Georgia Kenaf farmers high on African fiber crop that resembles marijuana

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Posted 5:30AM on Monday, January 21, 2002

MONTEZUMA, Ga. - A materials company is encouraging southern farmers to grow kenaf, a fast-growing fibrous plant that it says can be turned into a new type of environmentally friendly lumber that termites won't touch. Kenaf has a striking resemblance to marijuana, which could attract some unwanted visitors to farmers' fields, but a company called Integrated Composite Technologies hopes enough farmers will find it worth the trouble. ICT needs up to 11,000 acres of kenaf within two years as part of its plan to make boards and preshaped molding from recycled plastics and cellulose fibers from sawdust, rice hulls or the kenaf plants. "This is the first step in changing a whole materials paradigm that has built up over the past 200 years," ICT president Ron Rutherford said. Africans grew kenaf as early as 6000 B.C., and within the last century it has been grown in India, Asia, Africa, the Near East and Latin America. U.S. farmers devoted about 12,000 acres to kenaf last year, mostly in Texas, Mississippi and Georgia. Kenaf comes in two varieties: One with leaves that resemble marijuana, the other with heart-shaped leaves similar to the hibiscus plant, a kenaf cousin. Kenaf doesn't make a person high when smoked; instead, it "will make you sick as a dog," according to Brian Baldwin, a Mississippi State University agronomist who has studied the plant since 1992. "Some of the chemicals in it will give you an incredible sore throat." Kenaf stalks, which reach heights of 12 to 14 feet, have two types of fiber. The long, stringy outer fiber can be twisted into cords and ropes. The shorter inner fibers can be used to make paper, or blended with plastic to make molded or extruded products. Agricultural officials say some automakers have switched from fiberglass to molded door panels made with kenaf, which is stronger, lighter and less likely to shatter or warp in extreme temperatures. Last October, ICT moved into a former recreational-vehicle plant in Montezuma, an economically depressed town about 100 miles south of Atlanta. The company has a $1.5 million, computer-controlled machine that blends plastic and fibers at high temperatures and squeezes the paste out like Play-Doh. Rutherford said the plant can support 10 machines, and more have been ordered. "Our tests have shown that termites won't go after the extruded materials," he said. "The termites sense plastic and ... don't attack it." Baldwin's work has demonstrated that kenaf can be grown in the Southern Cotton Belt, but farmers have been reluctant because of limited markets. They also would need equipment to separate kenaf's fibers. Andy Moye, a board member of the Carolina Kenaf Farmers' Foundation in Snow Hill, N.C., said the crop has attracted the interest of some tobacco farmers whose incomes have been slashed by mandatory production cuts. "We're feeling our way into it," said Moye. "It's a case of trying to identify some places it can go and giving customers what they want. It grows well here and it appears to have a lot of versatility." Kenaf can be harvested in four to five months, compared with 10 to 15 years for pine trees used as pulp wood. Pines have been the region's traditional source of fiber for paper and "engineered lumber," which is made by gluing pieces of wood together under high pressure. Like many other crops, including cotton, kenaf is susceptible to root-knot nematodes -- soil-borne parasites that attack plant roots, but Baldwin is developing a resistant variety. "I see slow growth, but as the American public becomes more eco-conscious, I think there will be less trees cut for fiber," Baldwin said. "They'll be left for lumber and these other crops will come in to provide fiber." ------ On the Net: American Kenaf Society: http://www.kenafsociety.org