A growing number of U.S. farmers battered by low grain prices and the threat of ...
HAYSVILLE, Kansas - A growing number of U.S. farmers battered by low grain prices and the threat of a prolonged trade war with China are seeking salvation in a plant that until recently was illegal: hemp.
Industrial hemp plantings this year could double from the 78,176 acres seeded in 2018, said Eric Steenstra, president of advocacy group Vote Hemp. In 2017, 25,713 acres were planted on pilot programs authorized under the 2014 farm bill. “Nobody has any experience whatsoever,” said Rick Gash, 46, a businessman in Augusta, Kansas, who plans to grow his first-ever hemp crop on a horse pasture on his old family property.CBD oil, which is concentrated in the hemp plant’s flowers, made up an estimated 23 percent of hemp sales in 2017, according to the Hemp Business Journal.
Other CBD products with no health claims or ‘soft’ claims have drawn no federal enforcement, he said, “causing many people to confuse availability with legality.” Companies are also making big bets: Kroger Co, the nation’s largest grocery chain, said on Tuesday it plans to sell CBD creams, balms and oils in nearly 1,000 stores across 17 states.
Farther west, in the U.S. midsection where farmers are more familiar with commodity crops like corn and wheat and have been more scarred by the trade war, some see hemp as a rotational crop grown on a larger scale for seed and fiber, rather than for its labor-intensive CBD oil.The Kansas Department of Agriculture began issuing licenses to growers this spring, allowing the crop to be cultivated in the state this year for the first time in decades.
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