Farmers Experimenting With Hemp Hope for Success
In partnership with: Tennessee Department of Agriculture
Bill Corbin grew tobacco, wheat, corn and other row crops on his Springfield farm, but thin margins led the third-generation farmer to rethink his operation. In 2014, Corbin joined a group of pioneering Tennessee farmers who embraced the potential of hemp.
“So many farmers are looking for an alternative crop,” Corbin says. “I believe in hemp and what the industry has to offer.”
The number of Tennessee farmers growing hemp since the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) introduced a pilot project in 2015 exploded from 44 licensed growers in the inaugural year to 3,700 in 2019.
The 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp as an agricultural crop and removed it from the list of controlled substances, which Katy Kilbourne, a plant pathologist with TDA, credits for the huge spike in the number of licensed growers in Tennessee. However, farmers growing hemp have discovered that the learning curve is steep.
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Relearning How to Grow Hemp
Long-standing federal prohibition removed hemp from the agricultural landscape and the current generation of farmers had no experience growing the once-illegal commodity. Trial and error gave the pilot-project participants better insight into producing a robust crop.
“At first, farmers in the pilot project were not seeing a lot of success,” Kilbourne says. “We think the genetics [of the seeds we were sourcing] had a big impact, and now that we have found [seeds] that work better in our area, there has been a dramatic turnaround.”
Farmers have a few options when it comes to monetizing the hemp they grow. They can sell the organic material – called biomass – to processors or they can grow and process the biomass themselves. Some launch closed-loop operations that take hemp from seed to cannabidiol (CBD), a natural ingredient from hemp believed to have medicinal properties.
Bob Pile is one of the Tennessee growers providing other hemp producers with starter plants known as clones. His family business transitioned greenhouse space once used for poinsettias, mums and other bedding plants to raising hemp clones at PWP Greenhouses in Pall Mall in 2018. The business experienced a significant spike in revenues, but he is concerned about the long-term success of the industry.
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“The new federal hemp regulations are much more restrictive than the state regulations we’ve been operating under,” he explains. “My projected sales for 2020 will likely be cut in half because I have to grow new varieties that meet the federal guidelines. So we’re starting over, almost from scratch, to grow stock plants from varieties that will comply.”
Despite the challenges, Pile believes the demand for CBD products will ensure that hemp continues to be an alternative crop for farmers as the market develops.
Hope for the Future
At Twin Rose Farm in Murfreesboro, Andrew Moman started growing hemp alongside cut flowers. He’s increased production from 100 plants in 2017 to 650 plants last season to keep up with demand for his branded CBD products.
“We’re continuing to learn about this plant and how it grows in our environment,” he says. “We want to make sure that we’re producing a good product and providing good information [about CBD] to educate consumers so that this can be a viable crop for Tennessee farmers.”
Despite the challenges of learning to grow a new crop, find processors, secure contracts and produce products, Tennessee farmers believe that hemp has the potential to transform agriculture across the state and around the country.
“We’re learning so much more about growing hemp every year and we have positioned ourselves well in Tennessee to hit a home run with hemp production,” Corbin says. “The farmers who will succeed are the ones who have a vision for what the future of hemp will be and are willing to stick with it until we overcome the current challenges, which we will.”