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| Seven in county apply for hemp projects |
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1/23/2015
By Tom Marshall
Senior Advocate writer
The Kentucky Dept. of Agriculture has received seven applications from Montgomery County to participate in this year’s hemp pilot projects.
The dept. received 326 applications statewide. The Advocate obtained a list of the state applicants recently through the Open Records Act.
Montgomery County applicants include Larry Beer, Josh Hendrix, Berkley Mark, Roger Wilson, Danny Townsend, George N. Bascom and John D. Gabbard.
Hendrix, president of the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association, has listed three tracts where he hopes to raise the crop. Beer and Townsend both operate farms in Jeffersonville.
The deadline for applications was Jan. 1.
Hendrix said the number of applications is encouraging.
“I’m excited about the potential in Kentucky, especially with 326 applications,” he said. “That shows strong interest in the research side and the universities are making big strides in terms of potential research projects and studying the whole plan from seed to product.”
Several state universities applied for permits.
In particular, Hendrix credits David Williams, a professor at the University of Kentucky, for furthering interest in hemp production in Kentucky.
Adam Watson, industrial hemp program coordinator with the Dept. of Agriculture, said the dept. is pleased with the growing number of applications (last year’s number of applications were in the mid 200s).
He credited field days held at universities across the state and an increase in media attention for the better numbers.
Watson said the dept. will begin reviewing the applications soon. It plans to notify successful applicants as soon as early February, he said.
“When we look at some of the issues associated with tobacco you have many farmers who are looking at how do I diversify my farm,” Watson said. “Some people wonder if hemp can play as significant a role as it did in the past.
“They see it as a possibility and wonder what the research will bear out,” he added.
Beer and Gabbard said they applied because they are hopeful hemp will provide another source of farm income.
“Hopefully it will be a cash crop that will help take the place of the tobacco that we lost,” said Beer, who has been raising tobacco for 43 years. “I’d like to see the area get a new crop that people can make a little money for on the farm. It has the potential to go somewhere.”
Beer said he hasn’t done a lot of research into hemp, but sees good possibilities considering it can be used in so many products such as plastics and clothing.
Gabbard has similar hopes.
“It’s something we might use to replace tobacco with and have some sort of income on these farms that can’t grow corn or soybeans,” he said.
Gabbard, who raises about 15 acres of tobacco with his brother, said he will be watching developments involving hemp closely to see its viability.
Gabbard said he’s also encouraged that hemp promises to be less labor intensive than tobacco. He said it has grown increasingly harder to find people willing to work in tobacco.
The question will be whether hemp will be profitable, Gabbard said.
“If there’s no market for it, if they don’t offer a substantial price for it and you’re going to have to worry about whether you can sell it or get something out of it, it won’t be raised, I guarantee you that,” Gabbard said. “These farmers today have to have some kind of guarantee that if they are going to put time and money and investment in it they have to get something out of it.”
Gabbard said he sees the pilot projects as a chance to see if raising hemp for profit is realistic or not.
“I thought I would check it out and see what happens and maybe get in on it,” he said. “It may work out and it may not.”
Hendrix said he’s interested in hemp from both a research and farming standpoint.
“Through my work with multiple potential pilot projects and university projects I hope to be involved in multiple facets of the research on both the production and manufacturing side,” he said. “Personally, I’m transitioning from small scale tobacco operations into a small scale organic hemp operation.”
With the pilot crops, Watson cautions that there may not be much profit early on, but as the research continues that will be something that becomes “more meaningful.”
For now, people are considering small crops to get familiar with how best to grow hemp, he said.
Last year was the first year that Kentucky could operate hemp pilot projects. There were fewer than 100 crops raised in Kentucky, according to state officials.
Industrial hemp is not legal in the U.S., but there is a push among some lawmakers, including Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, to legalize the crop.
Watson said he hopes the crop will eventually be legalized the same as it was in Canada after a period of research.
“We hope the momentum is in the direction of legalized hemp,” he said.
Behind the scenes, Watson said the ag dept. is working to secure processing facilities and markets for hemp products.
There are various ways to harvest the crop, most involving use of hay production equipment, depending on the numerous products it can be used for, he said.
Instead of curing, like tobacco, hemp goes through a process known as “retting.” Retting involves soaking in water or exposure to moisture, as flax or hemp, to facilitate the removal of the fiber from the woody tissue by partial rotting, according to an explanation on dictionary.com.
Already the state has had companies come here looking at ways to utilize the hemp raised during the 2014 research pilot projects.
“It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg,” Watson said. “You’re not going to have millions of dollars of processing investment in something that is a limited research program with a limited time frame without federal authorization. ... We can’t have processing until we have production, but we need processing along with whatever producti
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