But for Dunseith, the move was calculated. Though she didn’t have much in the way of practical farming experience, she gained insight into the burgeoning cannabis and hemp industries after she was hired to help promote cannabidiol (CBD) products, a PR contract that proved to be her last.

After convincing her grandmother to end an agreement with the company that had been renting her 30-hectare (75-acre) farm, Dunseith approached her with a well-researched business plan to produce hemp on the family farm.

Industrial hemp, unlike cannabis, is a crop that can be – and has been – used for centuries, for everything from clothing and paper to building materials and biofuel. This is a market that’s been largely untapped in Canada, partly because hemp is difficult to process and there are very few processors in North America.

And while Dunseith said the medicinal market is still hampered for many producers by Health Canada regulations, hemp – with higher concentrations of CBD – can be used to treat the symptoms of a long list of ailments.

Hemp, when left to grow for more than one season, also has phytoremediation benefits, which means it’s particularly effective at removing toxins and heavy metals from the soil, Dunseith said.

Danyka Dunseith walks through the nearly fully grown hemp crop on her 75-acre Perth East family farm.

But hemp isn’t a crop one normally sees growing in Perth County, so when Dunseith explained to her neighbouring farmers what she had planned, they warned against it and suggested she try a smaller 0.4-hectare (one-acre) test crop before growing hemp on a larger scale.

Instead, Dunseith planted a 20-hectare (50-acre) test crop yielding roughly 93,000 kilograms in hemp biomass.

“Two months later, when the corn wasn’t doing as well … they came back and said, ‘What did you spray it with?’ And I said, ‘Nothing, it’s just the most versatile plant,’ Dunseith recalled. “Since 2018, specifically in Perth East, I’ve had at least five individuals come and say, ‘Well how can we do this?’”

Together with her grandmother, a single on-farm employee and business partner Ellen Taylor Brown, a renowned cannabis cultivator and educator based outside of Boston, Dunseith founded CannaCollective Inc. with the goal of building the Canadian hemp industry from the ground up.  She’s been educating producers, helping them grow their first hemp crops and, of course, growing it herself on her grandmother’s farm and through agreements with other farmers across Southwestern Ontario.

“After learning about bio-hemp plastic, phytoremediation, hempcrete (a hemp-based concrete), all of this stuff, that’s the goal,” Dunseith said. “I really want to empower producers. … My goal and my company’s vision is to truly see us pioneer hemp in North America and produce on that large scale. … Everyone’s focusing on CBD and marijuana, and that’s amazing, but we’re coming in and saying we need to move forward with this and we need the capacity to do that. I want to see this done on a large scale. I want my car to run on hemp and I want my house to be built with hemp.”

This year, after travelling from hemp conferences and summits around the world to learn what producers are doing in other countries, often as the only delegate from Canada,  Dunseith and her team planted almost 29 hectares (71 acres). Her crop is almost ready to harvest despite the wetter-than-normal season.

Before then, she will be speaking about CannaCollective and her first year growing hemp at the GrowUp Conference in Niagara on Sept. 13.

To learn more about growing hemp, check out CannaCollective Inc. on Facebook or email Dunseith at cannacollective.inc@gmail.com.