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First Indiana hemp event tackles its growth and use

 

By JOHN L. BELDEN
Indiana Correspondent

NOBLESVILLE, Ind. — The state is taking steps toward developing a thriving and profitable hemp industry, according to speakers at the first Indiana Industrial Hemp Symposium, hosted by the Indiana Hemp Industries Assoc. (INHIA) on Nov. 9 at the Hamilton County Fairgrounds.
“Our goal here is to draw a picture for you, field to factory. That’s where we are now, and where we need to be going,” said INHIA founder and President Jamie Petty. “There are a lot of positives for our economy and our environment here in Indiana.”
The symposium featured guest speakers from Purdue University, which grew its first industrial hemp research plots this year, and other interested parties, as well as booths by companies involved in hemp processing and products. It is legal in the United States to process and sell hemp products but not, in most of the country, to actually grow it – and when allowed, as in Indiana, only for research under provisions of the farm bill.
“It’s an exciting time to be involved in this phase of agriculture,” said Dr. Robert D. Waltz of Purdue, also the state chemist and seed commissioner. “It’s not a new crop – as all of you know, it was here hundreds of years ago, as part of our nation’s founding. We’ve reestablished it in the past couple of years now as a new crop, and it’s a very exciting time.”
Waltz noted his state offices are separate from his duties with Purdue. “We have different responsibilities, as determined by the state legislature, and we take those quite seriously.
“The seed testing in our office is specifically set apart for the industrial hemp component. The legislature passed the Industrial Hemp Law (IC15-15-13), signed into law by Governor Mike Pence in March of 2014. Approximately one week later, we issued the first permit (to Purdue).
“The regulation in Indiana is set up to do two things,” he explained. “Number one is facilitating the research component authorized by the federal government through the 2014 farm bill. So with that, the legislature laid out a plan of operation for our office.
“The second phase requires us to adopt administrative rules. That will come, we believe, in the next year. We look at those things that need to be addressed; we look at those things that don’t need be addressed in rule. Then we go ahead and begin focusing the rules with the intent of not creating barriers,” Waltz explained.
“But I think it’s consistent with the intent of the legislature, for rule structure should be supportive of activities, while providing accountability.”
To differentiate hemp from marijuana, he said “the regulation applies only to plants with less than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight – that is the federal definition and it’s also state law. So the licenses that we issue currently are granted only to researchers.
“It’s very important to recognize this. At this point, with current federal law, it is primarily economic research. So we’re not really dealing with some of the medical issues – that’s not our charge, that’s not our expertise.”
The Purdue Hemp Project (online at www.purduehemp.org) was represented by Dr. Kevin Gibson, who heads it with Ronald Turco and plant pathologist Janna Beckerman. “The university has been moving at warp speed,” Gibson said. “We had the first set of meetings in the fall of 2014. We went on to a discussion with the state chemist. We developed the research plan in late fall. We got licensed. We got a seed order in. And we were able to plant in summer of 2015.
“The amount of time between when we first started really talking about it to when we had plants in the ground was really just a handful of months – a really remarkable achievement, I think, a remarkable case for our university.”
While the permitting process wasn’t simple, he said the Purdue team had more difficulty in getting hemp seeds from Canada, which has an active hemp industry. “We originally hoped to screen 20 cultivars,” he said, “and we were able to get two.
“These are the varieties we worked with: Canda, which is a high-quality oil seed, and we worked with Alyssa, a dual-purpose fiber and seed. We were only able to get 50 pounds, total, of hemp seed; 45 pounds of that were Canda and five pounds was Alyssa.” The seed cost was comparable to high-quality seed corn, he said.
Because of the difficulty in acquiring seed, planting was late, just in time for the heavy rains that inundated the state in June. Still, while research during this first season was hampered, there was enough hemp grown to measure a harvest. “This is not a guarantee of what you’ll get,” Gibson said, “but this does show some promise for growing hemp in Indiana. With good conditions and proper management, we can get a high yield from industrial hemp.”
He reported from Canda, the harvest was 1,241 pounds per acre of seed and 172 pounds per acre of oil. For Alyssa, it was 1,281 pounds of seed and 253 pounds of oil. Average THC measurement was 0.11. Gibson noted that none of the hemp tested too high.
11/25/2015