Maybe South Dakota’s agricultural lobby isn’t as fired up about hemp as folks eager to override Governor Kristi Noem’s opposition to the crop are assuming. The South Dakota Farm Bureau held its annual convention in Sioux Falls last weekend, and delegates rejected a resolution advocating industrial hemp:
“Obviously, industrial hemp is a big issue in South Dakota right now, and our delegates had a resolution sent in by a county to support and promote the production of industrial hemp, and our delegates voted that down,” [SDFB president Scott] VanderWal said. “So we’re not going to be supporting it, but we also at this time won’t oppose it outright” [Dan Santella, “South Dakota Farm Bureau Discusses Industrial Hemp,” KELO-TV, 2019.11.24].
The majority of Farm Bureau delegates are giving Noem cover for basing her position on perpetual unknowability:
“Can we have the financial backing to regulate it, is our state ready for it? I think that’s a lot of it,” [SDFB VP Jeffery] Gatzke said. “Is this something that we want to jump into. I think our delegates are pretty cautious on this issue, and so I think that’s why they voted it down.”
…Clay and Union County delegate Marilyn Jensen did not support the industrial hemp resolution.
“As a health educator, I don’t know if there’s enough information that we have right now,” Jensen said [Santella, 2019.11.24].
I’m not sure what health concerns a health educator could have about this crop. Hemp is used for clothing and food; it’s a perfectly healthy crop! And hemp can’t be any less healthy than the new “Country Gold” Farm Bureau beer introduced at the convention.
If you can promote an actual intoxicating beverage, how can you hesitate to promote a more diverse and non-intoxicating cash crop?
The South Dakota Farm Bureau’s demurral on hemp stands in stark contrast to the South Dakota Farmers Union’s vocal support for the crop. And while the big-business wing of South Dakota agriculture may be heeling to Governor Noem’s irrational resistance to farm freedom, but our tribal neighbors aren’t:
The Flandreau Santee Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes have already submitted their hemp plans to the USDA. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe grew a hemp crop on the North Dakota side of its reservation this year for the second consecutive year and held a “hemp field day” in September to provide hemp education. Dozens of tribes, including several in South Dakota, formed a coalition to collaborate on writing hemp ordinances and hemp plans to submit to the USDA for approval.
…Agriculture-based economies want a diversity of crops and hemp offers another option for farmers, said Heather Dawn Thompson, the attorney working with the coalition. Hemp is a hardy crop that grows well on the Northern Plains region, and it is a “healthy crop” that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance or pesticides, which benefits the environment, she said.
“It’s a nice cultural match for a lot of tribal nations,” she said [Lisa Kaczke, “South Dakota Tribes Plan to Grow Hemp, Have ‘Big Dreams’ for Potential Revenue,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2019.11.24].
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe doesn’t mind if Noem continues to dig in her heels; they see a chance to get ahead:
“RST has the opportunity to be, at least, approximately one year ahead of the state of South Dakota with its hemp legalization and production efforts,” said Michael LaPointe, economic development specialist at the tribe’s business department, the Rosebud Economic Development Corporation.
Rosebud has about 100,000 potential acres for hemp, and, considering cost and profit estimates for hemp, the tribe has a profit potential of $25 million from the crop, he said. Looking ahead to a long-term goal, the tribe could ideally have a processing facility where hemp could be turned into textiles, clothing, insulation, paper, “Hempcrete,” particle board, and auto and boat parts.
“This has the potential to allow RST, and individual RST members, to have additional financial resources to reinvest into economic development projects, create jobs, increase tax revenues and fund critical government functions for some of the poorest people in the state,” he said [Kaczke, 2019.11.24].
Maybe hemp resistance is actually Governor Noem’s master plan for tribal economic development. She’s deliberately keeping South Dakota’s non-tribal farmers out of the business (and telling her Big Ag lobby friends to stick with her?) so the tribes can enjoy first-mover advantage, develop the fields, the processing plants, and the expertise, and establish an ongoing competitive advantage in a new and profitable market.
The tribes and many other farmers recognize that hemp is a viable addition to South Dakota’s ag-economical mix. Why the Governor and now her big-business allies declining to support farmers’ pursuit of Country Gold in all its viable forms remains a mystery.
This is an interesting stance for the Farm Bureau. They are know for corporate farming support, including CAFO’s, and have a huge investment in the insurance industry, whereas the Farmers’ Union typically supports family farms. I wonder what the real reason is.
I wonder how many of the fine folks at the South Dakota Farm Bureau shop at the new 26,000 sq. ft. Liquor store in Sioux Falls.
16 aisles of booze.
One entire aisle of vodka.
1000 different beers.
8,000 varieties of booze.
Isn’t that wonderful !!!!
Meanwhile the Dopes at the S. D.
Farm Bureau are drinking from the well
at Kristiland.
The Rosebud tribe are visionaries.
While the dopes continue to raise shrines to alcohol and all of its problems, thank God we don’t have a hemp scourge on top of that.
Our Indian tribes have seen what alcohol can do to people.
By the way , the last time I checked , South Dakota was an agricultural
state.
Hmmmm
Hemp has its problems…namely the relatively higher costs of growing the crop and the additional resources that it requires (including labor).
But if people are willing to lose their own money, fine with me. After all, we do allow people to gamble their own money away if not buy fireworks which vaporize into the air.
But for some reason, there is political resistance to assurances for zero tolerance of marijuana in any part of the hemp product life cycle. It is almost as if hemp is being used by some (not all) hemp advocates as a proxy for the legalization of marijuana. Hemp would be approved if marijuana were assured to be out of the production, delivery, and use of hemp.
Concrete is a contributor to our carbon emissions, namely due to the energy intensity that is required. So other biomass replacements are indeed of interest. The question will be how much hemp or biomass would be needed, and how much land would that take. I think there are hybrids that mix in polymers along with the concrete as well to boost strength properties, and those polymers could be bio-based too.
Here is an interesting article on the growth of industrial hemp on mine soil vs. soil with miracle-Gro.
“Enhanced tolerance of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) plants on abandoned mine soil leads to overexpression of cannabinoids”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6715179/
or
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221570
The good news is that hemp may have some promise for phytoremediation. It is unclear how well it does compared with sunflowers. The bad news is that hemp is a good absorber of heavy metals, so several hemp products will require monitoring.
Don’t expect South Dakota to monitor anything other than women’s reproductive cycles.
Wingnuts, bless their hearts, confuse oversight with overlook
The Farm Bureau was slower than others to embrace ethanol, too. A large part of the Farm Bureau is tied to the Republican Party, and the lobbying goes both ways. With ethanol, the Republican Party’s tie to the oil and gas lobby was the reason for the relative slowness of the Farm Bureau to support ethanol in its earliest days. I’m not sure what interests would be influencing this decision. The Wisconsin Farm Bureau is very supportive of hemp, convincing Governor Scott Walker to establish the pilot project after several years of his resistance.
From an old, but still occasional, farm editor’s hemp files:
Hemp grows more robustly than corn, and requires less water, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer. It prefers warmer climes, which would be a big consideration in the northern states, and is economically practicable for large operations that have well-drained, highly organic soils. Farm equipment manufacturers have developed modifications to existing machinery that can handle the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of hemp, but the seed growers are lagging in the production of seeds. It is very adaptable to crop rotation programs. But the red tape that insures the variety being planted isn’t the smoking kind is a drawback. Potential profits are comparable to other high-value crops, but there are no programs in place to deal with surpluses, should the popularity of hemp reach that point. The market potential for hemp is extensive, embracing uses from the culinary to the industrial. Its promoters say that more than 25,000 uses have been identified.
Farmers in the northern states will be taking increased risks. Although the crop can mature within the shorter growing season, it requires quite warm soil temperatures for germination, can be interrupted or delayed from reaching maturity by excesses of moisture, and requires warmer conditions to complete the maturation process that gives it the characteristics that make it a highly usable raw material.
Hemp wood is good. 😊
The way that cannabis has been thrust up on the people of SD is legislative rape.
I will be very surprised of much doesn’t come to light about abuses of process, but if I’m wrong I’ll admit it’s a win-win.
I am a goodie goodie. I believe in doing things the right way. The right way would be grass roots, respect of all faiths, backgrounds, genders, dispositions, educational campaign.
As we have it, an outside group gamed the system, confirming fears of the people who will run the state long into the future.
Expect the next legislative session to be a doozie?
I want to see this done the right way, not in a way that starts a fight and wastes a ton of money on lawyers.
There is something very fishy about the way this is being done.