Less than a month ago, the Manitoba government invested $4 Million into a hemp processing plant. Despite this encouraging influx, area farmers are still hesitant to adopt the crop. Both processing the hemp and marketing it pose a challenge. As the Portage Daily Graphic reports:
While plans for a new hemp production plant in Dauphin are moving ahead, crop producers in the Portage la Prairie area may not be jumping on the bandwagon so quickly.
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Initially, [Chris McCallister] grew hemp grain for pedigreed seed, but, after finding there was no market for the seed, instead he sold the grain for the production of hemp oil for human consumption.Unfortunately, McCallister found the market to be saturated this year, so he did not grow the product.
In the past, McCallister has grown hemp only for the grain as there had not been a market for the fibre.
MacGregor-area producer Lorne Hulme used to grow about 80 hectares of hemp for the grain to be crushed to make hemp oil and to be hulled for the meat as a human snack item.
However, Hulme stopped growing hemp about three years ago because the market was small and unstable, he said.
He noted shipping hemp straw to a plant in Dauphin would be costly.
Of course, much of the challenges to processing and marketing industrial hemp seems to be a chicken-or-the-egg problem: while a plant such as the one being built in Dauphin would help drive down the price-point on processed hemp products, investing in such infrastructure seems rash until market (interest) is stimulated by lower priced products.
Hopefully, the kind of government investment we’re seeing from Manitoba becomes more widespread. After all, it’s part of government’s role to push for longer-term economies that the private sector won’t invest it.
Besides, one plant in Manitoba won’t be enough to stimulate the market for industrial hemp. Rather, similar plants would need to be reproduced in both Manitoba and other hemp growing regions.