Missouri university researchers already growing hemp

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Researchers with the University of Missouri are getting a head start on growing hemp in order to collect information to help farmers who plan to grow the state's newest cash crop in the spring.

The crop is hemp, a type of cannabis without high levels of THC, the chemical that gets people high. It is found in thousands of products, from makeup to construction materials. Growing it had been illegal for decades under 20th-century tough-on-drugs laws, but the federal government, and the state Legislature, have loosened such policies in recent years.

This year, Missouri lawmakers dropped a pilot program allowing hemp farming only on 10- to 50-acre plots. A law that passed this year contains no acreage restrictions but requires growers to be licensed by the state Agriculture Department, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The law allowed universities to begin growing the plant immediately to collect useful data on the new crop for farmers, but otherwise takes effect Aug. 28. The University of Missouri has research plots at seven centers across the state.

"When you're starting a brand new crop -- you know, we haven't grown this for 100 years -- so when you start a brand new crop, we don't know the basics about it," said Tim Reinbott, assistant director of the University of Missouri's Agricultural Experiment Station. "Getting a chance, this head start, that we can grow it and feel it and touch it and learn something about it before next year when farmers get to grow it in Missouri -- that's huge."

Reinbott said St. Louis-based Tiger Fiber LLC is sponsoring the study. The company provided seeds and is monitoring THC levels to ensure they don't exceed the legal limit of 0.3% THC. The hemp grown through the experiment will be destroyed.

Tom Raffety, who farms corn and soybeans near Charleston, Missouri, is president of the Missouri Hemp Producers Association. He said he's heard "horror stories" from farmers in other states who paid for bad seeds.

"There's only so much information you can find on the internet, and much of it's wrong," he said. "Hopefully, the university research will really give some guidance to growers moving forward."

Topics being studied include what row spacing works best, how the crop grows in different regions of the state, how tolerant the plant is to drought, how much watering is necessary and weed control.

Perryville, Missouri, Republican Rep. Rick Francis sponsored this year's hemp law and said he thought hemp, which is used in thousands of products, could be an economic development tool in rural parts of the state. The challenge after next year's growing season will be connecting growers to buyers, he said.

"That's one of the keys," he said, adding working groups are already trying to solve marketplace problems.

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com