⁄Spotlight⁄ BY CHRISTEN McCURDY THE COLVILLE INDIAN Reservation includes fruit orchards, wheat, barley and alfalfa, as well as some specialty crops. In 2018 the tribe — whose land is bounded by the state of Washington — decided to try a new one: hemp. That was the year Congress removed hemp (and hemp seeds) from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s list of controlled substances — and authorized U.S. farmers to start growing the crop, the male cannabis plants, which are grown for industrial and consumable use, not for their psychoactive qualities. It was an experiment, says Jackie Richter, conservation district manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. “It’s the first time as a farmer- producer that I’ve ever grown a crop where we didn’t have an end product or an end buyer, so that presented a multitude of challenges,” Richter tells Oregon Business. “But that was OK, because we were trying to learn how to farm this [crop]. How do we cut it? You know, what kind of equipment do we need, what kind of nutritional needs does it have? We spent the first growing season doing just that.” The second growing season, the tribe grew more than 200 acres of hemp but continued to face practical challenges — like harvesting with combines better suited for grain crops — and also finding a market. Eventually the tribe sold that year’s crop to Queen of Hearts, a company that sells hemp-based food products, which was at that time operating out of The Dalles and has since relocated to Hood River. “That was a really cool experience. They were able to process it into oil,” Richter says. The third year, the tribe experienced cross-pollination between Hemp Hopes male and female plants. At first, Richter says, that didn’t seem like a problem. “We thought, ‘No problem. We will go with biomass,’” she says, referring to waste products that can be refined for CBD oil or products like paper, depending on which part of the plant is involved. But it was a problem, because lots of other farmers had the same idea. “Everyone thought they were going with biomass and the market was incredibly flooded, and you couldn’t even give it away,” she says. Then COVID hit, and the tribe decided to hit pause on hemp production. Earlier this year, though, the Colville Tribes became part of a federally funded project to develop manufacturing capabilities for materials and projects made from hemp. In March Oregon State University’s Jackie Richter, conservation district manager for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, stands between two hemp fiber varieties on a reservation field near the Columbia River. BONNY JO PETERSON Hemp advocates have praised the crop’s durability and versatility for decades. Now Oregon State is partnering with Native American tribes across the West to study potential uses for hemp in economic development. 20
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