Bordertown’s Mick Andersen was keen to be among the first industrial hemp growers in SA but quickly realised that there was no established market.
Instead, he has been building a processing plant to turn the crop into cold pressed hemp oil and hulled hemp seed which he hopes will be finished by April.
Mr Andersen is also importing a seed dryer from the Netherlands to help growers reduce the moisture levels in their grain.
“I have always been interested in hemp but I have never had the opportunity time-wise to do anything about it until now,” he said.
‘I was running a construction company in the pig industry and that (pigs) is not going so well so our construction jobs have slowed down.”
In his first year at Good Country Hemp he hopes to receive 100 tonnes to 150t of seed from six contracted growers and then triple his tonnage in 2020.
“All the research we have done says our biggest challenge will be getting growers on board to grow it,” he said.
“We are willing to take as much seed as we can possibly get and beyond that who knows but my goal is to get to 1000t in four years’ time.”
“We see the Tatiara as having ideal conditions to grow hemp-good soils, good quality water and good farmers as well, used to growing small seeds,” he said.
Good Country Hemp is offering $3.50 a kilogram to growers for seed meeting 85 per cent purity and 10pc moisture, delivered to Bordertown.
Mr Andersen has registered the Good Country Hemp brand and hopes to package products for supermarkets and health food stores, as well as online sales.
“Our market pitch is Australian, sustainably-grown hemp,” he said.
Mr Andersen says many growers are looking at the benefit of a hemp crop in a rotation, returning biomass to the soil and stimulating microbial activity.
“Hemp has an amazing ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and convert it to biomass and when the crop is harvested only a small part of that is lost with the rest left to go back into the soil,” he said.