on vegetable fuels like hempseed oil. In fact, the first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. Medical researchers documented amazing successes with cannabis flowers for pain. Between 1842 and 1900, cannabis made up half of all medicine sold in the U.S. It was listed as the primary treatment for over 100 illnesses. And then, in 1937 with the Marijuana Tax Act, hemp (and all related products) was effectively banished.
If you’re curious, it’s a great research project to sort that decision out. But, for our purposes here, hemp died. Until the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed state departments of agriculture to administer pilot programs to study the growth, cultivation, and marketing of hemp. Duh! In 1938, just months after hemp was effectively banned, Popular Mechanics called hemp the “new billion-dollar crop.” And some of you might remember that, during World War II, when our hemp supplies were cut off from abroad, the USDA circulated a film “Hemp for Victory,” begging U.S. farmers to grow hemp and offering them exemptions from military service if they did so. And then it died again. But, in 2014 we allowed ourselves to open that door once more. The 2014 Farm Bill allowed state departments of agricuture to administer pilot programs to study the growth, cultivation and marketing of hemp. In 2015 the Minnesota Industrial Hemp Development Act (MINN.STAT.18K) became law.
Our state’s pilot program operated from 2016-2020. In 2018 the Farm Bill legalized hemp cultivation for commercial purposes and in 2019 the USDA set up the regulatory framework for hemp cultivation nationwide. Each state had to submit a plan and Minnesota submitted our plan. Hemp growers have to report the location of each variety of hemp they plant to the MDA for sampling. A trained inspector takes a cutting from 30 different plants randomly selected, then dried for testing. They’re looking for THC, the stuff in hemp’s cousin, marijuana, that makes you high. The hemp must contain less than 0.3% which means, as my students used to say, that you’d have to smoke a telephone-pole-sized joint to get high on industrial hemp.
In the 8-county Arrowhead area of Koochiching, Itasca, Aitkin, Crow Wing, Carlton, Lake, Cook and St. Louis, 18 growers hold permits from the MDA to grow hemp. Most of them are growing what is called “craft hemp,” a smaller variety bred for its cannabinoid content. They’re extracting CBD oil or harvesting buds and flowers for smoking. You’ve likely seen CBD products popping up everywhere. Folks use it for pain relief, anxiety, depression and insomnia. This is different from “medical marijuana” which does contain THC, the component that gets you high, and is heavily regulated. Craft hemp products are sold over the counter in retail outlets and online by producers. The producers that I’m familiar with are Finnegan’s Farm in Two Harbors which sells CBD gummies and Northern Roots Organics in Angora which sells smokable flowers and buds.
But there’s an industrial hemp farm on the horizon just south of the Bois Forte Reservation. Renika Love and Love LLC are planting a crop this summer that will be used for the kinds of things that industrial hemp is best known for: textiles, biodegradable plastics, building materials, paper, and fuel. Their project was recently selected for technical assistance and funding by the Northland Food Network. The focus is to grow industrial hemp and to share that knowledge and experience to encourage other farmers to begin producing hemp for environmental and medicinal purposes. The long-term vision is for the project, called Love’s Hemp House, to harvest enough hemp to produce products that can be sold to benefit the tribal community. Love has identified an experienced hemp grower and an equipment operator/farm laborer who will join the project. They are purchasing 40 acres to begin. Love is a member of the Bois Forte Band and sees a future where hemp profits will be reinvested into providing fresh foods for the area in a Wiisiniwin Waakaa’igan (food house). Maybe other area farmers will join the trend to reclaim this amazing crop. I hope so!