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Emergent hemp industry muddled by uncertainties
www.pressherald.com/2015/05/31/emergenthempindustrymuddledbyuncertainties/
By KRISTEN WYATT The Associated Press
FORT LUPTON, Colo. — The newly legal hemp industry is entering its second growing season with some big
questions for producers experimenting with marijuana’s nonintoxicating cousin.
The federal government has allowed limited imports of hemp seed – in Colorado’s case, this month – for research
and development purposes. Companies trying to create a U.S. hemp industry are seeking investors not only for
unproven products but for a plant that is still classified under the federal Controlled Substances Act with marijuana
and thus cannot be patented.
Chemists test methods for efficiently turning raw hemp, left, into pulp which can be used for paper and other
products, at Pure Vision Technology, a biomass factory in Ft. Lupton, Colo. The Associated Press

Chemists test methods for efficiently turning raw hemp, left, into pulp which can be used for paper and other
products, at Pure Vision Technology, a biomass factory in Ft. Lupton, Colo. The Associated Press
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As a result, it’s too soon to tell whether hemp will become a boon for farmers or stay in mostly boutique products
that use imported hemp.
At least 22 states allow hemp cultivation, though most are limited to experimental testing, not commercial industry.
Two hemp facilities in northern Colorado underscore the crop’s uncertainty.
A biomass factory about an hour’s drive north of Denver is processing hemp into pulp, sugars and lignin.
PureVision Technology CEO Ed Lehburger is also experimenting with hemp stalks, sensing potential for a broad
array of industrial uses but unable to secure enough to see whether it could replace wheat, corn and wood as raw
materials for use in things like plastics, fuels and packaging.
“We don’t have enough hemp to process,” said Lehrburger, who created a subsidiary, PureHemp Technology, but
concedes the hemp business is a few years from taking off. He’s paying $500 a ton for the scarce commodity,
compared to $65 for a ton of corn stalks.
But Lehrberger is bullish on hemp’s industrial potential. Pointing to a roomsized machine that processes the
biomass into pulp, Lehrburger explained that hemp stalks become pulp faster than other raw materials and require
less water.
Just down the road, a greenhouse contains a more tantalizing prospect. The company CBDRx is growing several

hundred hemp plants in order to extract cannabidiol – frequently shortened to CBD – a nonintoxicating part of
hemp that some believe has a variety of medical applications, from alleviating pain and inflammation to managing
seizures.
CBDRx’s owners believe hemp’s therapeutic potential far exceeds any other commercial use. The company,
created in January, plans to expand to 200 or more employees within a year, thanks to a large investment of
venture capital.
“We see this as a very huge market, much bigger than the marijuana market,” said Alejandro Bergad, CBDRx’s
chief agricultural officer for the company. “We’re poised for national expansion.”
But CBDRx must first to develop a product they can’t yet patent and make sure their plants don’t contain too much
of the plant’s more popular chemical, THC, which produces a high.
The federal Controlled Substances Act makes no difference between hemp as a plant and marijuana as a drug.
Plants containing more than 0.3 percent THC are considered marijuana and must be destroyed by law, though
licensed hemp growers aren’t subject to criminal prosecution if their plants are too strong. Last year, the first in
which Colorado licensed hemp growers, agriculture authorities ordered the destruction of about an acre’s worth of
plants after spot inspections, out of 1,811 total licensed acres.
Colorado agriculture authorities say the state’s hemp industry is still very much in its infancy, even though the
state’s industry is thought to be the nation’s most mature.
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