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“Farmers are always looking for alternatives, and right now wheat prices are low, canola is sliding a bit… so (hemp) gives them some alternatives,” saidRuss Crawford, president of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance.

“Some years there’s a high value for the oil, other years it’s meal; well we’ve got a third option here, which is the cannabinoid piece of it. So now you’ve got this trifecta of opportunity within one plant,” Crawford said.

Harvesting CBD from hemp, however, won’t be as simple as taking chaff leftover when the hemp grain is collected in combines.

Photo by Steve Hellber/AP/The Canadian Press

Cannabinoids are contained in tiny and delicate hairs called trichomes.

“The fear is that if you do collect the material… these brittle structures on the leaf or flower surface will break off and all cannabinoids will end up in dust,” said Slaski.

Farmers could harvest the plants earlier, collecting the leaves and the flowers when they’re at peak CDB levels, and foregoing the hemp grain. But there is considerable research that needs to be done to figure out how to do this on a full-field, industrial scale.

“You’re talking about equipment, you’re talking about the whole process you have to work out, you’re talking about mass drying, you’re talking about acres of it, you’re talking about potential contamination from birds with feces,” said Dzisiak of the Parkland Co-Op.

“It will happen fairly quickly, but it will be years before it gets up and running,” he said.

Hemp strains, which contain much lower levels of cannabinoids than their smokeable cousins, also need to have their CBD levels increased through breeding programs.