Dr. Frank O'Mara:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the opportunity to present today. Farm diversification is a key strategic direction within the Teagasc statement of strategy for 2021 to 2024. Our rural development department, which is part of our rural economy development programme, aims to support farmers with diversification opportunities through farm business options webinars and in-person courses held throughout the Teagasc regions. Teagasc has developed numerous fact sheets on farm diversification, including one on industrial hemp. We work with industry to develop these opportunities and have been part of the organisation of a national hemp conference in 2019 and have been again in association with Hemp Cooperative Ireland on 8 April.

Teagasc, and An Foras Talúntais before it, has a history of hemp fibre research in the crops programme dating back to 1960. Over that time there have been three different areas of research of hemp. The first was conducted by Michael Neenan, who was interested in using the hemp fibre for paper and textile production between 1960 and 1966. The second era of research was carried out by a researcher called Jim Crowley between 1997 and 1999. He was interested in hemp as medium density fibreboard, MDF, material. More recently, between 2008 and 2012, Dr. John Finnan was interested in research on hemp as an energy crop. All of this research was geared towards the agronomy of hemp, though there were different uses of hemp in mind. This work has shown that hemp can be grown well in Ireland and has established the basics of crop production in terms of sowing dates, seed rates, varieties, harvesting techniques etc. It has also shown that the crop can be grown with little or no requirement for plant protection products, although if grown more widely, pests and disease could become a problem. It has also established the crop nutrient input requirements that are now included in the Teagasc green book, entitled Major & Micro Nutrient Advice For Productive Agricultural Crops, with the relevant table shown in the appendix. It should be noted that in the three cases above, no significant cultivation of hemp resulted, due primarily to the lack of a local or domestic market for the fibre.

Hemp fibre is a low-density material and therefore not well suited to long-distance transport to processing facilities. To deliver a significant increase in hemp production for fibre markets will require investment in processing facilities to extract the fibre as well as the development of local markets to turn the fibre into products. In addition to fibre, hemp may offer opportunities to develop novel products, in particular from the flowers, leaves and seeds, which would not present such a transport challenge as the fibre. Cannabidiol, CBD, oil is extracted from the leaves and flowers of the crops, the harvesting of which is currently not allowed under hemp cultivation licences. Therefore the development of a significant CBD industry will require some legislative changes. These alternative markets are an area of ongoing research, and our food programme recently received funding from the Department to carry out a project called Innovative food friendly processes of hemp CBD extraction and evaluation of hemp as a source of functional food ingredients. The project is led by Teagasc and involves researchers from UCD. The total funding allocated is €591,000.

Additionally, we plan to investigate the functionality of hemp protein to identify if there are specific market niches to which it is suited. We plan to do this as part of the Department funded Unlocking Protein Resource Opportunities To Evolve Ireland’s Nutrition, U-Protein, project. It is a large programme we have going on around plants as sources of protein. As part of that project we will look at the functionality of hemp protein. That is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Teagasc, University College Cork, Maynooth University, NUI Galway, the University of Limerick and Queen's University Belfast, as well as ten industry partners, that commenced in November 2020 and received funding of almost €3 million. Obviously, that is not all for hemp-related work. There will be some additional work in an EU-funded project lead by Teagasc that is currently in contract negotiation. We will be actively disseminating the research findings from these projects when they are available.

As with any crop or product, markets, together with the necessary infrastructure, are critical to encourage farmers and give them the confidence to grow the crop. However, as outlined above, the crop grows well in Ireland, and given the right financial returns, growers would be interested in growing the crop. There are many claims made for the carbon sequestration potential of the crop. We have done some very limited work in this area which indicates it sequesters slightly less carbon than grassland, but these results require further validation.

The net carbon sequestration will also be dependent on the system in which the hemp is being grown, that is, grassland or tillage land, and the soil type on which it is being grown, namely, organic or mineral. It should also be noted that as far as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, methodologies on which our national greenhouse gas inventories are based are concerned, the carbon contained in most crop products is assumed to be released back to the atmosphere once harvested. That stands in contrast to harvested wood products, for example. If such products are used in construction, the carbon is assumed to be sequestered. That is a difference between hemp and forestry or harvested wood products.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present evidence to it this evening. We welcome any questions members may have. My colleagues, Mr. Caslin and Mr. Spink, who are more knowledgeable on this topic than I am, will come into their own at that stage.