This winter, the Virginia General Assembly unanimously passed bills that are likely to lift restriction on the cultivation of industrial hemp. The crop may offer Virginia farmers a tremendously lucrative alternative crop, but Cooperative Extension and advocates recommend a go-slow approach to Montgomery County farmers considering the crop.
Hemp, a member of the cannabis family without the levels of high-inducing THC, has no use as a recreational drug, instead, is used for textiles, food, paper, building materials, auto parts, clothes and beauty products, but its production of cannabinol, CBD, for the health market would have the greatest economic return.
“You can buy [CBD] now at local health food stores, at prices from $100-120/lb.
“You’re not getting that from corn,” Kelli Scott, Agriculture and Natural Resources agent for the Montgomery County Cooperative Extension said. “Maybe mushroom production, but nothing like what it is for hemp.”
Because of the potential return in this pioneering moment, farmers may be rash in their planting decisions.
“People might be saying “I’ve got 50 acres of river bottom I’m thinking of planting, but that’s not Best Practice,” Scott said. “Our infrastructure is not as far along as farmer interest.”
Most Montgomery County farmers raise cattle and hay, maintaining jobs outside the farm. But people who are already growing row crops, or land-owners, may be better suited for hemp production.
When growing for oil production, start-up costs are high. Growing hemp plants seed means raising only female plants, requiring a farmer to buy cuttings that can cost, at this point, from $3 to $8 a piece for the annually planted crop. The risk is considerable with multiple possible pitfalls in the new industry – contracts may fall through on the back end, processors may be distant, cultural practices may be unclear.
“It’s not something easy to get into. There’s the higher initial investment with the potential for a much greater return, but currently, it’s the wild, wild west,” she said. “We’re not all kumbaya’ing yet.”
Virginia Cooperative Extension, whose job it is to extend science-based university research to the community, has been serving as a hub of education among researchers, producers, government and law enforcement.
The production of the crop will no longer be supervised as a drug, for its genetic relationship with marijuana, but as a crop by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, VDACS.
“As more permits are granted by VDACS, we need to let law enforcement know where the crop is being grown. You have to give them GIS coordinates of a field. We’re trying to have a database so they’re not flying over and your not getting a helicopter landing in your yard.”
Scott, who’s been an agent for decades, sees the hemp industry to follow the same infrastructural development as tobacco.
Scott sees ten years to a well-established infrastructure Virginia Tech, that may be too far out for the average farmer whose average age is 58. Scott get calls nearly every day from farmers seeing hemp as their “last hurrah.”
There are currently 16 processors listed on the VDACS site.
“As this industry infrastructure starts to meet production, all these costs will come down.”
For VDACS Grower and Processor Guides and Registration forms, visit http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/plant-industry-services-hemp.shtml
