FARMERS WILL RELEASE HEMP STUDY THIS WEEKEND

Study to examine profits, costs of controversial crop
By Janet Patton Herald-Leader Business Writer

Kentucky farmers who want to grow industrial hemp hope a July 4 weekend event becomes their Independence Day.
On Friday, the Kentucky Hemp Museum and Library will release the results of an 18-month study of the crop's economic viability. Invited to the 3 p.m. unveiling are celebrities who range from President Clinton and Gov. Paul Patton to drug enforcement czar Barry McCaffrey and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. "This is really an issue of freedom to farm," said Joe Hickey, president of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association. Andy Graves said the July 4 weekend is symbolic of farmers' desire for the freedom to grow hemp. Graves is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that would-be hemp farmers filed in May against Reno and the DEA. The federal response is due July 15.

The $23,000 study, done by economists at the University of Kentucky's Center for Business and Economic Research, covers a lot of new ground, said the researchers, who were surprised at how little previous data had been generated. "I think everybody else is going to kind of be kind blown away when they read it," Hickey said. For the release of the study, the hemp advocates picked historic Ashland, Henry Clay's estate, where it's said the Great Compromiser once grew hemp himself. Today's potential hemp farmers are seeking a compromise, too ? one reached with the government that would allow the growing of industrial hemp. "It's like any economic study," said Graves. "This is a credible business college, credible people that put this together, unbiased. "We want people to stand up and disprove what the study says if they're so smart. The only way to disprove it is to grow it and sell it," he said. The study is expected to give a clearer picture of the economics of the industry. "The idea was to look at the economic potential of hemp for the state economy of Kentucky," said Mark Berger, one of the study's authors.

"To look at the size of the existing market for hemp and do some scenarios for potential size of the market ... compared with the returns of what farmers could get instead of corn and tobacco." Berger said the study is very conservative in its estimates. "We didn't engage in any unneeded speculation about what the market would be like," he said. To assess the market, co-authors Eric Thompson and Steven Allen traveled to the hemp-growing nations of England and Germany. The two also talked to hemp growers and processors in China and France, the countries that grow the most hemp. The study does not address law-enforcement concerns involving marijuana versus industrial hemp, which has little worth as a drug crop, hemp advocates say. To gauge the cost of a detection program to discourage growing illicit plants, the economists looked at Canada, which is just getting into its second crop. Canadian farmers, who typically grow at least 25 acres of hemp, pay about $50 each to cover the costs of a 10-year background check and plotting of geographic coordinates for satellite photos of fields, said Thompson. "We were dealing with enough speculation as it was, and here's a place that's doing it," Berger said. "We were convinced by that (that the prohibition on growing marijuana can be enforced)."