IND HEMP looking for more growers

Representatives of IND HEMP were in Havre Wednesday to talk to producers about contracting acres to grow hemp for either fiber or oil production in the company's processing plant in Fort Benton.

Presenters Morgan Tweet, chief operating officer and co-founder of the family-owned company, and Ben Brimlow, lead agronomist, said they had more than 30 producers contracted in 2021 with 6,000 acres in production, and they are looking to expand to 8,000 acres for 2022.

"We really have a mission to try to bring value back to agriculture in the rural communities that we live in, and hemp is a vehicle that we think could do that," Tweet said.

The industrial hemp industry in the U.S. is really new since federal legalization only came about in 2018, she said. The big component that's been missing is the primary processor that converts raw material from the field into a usable ingredient or material for industrial and commercial use, and that's where IND HEMP comes in.

Their facility is the first of its kind in the U.S. and largest industrial hemp processor with both their oil seed and fiber production facilities running now, she said.

Plant in second year of processing

IND HEMP began processing oil seed by mid-2020 and fiber plant processing began last year. The company has produced plants on its own test fields to work on genetics and best practices for both growing and harvesting.

Tweet added that the company is working on partnerships with their growers and with companies that are working on traditional and innovative ways to use their seed oil and fiber materials.

"Unfortunately, a few years ago the hemp industry came into Montana and established a bad reputation for (the hemp industry) with a lot of CBD production," Tweet said.

CBD production is best suited for one- or two-acre, labor-intensive horticulture type growing practices, but grain and fiber hemp are more like row cropping, similar to alfalfa, hay and canola production that most producers in Montana are used to.

"It's something we really have to hit on to make sure people know that we are the other side of the industry," she added.

Whether producers have organic or conventionally farmed acreage or operate as a dry land or irrigated farm, the company has seeds and agronomy practices to fit all those profiles, Tweet said. And they are looking for producers who want to work with them growing even 100 to 200 acres of hemp.

Harvesting hemp

Fiber hemp is a tall forage crop grown for biomass, not seed, Brimlow said.

The plants reach heights of 8 or more feet in the right conditions, and it's grown in densely planted crops of about 100,000 plants per acre.

He said the company has worked with Torgerson's and New Holland dealers to find locally available farm equipment to harvest the plants. They found that a sickle bar mower works about the best, though they used a draper header successfully on plants less than 8 feet tall.

The seed oil, or grain, hemp is a shorter plant with male and female plants, both of which are needed to ensure pollination and seed growth, Brimlow said.

The plants are harvested when the seed is ready, but the straw, the stock of the plant, is harvested as well, for its fiber.

The grains can be harvested directly from the plant leaving the straw in windrows, or it can be swathed, Brimlow said.

Harvesting hemp can be a little tricky for producers initially, they said, mostly because it's a somewhat different process from other crops.

Hemp is harvested when it's still green and has about 15-18 percent moisture, Brimlow said, because the seed needs some moisture to help keep the hull from shattering, but it needs to be in a bin with a drying fan within four hours.

The straw, though, needs to stay on the ground for at least four weeks before it's dried and baled.

That four week period allows for retting, a process in which the plant and soil microbes break down the fibrous lining of the stock, something that has to be done in order for it to be processed in the plant.

IND HEMP, Tweet said, can include harvesting and hauling the crop, as well, in the contract for a reduction in the payment. And for producers who haul their own crops they are offering a freight subsidy.

The company's 2022 contract offers 8 cents a pound for retted straw from fiber hemp and $1.15 per pound for organic hemp grain and 60 cents for conventionally grown grain plus 7 cents per pound on retted residual hemp straw.

One of the requirements of producers is that they have storage bins with fans for the oilseed crops because IND HEMP doesn't have that capacity at the moment, they said. Producers who still have grain in the bins after the first of the year are paid a storage fee.

Uses of hemp

Hemp grain, the oil seed, is pressed to produce oil and two protein products. These are used in FDA approved foods, cosmetics and nutritional supplements, and the fiber plants are used in textiles and products from hempcrete to car door panels.

The hemp plant stalks, called straw, is converted to fiber from the outer layer - much like flax is processed into thread and material - and a chip-like material called hurd, which is the woody inner core, that can be used for animal bedding, insulation panels, hempcrete, biocomposits, biological plastic replacements and pulping for products like tissue paper and face wipes.

"(Companies) really are looking at the hemp fiber. ... They need to be carbon negative or carbon neutral by 2030, they need to have natural fibers in their materials," Tweet said. "Well there's very few products out there that they can do at that scale and hit those quality specs."

Textiles are actually the smallest part of the materials the plant produces, but the thing Brimlow said he's most excited about, especially with Montana clothing company Smith and Rogue using hemp cloth in some of their clothing line that can be purchased at stores like North 40 Outfitters in Havre.

"I'm looking forward to the day when you can go to North 40 and you find your jacket - that the hemp came right off your very own farm." Brimlow said. "... I wanna wear something that I know what field it came out of, what soil it was grown in.