Marketing.
After being broken in the field, the hemp is tied up in hanks of six to eight pounds. These are put in about 150-pound bales, which are taken to the market, where the hemp is rehandled by the dealer. The rehandling consists in running the hemp through hackles of various degrees of fineness. The hackled hemp is shipped directly to the twine manufacturer. The best hemp fibers, which are water-retted, come from abroad, especially from Italy and France.
Returns per acre.
Sufficient seed to sow an acre costs about $3; the breaking of the land costs $1.25 ; harrowing, 50 cents ; breaking and rolling, 50 cents ; drilling the seed, 50 cents ; cutting, $3 ; tying and shock ing, $1.25 ; spreading, 50 cents ; taking up and shocking, 50 cents ; putting in stacks, $1 ; break ing, $1 per hundred, or about $15 per acre, thus making the total cost $27 per acre. Twelve hun dred pounds is considered a good crop, and 1,800 pounds is often produced. The average price is about five cents per pound, making a gross income of $60 to $90 per acre, or a net income of $33 to $63 per acre.
Enemies.
The hemp plant is subject to few enemies. There is a parasitic plant that is causing a great deal of damage to the crop in central Kentucky. This parasite belongs to the broom rapes. It has been discussed in several bulletins issued by the Ken tucky Station. Cutworms and a small fly (Pegemyia fuscieeps) sometimes damage it seriously.
Methods employed in Nebraska, California and Minnesota.
At Havelock, Nebraska, where hemp follows hemp or a crop leaving the soil in equally good condition, the land is prepared and the seed sown and covered at one operation. A traction engine
draws a gang of plows followed by a harrow, then a special drill and a second harrow to cover the seeds and settle the soil. The hemp is cut with ordinary mowing machines with an attachment to throw the stalks smoothly in the direction the machine is going. The stalks lie where they fall until retted. They are then raked up with horse rakes and taken to the power brake, consisting of fluted rollers followed by beating wheels, which prepares the fiber in the form of long tow. In Cal ifornia hemp is cut with special self-rake reapers, bound and set up in shocks, until conditions are favorable for retting. It is then spread for dew retting and afterward broken on the Heaney hemp brake, similar to the one at Havelock, making long tow. At Northfield, Minnesota, hemp is cut by self binders of special construction and, after curing in the field, is water-retted in tanks and broken by machinery, producing a light yellowish fiber some what like Italian hemp.
L:4-ratu re.
M. Willard. Experimental Investigations on llemp. But. Soc. But., France, 50, 1903 ; Vinor, Fxp, riments with Hemp, Khozyaene, 1901, No. 47, Rev. in Zhur. Opuitn. Agron. (Jour. Expt. Land w.), 3 (1902), No. 2, pp 248-249 ; Dewey, The Hemp Industry in the United States, United States Department of Agriculture, Yearbook 1901, pp.
5d1-•554; Boyce, Hemp,—a Practical Trea tise on the Culture of Hemp for Seed and Fiber, with a Sketch of the History and Nature of the Hemp Plant, Orange Judd Company, New York, 1900.