"In the early 90's Jace Callaway and Anita Hemmiliä began to develope a new variety of hemp in Finland called FINOLA (correctly spelled with all caps). This was the first auto-flowering variety of hemp. The short stature and high grain yield from FINOLA sparked an agricultural innovation that has been imitated by others, especially in the US and Canada. In this episode, Jace and Anita share their story on how FINOLA went from their backyard to many countries around the world.” Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/jace-callaway https://podconx.com/guests/anita-hemmilia
"In the early 90's Jace Callaway and Anita Hemmiliä began to develope a new variety of hemp in Finland called FINOLA (correctly spelled with all caps). This was the first auto-flowering variety of hemp. The short stature and high grain yield from FINOLA sparked an agricultural innovation that has been imitated by others, especially in the US and Canada. In this episode, Jace and Anita share their story on how FINOLA went from their backyard to many countries around the world.”
https://podconx.com/guests/jace-callaway
https://podconx.com/guests/anita-hemmilia
Dan Humiston: [00:00:05] Welcome to another episode of Hemp Barons, I'm Dan Humiston. And on today's show, Joy travels to Finland to speak with the Hemp Pioneer team that discovered, developed and nurtured a variety of Hemp called vanilla, which has grown throughout the world for its nutritional grain and seed. Their 30 year commitment to vanilla is an incredible story. Let's join Joy's conversation with Jace Calloway and Anita Hemp.
Joy Beckerman: [00:00:39] Thank you so much for being with us today, Jason Anna-Kat.
Jace Callaway: [00:00:42] Well, thank you for having us. Joy, thank you.
Joy Beckerman: [00:00:46] Our view joining us today from Denmark as opposed to Finland, where you reside.
Jace Callaway: [00:00:50] Yes, we're in Finland. We're in the forest, actually.
Joy Beckerman: [00:00:54] And send them today in your summer cabin. Well, for those listeners who aren't haven't heard of Panola, Cynosure is a nominal variety of Hemp for attritional grain, for seed, for human and animal consumption. For those who are actually using it for ag feed at seed, of course, has not been proved yet. In North America, or as far as I'm aware, anywhere in the world, Hemp seeds for animal nutrition, but certainly for human nutrition. It is the most nutrient dense seed in the entire plant kingdom and the highest digestable from a profile in the plant and animal kingdom. And Jace Cholerae, an honored to have Iraq, are responsible for this very, very popular variety. Please tell us what brought you to Hemp. First of all, and then we'll go into how on earth you first created this beautiful variety together.
Jace Callaway: [00:01:52] Well, since the second grade in the U.S., I was always interested in in Cannabis through the drug education they were provided to us in the primary school. And certainly it's part of our our culture, having grown up in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s with the 90s and so forth and so on, at least for me, the business plants have always, always been part of my academic research. This just made sense after a certain point. We'll get more into it. But we started in in the early 90s, 1990s. We've been at it ever since. So for me, it's not first an additional plant to work with, but it seems like it's going to be the last one because it's totally consumed by life during the last 26 years.
Joy Beckerman: [00:02:39] So a natural evolution for everything that you you already love. And so here we have Kate Callaway from North Carolina or the South Carolina case originally.
Jace Callaway: [00:02:50] Well, I was born in Texas and I lived mostly in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi for most of my life until I met on it to. In 1983, I was a graduate student at the University of Mississippi, where the government grows their marijuana. But I wasn't really interested in that. I was more interested in ONECAN.
Anita Hemmilia: [00:03:11] Yeah. So I was born in Finland. I went to the University of Mississippi in 83 to be an exchange student for one semester. And that's where I met Chase. You had me to stay the summer as well. So we decided that we would move to California and San Francisco in particular. This was in 85.
Jace Callaway: [00:03:33] Right. And then 1988, we finally moved to Finland. And we've been here ever since. The Hemp thing came a little later in the early 90s. There was no plan. And basically, there's still no plan. We don't really have a plan to change that. Hemp does not allow people to have plans or at least no one plans here can't. What? Which way it is. You've touched on something really important, Joy, about another example of the Hemp paradox. Yes. Perfectly fine for humans. No, not for animals. So totally backwards. Usually every new crop in society is given to animals first and then eventually to humans. So here we have a small percentage of Hemp feeding the people and not very much feeding animals. Which is a pity because you can make omega 3 eggs by seeding Hemp seeds or Hemp cheesecake or anything like that to chickens. And they accept it better than flax, for example, linseed oil. That's which normally gives them to them, which is a little toxic because it contains cyanide. And of course, you know that hemp seed products contain a little bit of THC, which is not toxic whatsoever. But apparently cyanide gets a free pass for THC is even undetectable. It's somehow suspect. How did we get into AMSANT? Just just kind of got into it basically because nobody else would do it. So we did it and we were the first ones and sent them to reintroduce this crop.
Jace Callaway: [00:05:04] And we started that public early in nineteen ninety five. And it was a big struggle. Neither one of us or business people, we didn't really have an idea of going into business, but since no one would do it, we did. We realized we had something special up here because we're above ladder to 60 and that means we have 24 hour life. Do you. And we noticed that some of our plants were flowering and producing seed. This was the auto flowering trade. First recognized in Cannabis in 1995. So they see that all over the place in the market. These short things, early flowering things, they're probably one way or another derived from the no. We did it in Finland because we could. Finland never passed any laws against cannabis cultivation. They only passed laws against the use of Cannabis drugs. So being in this food and food, we were not considered to be a drug product. I guess the authorities just thought we would have given up after fifteen years of unprofitable business, but we didn't. We kept our day jobs and we just did it because we could basically and we did it because we thought it was important. This is truly an agricultural innovation that came from Finland. We have this audy floury short variety of Hemp that can be harvested with a machine.
Jace Callaway: [00:06:36] Turnover's still produces more grain per acre than any other Hemp variety on earth, and it accounted for 40 percent of all Hemp in Canada last year. Another 40 percent with similar knock offs, which we have nothing to do with hemp seeds are not new, of course, but a variety that can produce a lot of Hemp seed as the main product that was new. And that's caught on. It's caught on in Canada in a big way. It's slowly catching on. And in Europe, I don't quite understand what the problem is, except Europe has always been focused on fiber. So everybody getting into Hemp thinks they ought to go into fiber. And that's what we did too in the beginning. We quickly learned that that was really not going to be an economically viable thing to do in a free market economy with expensive hand laboring and no subsidies. So that we just kept following that thread all the way through. As I said, we tried to get professional seed growers interested in this early on, but they wouldn't touch it because of the Cannabis image of Hemp just kind of bumbles along and eventually various people picked it up and found value out of it and took it forward as we see in Canada. And as we began to finally see in Europe. So we finally seeing some progress here.
Anita Hemmilia: [00:07:59] I guess I could emphasize a little bit of historical fact. You know, I'm talking about modern history on himself, which is what James referred to in the sense that fiber was really what was on everybody's mind first. And also we were interested the intrigued by the fiber. Referring back to 1995 when we got the parents of Finland growing in our backyard. I mean, we were doing call it Shinola yet, but because it was what was getting smaller at the same time, we were involved with cultural projects in this community where we lived. And that was growing by the varieties from friends. These two things coincided at the same time. So related to that, I would like to emphasize Winola being considered an oil plant. It's even in the list of the European Union's subsidies on the list of oil plants, whereas all the other ones, they were all fiber varieties. So this was a new way of thinking, thinking about him in terms of oil content in the seed and not the fiber. And of course, in the scene, all of the rise of the fiber is of lesser importance simply for the fact that it is such a short variety compared to fiber varieties.
Joy Beckerman: [00:09:26] He's an honor to you are one of the most prolific, fiercest activist couples for the advancement of this planet and delivering it in a legal status to, frankly, countries. And you say, of course, it's a particularly so fluidly with humor apparently that you can't make plans or plans or hipsters don't plan or Hemp. Doesn't allow you to plan or. Yeah. SIGHING I guess the pass, but not to. The reality is that there is so much truth and profound concepts that you say in these statements that you make. Let's talk about some of these losses, brother and sister and what you have had to do to deliver your safe non-detectable.
Joy Beckerman: [00:10:11] In most instances, THC high Fishell seeds to a planet of people who are suffering from various depression.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:21] I want to take a quick break. Thank you for listening to today's show. As the leading Cannabis podcast network, we're constantly adding new Cannabis podcasts to support our industry's growth. And that's why we're so excited to announce our newest podcast, The Cannabis Breakout, which premieres October 18th. The show's about the thousands of Americans who remain in prison for violating Cannabis laws that have long since been overturned. The Cannabis breakout gives Cannabis political prisoners a voice. If you're a former Cannabis prisoner or have a loved one who is Cannabis prisoner, we want to share your story. Please go to MJBulls.com and sign up to be a guest.
Jace Callaway: [00:11:05] It wasn't really our idea to become activists for Hemp policy in Europe and in Canada and around the world, but we were constantly harassed by the authorities from the very beginning. So that was really not new for us. What was new for us was pushing back really hard and demanding our rights. You'll like this. We have a Bill of Rights, basic human rights in the European Union, and one of them's called the Right to Good Administration. I know that sounds absurd to anybody in the US. Civil servants are actually required to follow the law and make evidence based decisions. And when they don't. I'd like to point that out and they usually ignore us. And then we have to get their attention one way or another. Lawyers are certainly affected the specific task. But one way I've really found to be effective is to always be sure and get a civil servants name in print somewhere. They hate that. And then their boss wants to know why is your name in print and why are you not doing something about this? There are these kind of reactions to the harassment which are themselves low level harassment, but they do cause civil servants to do their job and obey the law because that's what they're supposed to do and that's what we do in our business. We obey the law and we expect that of the people that are supposed to craft these policies for us, Europe. The list is just too long for this discussion. Our legal efforts to craft policy in an evidence based way continue to this day. For example, in Europe, they're still struggling with CBD.
Jace Callaway: [00:12:46] So the European Commission has finally decided they'll allow CBD and cosmetics, but only if it's pure CBD produced in a lab, not the CBD produced from a plant, which is to. Idiotic and illogical and without any facts, also different isomers of CBB can be produced in the lab that are not produced by the plant. So here we have the European Commission allowing people to put something on their skin that has never been tested in a lab, whereas CBD from the plant has over 2600 scientific publications in the medical literature. So it has been well studied. And when the authorities tell you, oh, it's not been well studied and what that means is, oh, they really haven't looked into it very carefully. So I just want to encourage everybody out there to push back and challenge these people and require them. No. No demand that they do their job. Sure. Obviously, you could tell. I get a little worked up about this. But, you know, we've been going through this just for Hemp for 25 years, for Cannabis, even longer since 1937 in the US. Finally, things are changing. But let's not be fooled. It's not the activism that's changing. It's just purely attrition. These old people are dead or dying and they're not there to oppose the policies anymore. And there are more important things to focus. Money and other resources on them to put people in prison for these choices, for these life choices, basically. That's why we do it. We do it because we can and we do it because we think it's important.
Anita Hemmilia: [00:14:27] Certainly it is true that we do not plan to become Hemp activist, but with these Hemp that this was more like what we do this because we can. And then we just assumed that somebody would see what a great idea it was, particularly with all the information that we were getting out. We were also meeting with some people. We were hoping that some businesses would take their ideas further. Bilingual became evident to us that nobody would take these things further and start really bringing all the beneficial aspects of him into everybody's life. We saw already that could be done. So like little by little, we started thinking that, well, I guess we have to do that. We have to start thinking in a business sense. And registering, as we know, likes a variety. One of these major battles that we fought, again, has to do with the European Union. This was difficult to get no law on the list of subsidized Hemp varieties because it did not really produce much fiber. It produced seed and the seed was the main thing. We took a little convincing, some years of convincing of the authorities to establish a new category called All Feed Him so guarded on on the least of those varieties.
Anita Hemmilia: [00:15:57] This was 2003 and then and. It was taking also theleast because some of the THC testing was done wrong. It took us like seven years to get back on the move to all these years. We were really fighting. I didn't laters the European Commission about this. And when you eventually got the rights back, they only gave it back to Finland, not to all of Europe. And so in the meantime, some countries went to such extremes as to prohibit rulings in the lie entirely. And this was a DNA Sweden that totally cool with the NOLA. In other countries, you are still allowed to do. And it did continue on a very small scale in Finland and some other countries like Estonia. Some farmers really thought that it was not allowed to be cultivated anymore because it was not on this list anymore. So it took another few years to get the subsidy and the correction of the image back on the level of all of the European Union.
Jace Callaway: [00:17:04] Have those eight years of lost business and then all of a sudden when we got our rights back, we're suddenly supposed to have enough sheep to supply the world.
Jace Callaway: [00:17:13] So let's say he learned a lot during those eight years or after the really big fortunately during all those years when the business was not working out. Because we have other jobs. So we were able to carry on if we had taken the loan for the company, you know, to to really start having our own production of cold pressed oil and things like that. We would have absolutely done bankruptcy. And who knows if anybody would know about Enola Gay if that had really taken place.
Jace Callaway: [00:17:46] So barely, you know, if we did that in the states in the 90s, bankruptcy would have been the least of our problems. I'm sure I would have gone to prison.
Joy Beckerman: [00:17:54] Yes. Not enough remaining time. There were a couple of important questions. I want to make sure that we get out there. This one can be shorter because I really want to expand a little bit in the next one because I really want the research to understand about intellectual property right around genetics for Hemp. Is canola being grown in any United States?
Jace Callaway: [00:18:16] Yes, it is. It is. And it has been ever since 2014. Not all of them, because there is not a national policy and there's interstate commerce issues in the U.S. that preserve easy truck transport from state to state of siege. And it's quite impossible to be filling out all the forms for everybody's baggage see all over the place. But knowing what we're in the northern tier states where does well, hopefully if the USDA gets the policy in order before 2020 will be in all of the states. And in 2020. USDA sent their draft to the White House two weeks ago. It's probably on some talk security server by now. I guess we'll never see it. We don't know.
Joy Beckerman: [00:19:00] Yes, there's going to be a public comment period. So we're getting less and less confidence that these federal regulations will be filed in a final form before 2020. I would be shocked if there would be a public comment period. I'm almost certain there will be a public comment period. But that doesn't even start until they're released from the, you know, from the White House. So I do believe we're moving forward and I'm involved with multiple groups. As you know, I am a staunch activist also. And we're meeting with the USDA and have that meeting with the USDA, the FDA, the EPA. But I sure hope that those final regulations are going to be put out for public comment here as soon as possible. And every day is a new day and another chance for them to do it. And that's kind of the way I had to handle the unrolling of the legalization of Hemp as an agricultural commodity in the United States. So let's stop for a minute around intellectual property with Hemp varieties and maybe also a quick primer here that you have certified pedigreed seeds and how that pedigree seed fits into intellectual property around genetics and material transfer agreement.
Jace Callaway: [00:20:15] Yeah. There is not enough good information on intellectual property protection for planned. Basically, it boils down to this. Plants are protected by plant variety rights for something called plant breeders rights. It's all under an international treaty which is administered by the OPCW, the Organization for Economic Development, which most Western countries sign up to. You have a new variety of a plant and it's distinct, stable and uniform as a crop.
Jace Callaway: [00:20:50] Then it can be protected with plant variety rights which run a certain amount of time, 20 or 25 years or something like that. And it's actually a very narrow spectrum of rights basically for us. What that means is we can put the similar name on a bag of seed with a government sticker that says this is canola. It's 90 percent germination. It has ninety nine point nine nine purity. And you get that after you passed through two years of these distinct to you in the form of the instability trials. If you're new varieties shown to be distinct, uniform and stable, then it can be protected with plant variety rights. Now, we never wanted to do that, but we could not get it listed on any countries list of approved Hemp varieties if it was not protected by plant variety rights. So this is the reason why one would do that. If you want to have certified seed, then you would have to have that kind of protection in Europe. It's not so in North America. They play by different rules. Still, the intellectual property protection with plant variety rights. You cannot patent a plant with traditional patent methods unless it's genetically modified. So if I were Monsanto and I genetically modified canola, then I can protect it with a patent and I can also enforce that patent much easier than with the plant variety rights patent. So Monsanto just has to do a quick chemical test. See, that's our genetic tag and your genome. We own that and now we are new. In our case, we would really have to go through a lot of testing side-by-side trials maybe for a couple of years or just basically ask people where did you get that and how did you derive that? We know cheating is happening, but we're not the world's police.
Jace Callaway: [00:22:50] And in one way we like to look at the cheating was free advertising, because if people really see what Finland does, they want to get the real stuff from the real source. You don't want to buy crappy seed for a large scale farmer or been one uncertified seed, which should be used for food production. You can use that for farming, but there is really no guarantee that it is what it is for any other quality. Parameters have not been checked by an independent agency, so professional farmers don't really want to bother with stuff like that. In addition to legal sanctions that can occur, low level and gardener farmers grow whatever they can get their hands on and they have the right to do so. But someone that has uncertified snowless seed does not have the right to call it. Similar seed. We don't even have that right. We cannot just call a bag of seed. Similarly, we have to have a government sticker on that bag, nongovernment testing line. And the hope bit that they don't do the test. They test the production crop. They test the seed. It's expensive and not an unknown. So that's what the rights allow us to do, is to interface with government agencies and these kind of industrial seed schemes that exist for all of the crops. You know, for example, if you buy apples, you may have may not know what the variety is, but there really is a name for all of the different varieties of apples and all the different varieties of oranges. That's how these things are done.
Joy Beckerman: [00:24:32] That's how agriculture works.
Joy Beckerman: [00:24:34] And I think probably a quality piece of information or lesson that we can give to the listeners are material transfer. Oh, ECD, of course, is the Organization for Economic Cooperatives developed that I just had to say it because it was a slip of your tongue not to. And it is not without cooperation. And so wonderful that the said he served this his purpose. And also the Plant Variety Protection Act was after the signing of the 2002 Mishkin Farm Bill opened up for Hemp. So that's going to be interesting here in the United States, U.S. and getting those applications. So that's going to be interesting that material transfer agreements occur when he'd particularly certify pedigree seed is being transferred from. Agents of the breeder to the grower, what are some basic concepts of the basic provisions? They're around what the grower can and cannot do with those seeds. Based on that, the terms of the material transfer agreement.
Jace Callaway: [00:25:36] I think material transfer agreements are basically unnecessary and a waste of time because they don't really prevent people from doing anything or doing something and they're not even required to go and look at the plant variety rights regulation in the. Always see the manifest. Then you'll see that individuals have every right in the world to grow whatever they get their hands on, to breed with whatever they get their hands on. It's written into the law. We all have this. It's a basic human right for us to grow whatever we get our hands on. It says so in Genesis growing. You don't get any harder than that. Again, what it does is it allows us to produce and sell something that someone around the world can trust. According to a certification tag, it is what it is. It's not like we're growing skunk in our stronk is different than everybody else's skunk or something like that. That's not a variety. That's just something that people say what it is. It's not an independent kind of certification scheme of any kind whatsoever. People who complain about intellectual property rights for plants really don't understand at all what they do, their limitations or anything about it. Somehow it thinks that it's infringing on their rights as a human being when in fact they're so ignorant they don't even know that's so true.
Joy Beckerman: [00:27:10] And so the listeners know whether it's a hula, there's a material transfer agreement.
Joy Beckerman: [00:27:17] The readers do things will tell you you can grow this plant, but you may not use the seeds that are produced from this plant for further propagation as much as those rights do exist. And we love those. Right. We do have to protect our seed breeders. You have to protect families and families like yours who have sacrificed years and years to create these. You think people varieties that deliver so much promise and nutrition to us. And so it's very important for farmers and for folks entering. They have faith that there is respect and protections for these seeds and to pay attention to the material transfer agreements and those provisions. And we just feel that it's very important to protect our seed feeders who have sacrificed so much.
Jace Callaway: [00:28:08] We sure tried our material transfer agreement. We learned that monkeys really just don't know how to read. They're just going to do whatever the hell they want with water to get their hands on. So also, all these nice people that you mentioned are referred to and we are in that category are perfectly welcome to register whatever they want under the same guidelines that we did. And we haven't closed the doors there. In fact, we've opened it wide open to anyone who would like to just take a look and understand this little better. They'll see that it's somehow. Some people think that registering plants somehow closes the door. These people really need to look a little deeper into the kind of thing they're complaining about because they look a little ridiculous, showing their ignorance in this way. The other way to protect your intellectual property is just to keep the proprietary. These are the two standard ways that people protect things in the modern world. Do you keep it a secret and don't let it out? Try to protect it was to transfer agreement or you go through this other channel and get lawyers involved and allow a lot of forms and pay fees and do trials and have a very public and very open where actually everyone has access to it. That's the route retook is to let everybody have access to this. And again, the right we have is to put a sticker on it and call it Sonoma. That's just the way it works. So if someone else would like to do that, it should not look exactly like Shinola and they should not call it smouldered because we've already done that. Please go find something else to do to time. What I would say to people that want to dig into my pockets for the hard work that I've done, so please have respect for other people's work and go off and do something for yourself that helps humanity.
Jace Callaway: [00:30:00] That's what I would say to people that are complaining about the ads, the dad a little bit in the sense that it's kind of ironic, though, that we really did not think of going into business with him in any way. We were trying to give our ideas away for free and hoping that somebody would take all these things. But in the 90s, late 90s and early 2000 onwards, nobody was doing anything. And we were struggling with all these issues that had to do with authorities more than anything else. It failed at times like which is calling these flames your rocks, as they say in finished. And now when I look back, well, we have aged decades and we did all that time when we were pioneers. And then if somebody wants to just jump into the bandwagon, well, they should bring something new with them. You know, not just ride on the work of somebody else. I mean, they can use all the information we love that we have out there. And like like Jay said, they can even use the genetics, but they have to create something new, you know, build on the genetics we've thrown out there.
Jace Callaway: [00:31:20] We see it out there. We'll see where it's gone. And that's great. All the boats were raised now.
Jace Callaway: [00:31:27] So get a paddle and start paddling.
Joy Beckerman: [00:31:31] As your sister here, who's been working on the movement since 1990 and pushed those rocks up those hills and those events and sang the song of Hemp at the top of my lungs as best as I could for years and years. Now here we have gained traction with all of that energy, with all of that commitment and dedication and drive and sacrifice. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. Every minute, every frustration, every letter you wrote, every impassioned beats and presentation you've given that has helped to lead us to this point. And now let's go whaling, as you say, deliver it all over the world together and yet continue on this mission together. You are some of the brightest spots in the global Hemp movement. Jason on Adat and I can't thank you enough for being with us today.
Jace Callaway: [00:32:24] Thank you so much, Joy. So wonderful to talk to you.
Anita Hemmilia: [00:32:27] Thank you very much. And we really want to see you next month, as a matter of fact.
Joy Beckerman: [00:32:33] Same same on every level. Guys, love you so much. It up to you to
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