GROWN IN THE USA?

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Meanwhile people are getting experience. In the United States that will mean continuing to sell and develop products that consumers will like and buy and show off. Elsewhere that means actually growing and processing it. Marcel Hendriks, director of Hemp-Flax, a European pioneer in working with hemp fibers, grows 3,000 acres of hemp in The Netherlands. (Ironically, he points out, the outdoor growers of pharmaceutical cannabis complain about the fertilization of their plants by his industrial hemp fields female plants must remain separated from male pollen to produce the potent, psychoactive flowering tops.) "We were fortunate to have people who already knew about handling fibers; flax is as near as you can get to hemp," says Hendriks. The tide of recent years has been flowing with hemp. When he established the company in 1994, natural fibers were drawing a little attention, but very little was going on with hemp in particular. "Now every car company in Europe is doing tests with natural fibers," says Hendriks, who has processed hemp for Mercedes though the car company is not yet a regular client. Conrad explains the utility of hemp in autos: "Glass shatters, fiber bends."

Hemp's emergent popularity fits with other national trends in support of ecofriendly commerce generally, wherein the market for organic foods is doubling every three years or so. "I think we need to be a part of that movement," says American Hemp's Friedman. "It's part of the same kinds of consumers."

SIMPLY PUT ... ...hemp is not marijuana and can't be transformed into marijuana any more readily than pure heroin can be extracted from garden poppies.

According to Frank Riccio Jr., president of Danforth International, the global leader in non-wood pulp-supply, cultural faddism "accounts for a big part of [the national interest in hemp]." In terms of the global market for pulp alternatives to wood, however, there are other places to turn than hemp. REAP-Canada's Girouard says switchgrass, staple of the historical bison and well-adapted to marginal land, "will take off before hemp:'

Riccio emphasizes the unexhausted potential of what we already grow "What we're underutilizing is ag residue;" explains Riccio. In economic terms, reclaiming all the lost fiber of castaway leavings from corn, wheat, and flax makes more sense than looking to hemp as a new fiber crop.

No doubt, American industry neglects the utility of agricultural by-products. But International Paper has eyed the same economic landscape as Riccio and decided that hemp is worth a good look.

Murky waters lie between hemp advocacy and a politics associated with liberalizing the marijuana laws. Many of those in favor of allowing farmers to grow hemp want nothing to do with pot politics. "Hemp is absolutely separate from the marijuana issue," says Sholts.

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