SHUTTERSTOCK Global Hemp Innovation Center was awarded a $10 million grant, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to develop manufacturing capabilities for hemp-derived materials. The center will partner with 13 Native American tribes on the project, in the hopes that it will spur economic development across the West. Jeffrey Steiner, who directs the center at OSU, says the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation were early adopters in the hemp-growing field, growing and crushing the first hemp oil west of the Rocky Mountains. And other tribes were starting to show interest in the crop before the grant was announced. “There are tribes that have been growing hemp, there are tribes that have marketed hemp products, there are even tribes that have manufactured biobased materials — say bio-based plastic substitutes,” Steiner says, including the Yakama Nation as well as the Shoshone-Bannock tribes, whose reservation is bounded by Idaho geographically. “The tribes will individually decide how they want to interact with the project, and we basically will be functioning like a consulting engineering firm — an information source helping them think through what they want to do individually,” Steiner says. The first records of hemp cultivation date back to ancient China, with archaeological data suggesting it was one of the earliest crops cultivated in the region, and early written records suggesting its cultivation continued for thousands of years, according to the International Hemp Association, using the crop for fiber, paper, food and medicine. Europeans began cultivating hemp by the 16th century; like the Chinese, they both used the plant for fiber and ate the seeds. They brought hemp with them to the Americas, cultivating it in Chile in 1545 and in New England in the early 1600s. In the 19th century, the American South became a major producer of the crop, grown for cordage and sailcloth — but hemp was eventually displaced by cotton and other cheaper fiber crops. The plant is not indigenous to the Americas, but records show Native Americans began cultivating hemp as early as 1605 in Jamestown, presumably with seeds acquired in trade with colonists. In 1937 Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which put all cannabis plants under federal control. Hemp was still legal, but growers had to register with and be licensed by the federal government. While the federal government relaxed some of those standards during World War II in order to meet a demand for rope and fiber, the crop mostly remained under tight control for decades. The past decade has seen a sea change in social attitudes and legal restrictions regarding hemp’s psychoactive sister. As of April, marijuana was legal for recreational or medical use in about 24 states. The drug is still federally illegal, but Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has said she supports decriminalization. (Former President Donald Trump has said he favors leaving the matter to the states.) For a few years, hemp existed in the same legal limbo. But the 2014 Farm Bill made hemp research legal, and the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp — which it defined as cannabis and derivatives of cannabis whose THC contents do not exceed 0.3% of the product — from the definition of marijuana laid out under the Controlled Substances Act. Nearly overnight, it seemed, hemp-derived products were everywhere — specifically CBD, a chemical linked with pain relief and relaxation. In the mid-2010s, a shopper in a state where recreational weed was legal might be able to find a topical CBD oil at a dispensary. A few years later, CBD was utterly mainstream — an additive in bath salts available at grocery stores, as well as products like diffusers or pillowcases. Tribes showed interest in the current hemp boom as early as 2015, when the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin decided to grow hemp independently — only to see their crop destroyed by Drug Enforcement Administration agents just before it was harvested. But in October 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture published a rule that explicitly acknowledged tribes’ authority to regulate hemp production in their territories. According to a 2023 article published by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, tribes submitted more than 34 hemp regulatory plans to the USDA, and as of October 2023, USDA-approved tribal hemp plans outnumber state programs 53 to 42. Oregon decriminalized the cultivation of hemp in 2009 but didn’t license the first hemp producer until 2015, according to information published by OSU’s Global Center for Hemp Innovation, which launched in 2018. “The tribes will individually decide how they want to interact with the project, and we basically will be functioning like a consulting engineering firm — an information source helping them think through what they want to do individually.” JEFFREY STEINER, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL HEMP INNOVATION CENTER AT OSU 21
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