After years of sporadic trials and a small rising space, a primary coordinated effort to construct a industrial industrial hemp worth chain is being promoted in New Brunswick.
The initiative revolves round a deliberate processing and packaging plant in Saint-André and an organized marketing campaign to recruit growers starting with the 2026 season, based on Antonio Bramante of Montréal-based Décision de la Nature Inc., who’s main the initiative.
A flyer distributed to farmers described the mission as a “new hemp farming alternative in Atlantic Canada,” inviting growers and regional growth stakeholders to find out about licensing, agronomy, and markets.
Purpose: 10,000 hectares
Bramante stated his crew has spent 4 years assembly producers and provincial officers to construct momentum. The plan targets 10,000 acres of hemp in 2026, rising to 25,000 acres in 2027, with a part of the crop meant for native processing on the Saint-André facility and the stability going to exterior consumers. All provinces in Canada grew a mixed complete 15,000 hectares in 2024.
Organizers say growers will obtain hands-on assist and argue that the best barrier shouldn’t be agronomics, however farmer hesitation: shifting to a brand new crop, new markets, and unfamiliar logistics. The technique positions hemp as a rotation crop that may diversify farm revenues whereas constructing towards regional meals, fiber, and biomass markets.
Whether or not hemp can scale in New Brunswick will rely upon its match inside present agricultural techniques. Northern and western New Brunswick comprise a number of distinct farming zones that form the chance.
Fertile fields
Within the Woodstock–Drummond hall, the place grower outreach is concentrated, farms use deep, well-drained soils and rotate their acres by way of potatoes, grains, and forage crops.
Additional north, towards St-Quentin, fields sit at larger elevation with cooler temperatures, supporting grains, forages, and combined farm-forestry operations. The Belledune space, against this, has extra variable soils and traditionally much less intensive cropping exercise.
Hemp may combine into these rotations — notably within the Woodstock–Drummond zone — however success will rely upon agronomy, selection choice, and timing inside a shorter rising season than Canada’s Prairies — the place most hemp is grown within the nation.
The size of the imaginative and prescient stands in distinction to the province’s monitor file. Authorities knowledge present 203 hectares of hemp in 2017, rising to ~448 hectares in 2018, with yields described as inconsistent. Newer federal licensing figures recommend exercise has dwindled to a couple hectares since.
