Decision on hemp crop 'needed in six months'

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

agricultural editor

Hemp got into Parliament on the back of Green MP Nandor Tanczos, but unless seed gets in the ground this spring, New Zealand will lose opportunities from the controversial crop, researchers say.

An organic horticulture consultant based at Lincoln University, Charles Merfield, said the hemp working party promised by Customs Minister Phillida Bunkle needed to make a decision within six months.

That would enable seed to be imported and trial plots planted by farmers and researchers by October.

Mr Merfield said hemp - banned because it is the same species as cannabis - would be no wonder crop for New Zealand.

But in a study published in November he concluded that the fast-growing annual that produces high-quality oil and fibre would be a useful addition to the country's crop mix.

Motueka horticulture scientist Peter Smale agreed with the assessment and the need to move quickly.

"We have lost two years now because of stupidity," he said.

"It really needs to be set up so we can get seed here and ready to sow in the spring of 2000. If we leave it any longer we are just wasting our time," said the researcher who first investigated the possibilities of hemp for Motueka in 1981 as the tobacco industry wound up.

"The Canadians and the English will walk all over us. They have planted 6000ha [with subsidies] in England and there is about 6000ha in Canada. That's all happened in three years," Mr Smale said.

The researchers, unknown to each other, have both picked Motueka as a likely growing area.

Mr Smale said former tobacco-growing land could produce hemp with very little effort.

"There are downstream effects; you would need a $1 million processing plant.

"But we do have an MDF [fibreboard] plant here and if the forestry would get in behind this we would be able to put the stuff straight into MDF."

Other potential hemp-growing areas included Wairarapa, Hawkes Bay, Canterbury and Southland, he said.

Mr Merfield, in a 33-page report, criticised police for being ill-informed in their opposition to hemp.

He suggested that cross-pollination with the industrial crop, which has negligible levels of the compound THC - the chemical that gives dope smokers their high - would destroy the value of marijuana crops by lowering their THC levels.

It was more important to assess the threat of hemp as a weed with potential to endanger New Zealand's already compromised native flora and fauna.

Mr Merfield's report said hemp was one of the oldest crops known to humans, but had been in decline since the beginning of the 19th century because of competition from cheaper fibres such as jute, and after technological breakthroughs such as the cotton gin and the ability to make paper from trees.

"Hemp has been continuously out-competed by alternative products. It would therefore be very optimistic to expect that hemp will suddenly supplant its competitors, coming from so far behind in the marketplace."

He listed many strikes against the crop, including that its use in carpets would displace wool, but cited a University of Kentucky economic analysis which concluded that, initially, hemp could earn Kentucky farmers up to $US790 ($1580) a hectare for seed and straw production.

In other areas of the United States, low yields made it uneconomic; so "if hemp production is marginal in large and wealthy areas of the US, then its success in New Zealand is by no means guaranteed," Mr Merfield wrote.

More extensive economic analysis and crop trials in this country could demonstrate greater opportunities, he said.

A spokesman for Phillida Bunkle said the working party's establishment was some way off, with dialogue between relevant Government departments just beginning.

Mr Merfield's report is available on http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/leo/hemp/default.htm