While hemp farming is gaining popularity in Missouri, and across the country, there are still several hurdles to overcome before it becomes a cash crop.

To that end, hemp producers from across the state have joined together to form the Missouri Hemp Producers Association (MHPA), aimed at protecting the interests of Missouri hemp producers while creating a thriving marketplace through research, communication and legislative advocacy.

Tom Raffety, a Cape Girardeau resident, multistate farmer and president of the MHPA, has spent years lobbying on behalf of the hemp industry in Jefferson City and Washington, D.C.

"If we can get this industry back, it provides a viable crop for the American farmer. We haven't had anything new and exciting since soybeans showed up onto the scene," Raffety said.

Raffety said it's going to take time to build the industry and get the infrastructure back in place.

"To have something new out there and viable that has real value is pretty exciting," he said.

A bale of hemp is seen during the harvest season last year on a Cape Girardeau County farm.Submitted

Hemp history

Thomas Jefferson said, "Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation."

According to Monticello's website, hemp, flax and cotton were primarily used for making clothing at Monticello. Jefferson grew hemp at Monticello and at Poplar Forest, his plantation in Bedford County, Virginia.

Even though hemp was a successful American crop, it got caught up in regulation against cannabis plants beginning in 1906 with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, regulation that gradually increased until 1937, when the plant was essentially banned by the Marihuana Tax Act.

Years later in the 2014 Farm Bill, research programs involving hemp cultivation were legalized. The 2018 Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp production at the federal level with regulatory control passed to individual states.

In Missouri, the General Assembly approved an industrial hemp pilot program in 2018 under the Missouri Department of Agriculture (MDA), which exempts the crop from the list of controlled substances and the definition of marijuana.

Missouri farmers, who have to apply and receive a permit from MDA, were allowed to grow industrial hemp during the 2020 growing season.

A hemp plant is seen in a field during last year's season on a Cape Girardeau County farm.Submitted

CBD vs. fiber

Many people associate hemp with CBD (cannabidiol), which is derived from the plant, and offers pain relief without the effects of marijuana or pharmaceutical drugs.

Raffety was initially drawn to the CBD side of the business because "people were throwing out some pretty crazy numbers, and at the time, with commodity prices what they were, that was pretty enticing."

However, "the numbers just were too good to be true and as it turned out, guess what, they weren't."

Raffety then turned his focus to the hemp fiber business, where he met the co-founders of Tiger Fiber in St. Louis.

Tiger Fiber is a processor in the middle of the hemp production chain, which is the sector of the industry "we identified was the real bottleneck sort of holding the industry back," said Jerred Killoren, CEO and co-founder.

Through research, the co-founders of Tiger Fiber recognized if there wasn't a way to take raw hemp crop into something existing manufacturers could use, there was no incentive for Missouri farmers to grow it and no way for manufacturers at the larger scale to use it, said James Forbes, co-founder and chief operations officer of the company.

"We realized that if we were going to get involved in the industry, since we're not large landowning farmers and we're not a big massive manufacturer, the role we could serve to be of value to the supply chain is creating the system and that infrastructure to help process and refine the hemp crop," Forbes said.

To make it simple, Tiger Fiber refers to the production as a "hemp gin," similar to a cotton gin.

"We're the gin in the middle that is refining the raw crop to be used for 25,000-plus applications," he said.

Forbes explained, "Similar to how a farmer would harvest wheat or hay, bale it up and send it to a centralized processor, that's the role we've built. Tiger Fiber is the centralized processor where we organize with farming communities to help monetize their crop to become a cash crop."

Among those 25,000 uses for hemp are paper, clothing, textiles, animal feed, plastic and food products, such as hemp seed, hemp milk, hemp protein powder or hemp oil.

"People are beginning to see the benefits that the plant fiber has being extremely strong, extremely light, water resistant to be used with resins and molded into all kinds of things, even car parts and door panels in automobiles," Raffety said. "There has been a lot of interest from textile manufacturers, even from the Department of Defense on some uses, and that's just the fiber."

Hemp vs. marijuana

Legally, hemp is defined as a cannabis plant that contains 0.3% or less THC, which pot its high, while marijuana is a cannabis plant that contains more than 0.3% THC. CBD may be derived from hemp and marijuana plants.

According to Medical News Today, marijuana contains more THC, and less CBD; hemp contains more CBD and less THC.

However, Richard Selby, co-founder, CFO, and "agronomy guy" for Tiger Fiber, thinks the measurement of THC needs to change.

"The federal law is currently anything above .3% THC is classified as a controlled substance, and we really think that you need to take the decimal and move it so it's 3%, instead of .3%," he said. "Three percent would not get my wife's Chihuahua high."

Tiger Fiber has seen hemp tested at 0.52%, and the crop had to be destroyed.

"Even when we wanted to make the crop into fiberglass replacement, we were still told that we had to burn the crop or plow it back into the soil," he said.

Farmers not only have to get a permit to grow the crop, but are subjected to testing of the hemp 15 days before harvest to be sure they're under 0.3% THC.

"Keeping the crop below .3% is done starting with the genetics and making sure that you don't harvest too late because the cannabinoids can translocate to the parts of the plant that the state inspectors test," Selby said.

In Missouri

After being given the green light, farmers haven't had the best conditions for planting. "2019 was one of the wettest years we've ever had, and 2020 was a little better, but we didn't get as much seed in the ground as we would have liked," Raffety said.

Raffety and the co-founders of Tiger Fiber believe in the future of the crop for Missouri.

"The way we see the industry emerging, is the need and the desire from the agriculture community for another rotational crop to add to their rotation plan," Forbes said.

Raffety said there will be a learning curve, "but hemp has been proven to be viable, and we've proven it's a good plant and it's a good product, and that there's demand for it."

Tiger Fiber is not a farmer or the permit holder; it provides the seed and the agronomy program for farmers to operate with.

"We form symbiotic relationships with commercial farmers," Forbes said.

In 2020, Tiger Fiber handled the largest coordinated outdoor grow in the State of Missouri.

"And this year, we have resources to put in as much as 2,000 acres into the ground ourselves," Selby said.

Which Forbes added is a challenge "to strategically get the 2,000 acres worth of seed planted, with the logistics in place to get the material to processing."

"2021 is going to be our biggest year yet," Killoren said. "We're really excited about it and definitely going have the most hemp produced to date."

In 2021, Tiger Fiber will have its first fully-operational plant, with hopes of expanding to a second, third or fourth hemp fiber production plant.

In the past two years, Tiger Fiber has only processed a few dozen tons of hemp fiber, however, that "still puts us in the top five processors in the United States," Killoren said.

Selby added, "Our production plan calls for us to process at least 6,000 tons of raw hemp bales, possibly up to 8,000 or 9,000 tons, and that's just using one shift with a production capacity of four to five tons per hour."

Forbes sees the hemp crop as a way to blend rural and urban economies in Missouri.

"I don't think it's any secret that there's a disconnect between rural and urban communities because we haven't had that mutual dependence on each other for economics," he said, "But, by trying to usher in hemp fiber production with a product-based focus, we'll need the rural community and the urban community to start working together to create the industry."