M. Scott Mahaskey for Politico Magazine In 2014, Kentucky farmer Brian Furnish was looking for ways to diversify his crops. His family had been growing tobacco for eight generations, but the market was withering. If he wanted to keep his farm profitable, he needed something new to grow. So […]
In 2014, Kentucky farmer Brian Furnish was looking for ways to diversify his crops. His family had been growing tobacco for eight generations, but the market was withering. If he wanted to keep his farm profitable, he needed something new to grow.
So he helped pioneer Kentucky’s hemp industry, a new crop the state was eager for farmers like him to try, and which showed promise as a high-profit alternative to tobacco. Hemp, he was told, could be used as fiber for clothing and textiles, as livestock feed, and to make an oil that’s used in food supplements. Furnish became the state’s first licensed hemp grower.
A few years later, in the fall of 2017, he sent off samples of his crop for testing. When the results came back he discovered that for some reason – maybe there’d been more rain than usual, or too much sun — five acres of his hemp fields had turned into marijuana. Since marijuana remains illegal both federally and in Kentucky, Furnish had to burn all five acres.
As Furnish knows firsthand, hemp and marijuana are versions of the same plant: cannabis. The only difference is that marijuana contains higher concentrations of a chemical called THC, which causes a psychoactive high when smoked or ingested. But since cannabis can be used for other purposes than to get high, the federal government has decided that cannabis that has only a small amount of THC, no more than 0.3 percent, is a different crop — hemp.
“This whole industry is an experiment,” Furnish said. “We’re not marijuana people … we’re hemp people trying to make a living.”
All forms of cannabis used to be illegal to cultivate. But to help farmers like Furnish, Congress legalized production of hemp nationwide as part of the 2018 farm bill. In a declining farm economy, the crop offers a new source of income for farmers who are under siege because of the trade war with China, dropping commodity prices and a series of natural disasters. The potential economic boom is luring scores of agricultural novices.
All forms of cannabis used to be illegal to cultivate. But to help farmers like Furnish, Congress legalized production of hemp nationwide as part of the 2018 farm bill. In a declining farm economy, the crop offers a new source of income for farmers who are under siege because of the trade war with China, dropping commodity prices and a series of natural disasters. The potential economic boom is luring scores of agricultural novices.
But while legalizing hemp has provided new opportunities, it has also created new problems. One of them is that farmers need to keep a close eye on their crops to make sure that the THC level in their cannabis doesn’t creep above 0.3 percent. Even in states where marijuana is legal for adult consumption, hemp farmers who accidentally grow marijuana can’t just turn around and sell it to a dispensary to be smoked or ingested — THC levels for marijuana are typically much higher than what a hemp farmer would see, usually around 15 to 20 percent.
Measuring the THC level in growing plants is a delicate, high-stakes task. It’s one of many issues that have popped up in the past year as the country grapples with how to grow and regulate this brand new crop. The Department of Agriculture is under pressure to overwrite a patchwork of state regulations on measuring THC by setting a national testing standard. USDA has yet to produce federal guidelines that will shape how the new commodity is grown and sold, though the department has said it plans to do so this fall, ahead of the 2020 growing season.
“We all want one thing — that is an equal playing field,” said Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles. “What we don’t want is states pitting themselves against each other with different testing measures which may or may not accurately determine if hemp is marijuana or not.”
Hemp proponents like Furnish try to keep a strict distinction between hemp and marijuana. But during the debate over the farm bill, proponents of legalized marijuana made clear that they saw them as connected, that legalizing hemp would be a step toward legalizing production of all varieties of cannabis. So far, that isn’t happening – opponents of legalization in Congress still have the upper hand. It remains unclear how the growing popularity of hemp will factor into the debate over legalizing marijuana.
But on the ground across the country, the exploding number of hemp farmers and proliferation of products containing hemp oil are quickly normalizing consumption of cannabis products, potentially changing the political equation and complicating an already complex legal and policy debate around cannabis in all its forms.
“It is kind of the first step to getting cannabis rescheduled,” said Michael Boniello, managing director of Poseidon Investment Management, a cannabis investment firm. “The industry is just waiting to see how these guidelines are going to play out.”
HEMP HAS A range of uses, but most farmers grow it to produce cannabidiol, or CBD — a compound that doesn’t get you high. CBD is the key ingredient in trendy new products from lotions to gummy vitamins, and companies claim it can alleviate anxiety, pain and treat other health conditions. It’s also trapped in a regulatory black hole at the Food and Drug Administration, which hasn’t explained how it plans to regulate products containing the chemical.
Despite that uncertainty, hemp harvests have exploded in just a few years. In 2014, the first year of Kentucky’s program, farmers planted just 33 acres. This year, Kentucky approved the planting of an eye-popping 56,000 acres across the state.
Sky-high enthusiasm around hemp, which can bring in as much as $2,200 per acre, has helped farmers feel more comfortable about growing a plant related to marijuana, said Jeff Sharkey, a lobbyist in Florida on behalf of the medical marijuana and hemp industries. Farmers by nature are familiar with risk, and the support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and endorsement of hemp by the farm bill, legislation widely known by producers, certainly helps, Sharkey added.
“The stigma is slowly being eroded and hemp has certainly helped that out,” Sharkey said. He pointed out that even “very conservative rural potato farmers” are interested in growing hemp.
Hemp is hardy enough to grow in many climates and soils: Montana, Colorado and Oregon also rake in sizable hemp harvests, and many other states are experimenting with it.
“Certainly a lot of people see hope with this crop,” said Laura Pottorff, a program coordinator at the Colorado Department of Agriculture, which has been managing a hemp program since 2014. “That’s part of the gold rush mentality there.”
Because the U.S. hemp industry is nascent, growers often need to import seeds from overseas, mainly from Canada and Europe, increasing the chances that they unknowingly grow a crop more like marijuana than hemp. That puts a farmer’s entire crop on the line: Regulations in many states mandate that a harvest with high THC levels must be destroyed.
“Test early and test often,” Erica Stark, executive director of the National Hemp Association, said she tells farmers. “That’s where a farmer is going to risk failure. If they spike THC levels and their crop is destroyed, they’ve lost thousands and thousands of dollars, and that can be devastating.”