The Hemp Invasion
Early this fall, along interstate 5 just north of Ashland, the air sometimes smelled of skunk—not the sharp odor of roadkill, but a foul smell that hung like fog. I later learned that I was smelling hemp, not skunk, growing on fields next to the Interstate.
Hemp, you probably know, is a strain of non-psychoactive cannabis grown specifically for “industrial uses.” It must contain 0.3 percent or less of THC content. Cannabidiol, CBD for short, is its star performer.
Here in Southern Oregon, hemp is an overnight Gold Rush—or, in this case, “green rush.”
A few weeks ago, when I asked my hairstylist what’s new, she said that she and her hairdresser husband had just harvested their first crop of hemp on the land they bought two years ago. Last Friday, the wine steward at the small vineyard near us mentioned that he and his wife, an acupuncturist, might turn over some of their acreage outside town to the non-THC weed. They already raise bees.
Farmer friends call hemp a curse and a blessing. They’ve lost much-needed farm workers to hemp operations that promise higher wages—hemp is a higher value crop so growers can pay their labor more. But rather than simply lament, these farmers see an opportunity, too. By switching out vegetables or fruit for hemp in some of their fields, they may bring in more money. “I call it my ‘mixed portfolio,’” one farmer said.
Oregon is not the only state where hemp cultivation has erupted since the 2018 Farm Bill, which removed hemp from a list of controlled drug substances. According to Vote Hemp, the nation’s leading grassroots hemp advocacy organization, 34 states and counting have joined the hemp movement.
But certainly Oregon is the most voracious. In 2015, Oregon had 13 registered growers and 105 acres of hemp. In 2019, there were 1,915 growers and 62,000 acres.
Jackson County (where Ashland is located) leads the rush, with its abundant farmland, temperate climate, and progressive politics. A quarter of the state’s licensed growers live here. A recent headline in thatoregeonlife.com reads: “Some of the Highest Quality Hemp on Earth is Being Grown in Southern Oregon.”
What’s to know?
Hemp, I have learned, may be one of the oldest cultivated crops on earth. It was grown for its fiber in China as early as 2800 BC, spread through Europe in the Middle Ages, and landed in North America in the 1600s.
In 1756, George Washington reportedly pushed for the growth of hemp as a source of rope and fabric. In 1936, a “news” article in Popular Mechanics touted hemp as “the new billion-dollar crop,” stating that it “can be used to produce more than 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane.” A year later the U.S. government passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, levying a tax on anyone who dealt commercially in cannabis, hemp, or marijuana—effectively kneecapping the hemp industry.
The association with marijuana has stalked hemp ever since, even though its psychoactive powers are minimal and its commercial uses, as Popular Mechanics pointed out, are enormous: rope, paper, textiles, clothing, biodegradable plastics, paint, insulation, biofuel, food, animal feed.
Complicating matters, hemp and marijuana plants look alike. Anxious to ward off marijuana scavengers, hemp farmers often mark their property with large signs—my first clue that hemp had taken root in the fields around me. “Industrial hemp. No THC,” read one. Another suggested a story: “New Management Registered. Female Hemp Farm. No Trespassing. Will Not Get You High.” (A “Make America Great Again” sign stood sentinel on the property across from the female hemp farm.)
Hemp grows like a weed, reaching up to ten feet in three months. The plant’s strong smell keeps parasites at bay, eliminating the need for pesticides and herbicides. Hemp plants grown for fiber are tall and slim. Oil rich—CBD—plants will be bushy and flower. As they flower, they produce more and more cannabinoids and risk exceeding the .3 percent level set by law (at which point the plants must be destroyed). Hemp grown for fiber requires little oversight. Hemp grown for CBD oil requires vigilance; the window for harvesting the flowers is short.
Best practices for cultivating hemp do not yet exist. In June, Oregon State University launched a hemp research center—the Global Hemp Innovation Center—which aims to meet the need for research-based understanding of how to efficiently and sustainably grow hemp and develop its use in new products.
The research can’t come soon enough. A report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Farmers Struggle as Hemp Harvest Winds Down,” opens with a scene from Southern Oregon.
PHOENIX, Ore. — Ajit Singh strode across his 16-acre hemp field toward a broken-down harvester. He’d been hoping all day that the mechanic now crouched beside the machine could get it back up and running.
It was late October and Singh still had thousands of stinky green and purple cannabis plants across 425 acres to pick, dry and sell before winter. Like many hemp growers here in Jackson County, Oregon, he was harvesting slowly, facing a mold problem and unhappy with prices offered by potential buyers.
“We want a better price,” said Singh, a soil scientist and former garden store owner — and, he said, he was prepared to hold out for one. He sold 50 acres of hemp for $70 a pound last year and now was being quoted prices less than half that.
Hemp growers nationwide scaled up this year after Congress legalized the non-psychoactive cannabis. They hoped to cash in on the booming market for cannabinoids such as wellness darling CBD, an ingredient in oils, tinctures and salves. But as harvest winds down, it’s likely that many growers will go bust.
More than half a million acres were licensed for hemp production this year, though Vote Hemp, a hemp advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., estimated in September that less than half that was planted.
Some of the more than 16,000 licensed growers will profit from their crops and say hemp is a better investment than traditional commodities such as corn. However, because of crop failure and other factors, Vote Hemp estimates that between 40% and half of the crop planted this year won’t be harvested.
“People went in thinking they’d be instant millionaires,” said Matt Ochoa, founder of Jefferson Packing House, a cannabis drying, and distribution business in Medford, Oregon. “But the reality is, they’re broke.”
When it comes to the promises of CBD oil—the source of much of hemp’s draw—the research is young at best. The strongest scientific evidence for CBD’s effectiveness involves the cruelest forms of childhood epilepsy. Claims that CBD can relieve a long list of 21st century ills—anxiety, depression, chronic pain, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder—await the clinical trials that account for placebo effects. No wonder the CBD industry—from edibles to tinctures—is flourishing, conservatively projected to hit $16 billion in the United States by 2025.
“Will CBD be our 21st century aspirin?” a scientist friend of mine asks.
For better or worse, virtually all of the hemp grown in Jackson County is destined for the pharmaceutical and nutritional markets. Will it pay off? Farming has always been a profession of hope.
Today, in the thick of January, light snow cloaks the valley floor and hills around Ashland. The hemp fields are bare.
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