Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 06:59:01 -0500
From: [c--o--n] at [dsmnet.com] (Carl E. Olsen)
Subject: State Ag Dept promotes hemp

From: [b--as--l] at [igc.apc.org] (Ben Masel)

Copied without permission from the October 19 Wisconsin State Journal
 
STATE PROMOTES USE OF HEMP
 
FIBER FROM MARIJUANA HAS BUSINESS APPEAL
 
By Jennifer A. Galloway
 
Agriculture reporter
 
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture has invited 75 executives and 
researchers to a private meeting in Minnesota on the commercialization 
of hemp, the woven fiber derived from marijuana plants.
 
This week's meeting of the North American Industrial Hemp Forum was 
organized and paid for in part by the Wisconsin Department of 
Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection to promote industrial use 
of hemp, said Bud Sholts, director of the agencies agricultural 
diversification program.
 
"As we begin to move from a petrochemical economy toward a carbohydrate 
economy, industrial fibers are going to be critical." Sholts said. 
"There is a market out there for a crop that everyone has steered away from."
 
Not any more. Hemp, once considered a poor step-sister to other 
fabrics, has suddenly become the darling of the fashion and textile 
industries.
 
J. Crew and Ralph Lauren sell hemp bags. Patagonia makes hemp 
backpacks. Adidas sells the Hemp Shoe.
 
"We saw it as a big trend and jumped on it," said Michele McSperritt of 
Adidas in Portland Ore.. "It's just a booming trend."
 
The problem for U.S. companies is that hemp is illegal to grow, and 
industry would rather buy hemp locally than import it, Sholts said.
 
That's why the state agriculture is involved in the effort to 
commercialize the crop, he said.
 
"This has nothing to do with recreational uses of marijuana." Sholts 
said. Agricultural hemp has no THC, (Tetrahydrocannibinol), the plant's 
narcotic compound, he said.
 
Before the US banned hemp production in 1937, Wisconsin was the 
country's largest producer of the crop used for paints, fuels, and 
building materials, Sholts said.
 
He organized the meeting set for Thursday and Friday with David Morris 
of the Institute For Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, William 
Holmberg of the American Biofuels Association in  Arlington Virginia, 
and Neal Jorgenson, executive associate dean of the College of 
Agriculture and Life Sciences at UW-Madison.
 
The state has spent about $2000 on invitations and travel costs to the 
Oct. 19 conference and another gathering on the same topic held in 
Bloomington in March, Sholts said.
 
Companies such as Weyerhauser, International Paper. and Patagonia, 
researchers from the U.S., Canada, and Europe, as well as hemp 
associations from around the world are expected to attend. Sholts said 
the event was by invitation-only to prevent people with a "different 
agenda" from diverting the meeting's purpose. A September 11 mailing 
from Sholts on state agricultural department letterhead to the 
meeting's guests included a "confidential" invitation list.
 
"We didn't want any pre-meeting publicity," he said. "If people with a 
recreational agenda come, then these heavy hitters from industry are 
going to go home."
 
Sholts said he would not classify the meeting as secret, but said "this 
is not a normal, regular, open-for-discussion conference. It is a 
strategic planning conference."
 
The agriculture department didn't publish a public notice or inform or 
invite chairmen of the Legislature's agriculture committee of the 
meeting. Under state law, notice of public hearings are required only 
for governmental bodies.
 
Sholts said that the meeting is being held near Minneapolis because 
that's where the group wanted it. Agriculture Secretary Alan Tracy did 
not return phone calls Tuesday.
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