Pubdate: Wed, 27 May 1998 Source: Lexington Herald-Leader ( KY) Contact: hledit@lex.infi.net Website: http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/

Author: Janet Patton Herald-Leader Business Writer

KSU RESEARCHERS INVESTIGATING HEMP AS FOOD FOR CATFISH

At Kentucky State University, Carl Webster and Laura Tiu have been giving about 150 blue catfish a kind of hemp diet torture test.

"This is the worst-case scenario," Webster said. The aquaculture investigators have been feeding the 6-month-old fish hemp meal mixed with vitamins, minerals, oil and fatty acids -- pretty much the bare minimums the fish need to survive.

"They seem to like it. I think they're on par with normal growth for blue catfish. If you can feed them something straight like this, you've got a pretty good ingredient," Webster said.

Using more hemp meal provided by Craig Lee of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Association, Webster and Tiu are going to start another study on channel catfish in June using formulations closer to commercial feed. They'll try substituting hemp meal for soybean meal, a main ingredient in fish feed.

"If we think it's a good feed ingredient, we'll publish it," Webster said. They'll let economists worry about whether it's feasible to use.

"There's 400 million pounds of channel catfish commercially produced each year. At 2 pounds of feed for each pound of catfish, that's about 800 million pounds of feed," Webster said. "So, if you only have a little part of that market, you've got a good market."

Right now, hemp meal wouldn't be very practical for catfish farmers. "Forty to 70 percent of a producer's cost is feed," Webster said.

U.S.-produced soybean meal, about 50 percent to 60 percent of the fish food market, costs about $170 a ton, plus delivery. Hemp meal, with its higher shipping cost, is about $1,200 a ton. Prices fluctuate with the crop availability.

Don Wirtshafter, owner of Ohio Hempery in Athens, Ohio, said that as people find more uses for hemp seed cake, demand is driving up the price.

At this point, it's a specialty product because of the shipping from overseas, Wirtshafter said. "We could get rid of two-thirds of the cost simply by growing it in Kentucky."

Or the hemp meal could replace fish meal -- ground up "trash fish" -- another fish feed ingredient. Because of El Nino's changes in ocean temperature, fish meal has skyrocketed to $600 a ton.

Although Wirtshafter has contracted to begin buying Canadian hemp seed, most of it now comes from China.

Unless laws against growing hemp change, there probably won't be many catfish eating it. Because it's illegal, U.S. farmers can't grow it; because U.S. farmers don't grow it, it's too expensive for fish farms to use.

"I don't think there'd be any feed mill making it cheap enough to use commercially," Webster said. Like a lot of people, he found the idea was a little eyebrow-raising.

"I was very unfamiliar with it ( hemp). In fact, I thought it was illegal. I said, 'Can you have that in the states?' " Webster said.