OSU Global Hemp Innovation Center (GHIC)

Register at the following link for this January 9, 2025 seminar and discussion on Native American entrepreneurship presented by Daniel Stewart with Gonzaga University. Register here: https://lnkd.in/g-wTATxh This event is made possible by a grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Thank you to Global Hemp Innovation Center affiliated faculty member Anne Sinkey with the Oregon State University College of Business's Center for Advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Business https://lnkd.in/gBu-NC8n for organizing this unique event.

Kick the Tires. ‘Become informed about the quality of a product or service before buying.’ Tom Pires, manager of the West Island Cotton Growers hemp decortication facility near Riverdale, California, shows University of California, Davis’s Bob Hutmacher and Lawrence Serbin of Hemp Traders a stack of baled hemp that he grew this past season. These bales are in queue to be decorticated at the West Island facility or shipped to another decorticator in need of biomass to process for their market outlets. Tom, Bob, and Larry are a part of the more-than-30-member team on the Global Hemp Innovation Center’s project ‘Hemp-based Fiber Materials, Technology, and Commerce as Drivers for Northwest American Indian Tribal Economic Development.' Tom’s facility is one of four commercial Production, Harvest, and Primary Processing (PHPP) operations participating in our project that are generating bast fiber, hurd, and other byproducts being assessed by our engineering and business teams to identify optimal combinations of hemp materials produced, processed, and biobased products that can be manufactured from each. There is a lot of tire kicking going on across our six state region and involving our eleven American Indian nation partners. This work is supported by grants provided by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The cotton fiber grading process starts with a sample at the end of the cotton ginning process. A sample is taken when each bale is made. From there the sample goes to a Cotton Classing Office https://lnkd.in/gPXN9dHb where the fiber sample is tested for comparison against Cotton Grades and Standards https://lnkd.in/g-raR4GT using methods and equipment that have been developed for just this purpose with cotton. All of this has been done to facilitate trade between the cotton farmer and the purchaser of fiber to help ensure there is a fair price for the quality of fiber produced. There is a lot we don’t see behind the Wizard’s Curtain that has to do with global trade of commodities. It is a good thing that there is focus on this need to accelerate progress for hemp as it marches forward down the Yellow Brick Road to gain a larger share of the world natural fiber market. The private-public partnerships the Global Hemp Innovation Center is forming with innovators such as the West Island Cotton Gin is made possible by grants from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program. https://lnkd.in/eQiKsVe3

Synthetic fibers make up more than 70% of the world textile market. Cotton is the leading natural fiber and makes up roughly 22% of the market, while other natural fibers such as wool, jute, and flax contribute around 6-8%. Hemp presently is estimated at less than 0.5%, but the market is growing rapidly with a compound annual growth rate projected to exceed 20% over the next several years. By 2030, the global hemp fiber market is expected to reach $23-41 billion, driven by demand for eco-friendly materials, especially in textiles, construction, and composites. But getting back to why cotton is the dominant natural fiber, it is because of technological advances in that sector over the past century. Shown below is a video from the West Island Cotton Growers ginning facility near Lemoore, California that shows the automated, high-speed compressing of cleaned cotton fiber that comes from the ginning process that removed the seeds, trash, and plant debris from the lint. Note at the end of the video the bale is ready to be sampled for comparison to USDA-Agricultural Marketing Service grading standards https://lnkd.in/gzsP6JQU Each bale will be tagged for track-and-trace from the gin to the textile mill, with every handling step along the way. https://lnkd.in/g-raR4GT, and each bale tagged for track-and-trace from the gin to the textile mill, with every handling step along the way. Thank you to gin manager Tom Pires for the tour to see in detail what happens with cotton at the top of the supply

A groundbreaking study comparing the?sensory and chemical profiles of hemp and cannabis flowers is nearly complete. This research is being led by Tom Shellhammer and his laboratory in the OSU Food Science and Technology Department in partnership with Adie Rae (Wilson-Poe), Ph.D. with Legacy Health in Portland. Hemp flowers collected this past year from commercial fields in three states have been evaluated by sensory panels for their aromatic profiles and characterized for their chemical constituents by analyses done in the Michael Qian laboratory. Making comparisons of these, the research is uncovering fascinating similarities and key differences that will deepen our understanding of consumer sensory perceptions and preferences to help find out why they choose what the purchase. Stay tuned for the insights soon to be reported.

Global Hemp Innovation Center affiliated members Gordon Jones (L) and Bob Hutmacher with the University of California, Davis (second L) conducted a site visit today at the West Island Cotton Growers ginning facility near Riverdale, California to scope out project plan details for the engineering analysis and physical and chemical properties characterizations of the industrial hemp bast fiber, hurd, and byproducts produced at the facility. Tom Pires (R), a recognized national expert in cotton ginning technology, has become an artist in converting out-of-date saw-type gin equipment into hemp stalk decorticators. Also joining in with planning next year’s research at the UCD West Side Research and Extension Center https://wsrec.ucanr.edu// was Lawrence Serbin owner of Hemp Traders https://lnkd.in/gGGy8cKf who has been working with all aspects of the hemp industry for more than 30 years. You can find out more details about this project supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture at: https://lnkd.in/gBM9A2EP

The USDA is hosting a webinar to go over the programs and resources that are available to the hemp industry. Check out the following link for more information and to register. https://lnkd.in/gZh98-E4

The Global Hemp Innovation Center is proud to be the sponsor of the newly formed Intercollegiate 1/4 Scale Tractor Team hosted in the Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences’s Biological & Ecological Engineering - Oregon State. The American Society of Biological and Ecological Engineers (ASABE) oversees the annual event that is in its 27th year. The student team members are gaining practical knowledge and design experience through this project that is an important key to help them be prepared to be effective professional engineers. Thank you to John Greeven and Adam Ward who are making this opportunity available to their students. In 1938 Popular Mechanics Magazine proclaimed hemp the next billion dollar crop https://lnkd.in/gsnWxdVA obecause of advancements in mechanical decortication. GHIC affiliated faculty member Stephen Baluch will be there helping point the students in the right direction for new mechanical hemp handling solutions towards 2038, a long ways from 1938. You can find our more about the ASABE and this competition at: https://asabe.org/IQS

The just-released Oregon State University 2024 Research and Innovation Annual Report is fresh off the presses. https://lnkd.in/gBHBYPNy. The Global Hemp Innovation Center with our affiliated faculty and partners are able to accomplish what we accomplish in the emergent hemp space because we are a part of the Oregon State University community. Check out the link above to learn more about the research and innovation enterprise at OSU.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State Oregon State UniversityBiological & Ecological Engineering - Oregon State have formed a new research partnership 'Advancing Our Predictive Understanding of Hemp through Crop Modeling.' The team that has been formed is comprised of seasoned modelers John Bolte and Adam Ward, ARS soil carbon and entomology modelers Jennifer Moore and Seth Dorman, Stephen Good, an OSU plant hydrolic modeler who works across scales from leaves to continents, and María Isabel Zamora Re who specializes in water management decision making are joined by graduate students Tingting Huang and Manuel Alejandro Rios who will be carrying the heavy water in this new innovative effort that will link emerging data, predictive models applied across scales, and utilize artificial intelligence tools. Thank you to Ryan Jeffrey Hayes who leads the ARS Forage Seed and Cereal Research Unit in Corvallis and is the driving impetus for this new effort that will set the foundation for finding optimal ways to incorporate hemp into agricultural landscapes and help guide the sustainable scaling of the industry in the future. https://lnkd.in/gSQUXwCt This is another great example of the continuing partnership of ARS with OSU and how our combined strengths are helping bring industrial hemp into the 21st Century.