Yakima's Experiment Station Bets on a Twelve-Foot Wonder Crop
The Northern Pacific test plots at Yakima prove Japanese hemp flourishes in the valley, and a Pacific-coast expert predicts a lucrative new staple for Washington and Oregon.
Mr. F. B. Leckenby, who has personal charge of the Northern Pacific experiment station at Yakima, is well pleased with the experiments made this season with Japanese hemp. It has done remarkably well, growing about 12 feet high, and takes possession of the land with a growth that is exceedingly rank. "All it needs," writes Mr. Leckenby to Ranch and Range, "is fertilizer and water. No need of cultivation."
In pursuance of a desire to obtain more complete information regarding this promising crop, he recently directed a letter of inquiry to Hon. Felix Fremery, who has made exhaustive experiments with hemp on the Pacific coast, and who is now employed as an expert by the Portland Cordage Company. His reply is interesting and valuable, showing what great possibilities it possesses for our country:
"Mr. F. B. Leckenby, North Yakima, Wash.: My Dear Sir — Thankfully I take notice of the contents of your kind letter, which once more confirms that the hemp requires rich soil and plenty of water during the growing season. If these requisites are complied with, our natural moderate warmth added, such as we witness in Oregon and Washington during the months of June, July, August and September, this growth will doubtless become a staple article in both these states ere many years have gone down into eternity. There is at present no better-paying crop on this coast than hemp except the orange.
"If planted close, so as to produce 10 to 12 stems per square foot, 12 to 14 feet in height, an acre will produce from 2,400 to 2,600 pounds of fibre if treated in the old Kentucky manner... yielding about 50 per cent long fibres, called dressed hemp, and about 50 per cent of tow. The price of the long fibres is from 5 to 6 cents per pound and that of the tow from 2 to 3 cents... If... immediately decorticated and the ribbons water- or steam-retted without delay, an acre yields 2,000 pounds of cream-white, strong, glossy fibres, commanding the highest market price for Italian (Bologna) water-retted hemp in New York, which averages 8 cents per pound.
"The Portland Cordage Company, at Portland, will be disposed to contract for any quantity to be produced in Washington and Oregon for next and following years at the regular New York market prices... the demand in the east, England, France and Germany is practically unlimited... The costs of culture, rent of land, plowing, harrowing, seeds, sowing, harvesting, decorticating, retting, drying, baling, etc., amount to $32.50 at most per acre. A decorticating machine of 24 knives has a decorticating capacity of about 400,000 stems, or the produce of one acre in 10 hours...
"I gladly will assist you in any way as regards this much promising new field of human activity. — FELIX FREMERY."
Note. — Mr. Fremery will exhibit his decorticating machine at the Yakima state fair.
“There is at present no better-paying crop on this coast than hemp except the orange.”
More than a century before Washington farmers replanted industrial hemp under a new legal regime, the Yakima experiment station was already touting it as a miracle crop. Then, as now, the promise of a high-value replacement for traditional farming collided with questions of cost, processing, and who would profit. The valley's agricultural identity has always been built on such gambles.
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