[UPDATE: July 12, 2023] A little hempseed named Trallala is sitting on her plant when an elderly cat named Max passes beneath and tells her about a mysterious field of singing flowers. She pleads with the black and white feline to take her there.
Adventure follows as Trallala travels across “Hempworld” farm, meeting friends and learning everything she, as part of a hemp plant, might become.
So went the storybook Anndrea Hermann picked up at an Austrian farm’s booth during a German organics trade show. She couldn’t read it — it was in German — but the pictures caught her eye.
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“I fell in love with these images in the book,” she said.
Over the course of the show, she kept dragging colleagues to the booth to see the book.
In the end, the Austrian family gave it to her. Hermann took it home to Canada, hoping one day someone would translate it for her.
That opportunity came when a German tourist stayed at her farm. Today, Hermann, an internationally recognized hemp expert and advocate, uses the story of Trallala to teach kids about her favourite subject: hemp.
Why it matters: The tale of Trallala the hempseed was translated to English and released last year.
Hermann’s gateway to hemp was interest in the species’ more controversial cousin, marijuana.
Near her hometown of Joplin, Missouri, sits Lexington, site of a Civil War siege where pro-Confederate forces took cover behind water-soaked bales of hemp. They rolled the bales toward Union forces as they advanced, according to the National Hemp Association’s website.
With these introductions, Hermann read the works of authors like Jack Herer, whose work covered the U.S. Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which lumped hemp and cannabis together and killed the once thriving hemp fibre industry in North America.
Hermann wrote several papers on hemp while in high school. In college, formally studying hemp wasn’t an option; growing it was illegal in the U.S. at the time. However, a professor advised her to pursue what made her angry or what she’d like to change. That subject was hemp.
Her school tailor-made a program for Hermann and she focused her bachelor of general studies on hemp. If she was writing a paper or presenting, it was on hemp. She searched for an internship in a hemp-related organization.
That brought the Parkland Industrial Hemp Growers in Dauphin, Man., to her attention. The crop had recently been legalized in Canada, a milestone that would turn out to be a decade away in the U.S.
Instead of continuing to pursue work in her home country, Hermann immigrated. She completed her master’s degree at the University of Manitoba, focusing on hemp agronomy.
“I was doing something that was technically illegal in the United States,” Hermann said.
Twists and turns
During her two decades in the industry, hemp has had a winding journey.
It remains a specialty crop in Manitoba, peaking in 2017 at about 24,000 seeded acres, based on crop insurance data. However, companies like Fresh Hemp Foods and Hermann’s workplace, HPS Food & Ingredients, have had enough demand to set up processing hubs in the province.
In 2018, the U.S. Farm Bill of that time removed many restrictions from hemp south of the international border, allowing for widespread cultivation. Legalization allowed production for CBD, a nutraceutical prized for a long (and often debated) list of health benefits, to gain a foothold, Hermann said.
Current market interest is mainly in hemp grain as a food, but Hermann said interest in fibre is growing. For instance, Patagonia, an outdoor clothing and gear company, has a clothing line made from hemp-derived fabric.
Locally, there is Hemp Sense, based out of Gilbert Plains, Man. It built its brand on animal bedding and other products derived from hemp fibre, and has more recently branched into animal feed.
The many hats of Anndrea Hermann
Today, Hermann works as director of inside sales with processor HPS Food & Ingredients. She founded a hemp consulting firm in Mexico, is co-owner of Hemp Technologies Canada and is a long-standing board member of the trade group Hemp Industries Association.
Hermann was also the recipient of the ‘Mother Earth Award – Lady of Agriculture’ at the WAFBA Awards of Excellence at the NoCo Hemp Expo in 2023.
Hermann has travelled all over the world overseeing hemp-related projects, serving in hemp organizations and speaking about the crop. It was on one of these trips, in 2012, that Hermann found Trallala the hempseed.
She obtained permission to print Everyone Loves Trallala in English and adapted it for North America. Austrian children were apparently untroubled by a chapter titled “Drunken geese.” It was amended to “Silly geese” in the English version.
Hermann renamed characters, some to reflect greater cultural diversity, some to be more familiar and some to honour those who she says have been crucial to her hemp journey. Characters “Joey” and “Dolores,” for instance, are named after the couple who hosted her during her internship in Dauphin.
Adaptation was a nearly 10-year process, split with her advocacy work and the time commitment of raising a young family. After the birth of her son, now five, it became more important to her to finish the book, Hermann said.
“How do we want to inspire the next farmers? Or agronomist, or environmentalist, or people looking at sustainability or bio-composites or medical applications [of hemp]?”
Hermann released Everyone Loves Trallala in 2022, followed by a young readers’ version, Trallala’s Journey to the Field of the Singing Flowers. She’s since released a version in French and has plans to translate the story into more languages.
*Update: clarity was provided to the organization that gives out the Mother Earth Award.
