Once again, the Manitoba government is investing in its local hemp industry once again. In early April, the provincial government announced that it would be investing a half-million dollars into a hemp processing plant that is expanding its operations. As the CBC reports:

The provincial government is giving $500,000 towards the expansion of a Manitoba hemp-processing plant — an investment it says is the first of its kind in Canada.

Plains Industrial Hemp Processing Corp. is based in Gilbert Plains. The company currently manufactures hemp pellets, animal bedding and insulation, the province said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

However the company is expanding its business to be able to make hemp fiber. The new plant will allow it to produce 18,000 metric tonnes of fibre a year, Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives Minister Stan Struthers said.

This is not the first time that Manitoba (the second largest producer of hemp in Canada) has invested in its hemp industry. In October of 2008, the provincial government invested $4 million in a hemp processing facility that would make home insulation and animal bedding from hemp straw.

It’s not everyday that you hear about a yuppie turning hippy. In fact, when I think about my parents’ generation, it was pretty much the other way around. When all the free lovin’ left the flower children with children of their own, most of them sold-out and then bought-in to the very same materialistic suburban groove that they’d been resisting all along.

Well, there’s an exception to prove every rule, and last week saw a hedge fund manager buck the trend. That’s right: a hyper-capitalist gave it all up for something more wholesome, and part of that something was hemp. Portfolio.com had the story:

Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, burst into the spotlight last year after his one-year-old fund returned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse.

What Porfolio.com didn’t emphasize, however, was how Lahde sees the future not in capitalism, but in hemp. The LA Times blog did pick up on that:

The letter to clients begins with a vicious attack on the hedge fund industry itself and the U.S. “aristocracy,” and ends with a plea for using hemp as an “alternative food and energy source.”

Well, without further ado, here’s the excerpt from the infamous letter that looks to hemp for a sustainable future.

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. Hemp is the male plant and it grows like a weed, hence the slang term. The original American flag was made of hemp fiber and our Constitution was printed on paper made of hemp. It was used as recently as World War II by the U.S. Government, and then promptly made illegal after the war was won. At a time when rhetoric is flying about becoming more self-sufficient in terms of energy, why is it illegal to grow this plant in this country? [...] This policy is ludicrous. It has surely contributed to our dependency on foreign energy sources. Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week. Please people, let’s stop the rhetoric and start thinking about how we can truly become self-sufficient.

The letter is printed in its entirety in the Portfolio.com article, and you can see an original copy the letter here.

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.
[...]
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.