CBD producers Matt Fastuca, Mike Simpson at hemp strategy session.
Fattie Roots pumps up the reggae at Saturday’s gathering.
Tinctures and textiles perched on tables around the room, a reggae band played, and the taps were flowing. Everything was in place to celebrate the launch of a new association for Connecticut’s emerging hemp industry — everything, that is, except for needed regulations.
That was the scene as hemp growers, CBD (cannabidiol) retailers, lobbyists, and enthusiasts gathered at the Space Ballroom in Hamden on Saturday to celebrate the launch of the Connecticut Hemp Industry Association (CHIA).
The mood was hopeful — and, yes, relaxed.
CHIA, according to its Facebook page, aims “to help restore dormant family farms in Connecticut and revive rural economies by helping to create a sustainable new hemp industry in our home state.” It has existed just as a Facebook page for about three years, said founder Jeff Wentzel.
With new developments at the federal and state levels, 2019 is the time to ramp up the work.
Connecticut Hemp Industry Association
The 2018 federal farm bill legalized the production of hemp and permanently removed CBD from the list of controlled substances. Hemp is the same species as recreational and medical marijuana, cannabis sativa. It is a variety, however, that has a low enough THC content to not have psychoactive properties. Laws state that industrial hemp must have less than .3 percent THC content by dried weight.
Sentate Republican leader Mitch McConnell championed the legalization of hemp in the 2018 farm bill because of its potential as a cash crop in his home state of Kentucky. Hemp has a high yield per acre and a variety of uses that make it very profitable.
“Hemp is opening up bright new opportunities for American culture,” Wentzel told the crowd in his speech, “but there’s still a lot more work to do.”
Don Tuller: Hopes farmers can plant this season.
The farm bill legalized the production of hemp, but with a condition: States must first pass regulations on the industry before farmers can start to grow.
Connecticut has such legislation in the works, and Gov. Ned Lamont has expressed his support for legalizing hemp in the state. Senate Bill No. 598 would “establish a licensing program for the growing, cultivation, production and processing of industrial hemp in the state.” A public hearing on the bill will take place on Friday at 10 a.m.
Don Tuller, president of the Connecticut Farm Bureau, said that he hopes “farmers that want to can plant a crop this season.” That would mean passing the bill by the end of spring, which could prove difficult because of the slow pace of legislation.
In order to pull it off, said state Farm Bureau Executive Director Bryan Hurlburt, “we need more help from all of us in the industry. Legislators need to hear your voice.”
The Devil Is In The Drying
Fattie Roots pumps up the reggae at Saturday’s gathering.
Many of the people at CHIA’s launch focused on the production of CBD because there is a market right now.
Enthusiasts swear by CBD’s pain and anxiety relief properties. Since it became legal at the end of 2018, CBD products have begun to appear all over the country, including in at least one store in New Haven.
Hemp also has a whole host of other uses. For instance, its fibers can be used for textiles and building materials. Its seeds can be crushed to create hemp seed oil.
Though CBD was made legal nationwide only at the end of 2018, farmers in many states have been growing hemp legally since 2014. The 2014 farm bill included a provision allowing states to enact pilot programs for the production of hemp in order to experiment with the industry. It also allowed universities to run hemp-growing programs for research purposes.
Though Connecticut was not one of the 41 states that authorized a hemp-growing pilot, the University of Connecticut created a hemp program in 2017 at its farm in Storrs.
Dylan Williams, who runs a farm in Ledyard, is the head grower for the UConn’s program. He is a recent UConn graduate, and got involved with the hemp industry as a student. During the summers of 2017 and 2018, he was in charge of experimenting with the plants to figure out the best practices for growing them.
In a low-ceilinged back room Saturday, he sat on a small stage giving advice to a room full of growers, potential growers, and others involved with the industry in other ways. The first year, he recounted, he planted seeds on June 14. By June 27, there were small seedlings. By early August, he had five- or six-foot-tall plants. The next year he planted in May, “and then by August I had 14-foot plants that I had no idea what to do with.” He recommended to the crowd that they plant in mid-June.
Growing can present a number of challenges, but when it comes to producing hemp for CBD, Williams said the crucial part that he and other farmers still need to figure out is the drying.
Attendees at Saturday’s gathering.
CBD is extracted from hemp flowers, which are dense and hold a lot of moisture. If they’re not dried properly, they will mold, ruining the crop. In Colorado, hemp growers can simply let their crop dry outside because the climate is so dry. Northeast weather, with its humidity and frequent rain, makes drying outside a no-go.
Williams explained that many farms across the state still have tobacco sheds used for drying tobacco from when it was a common cash crop in Connecticut. Yet tobacco, Williams explained, dries differently than hemp. The sheds also require heating, which takes energy, adding to the costs of production for farmers.
Can Small Farmers Compete?
CBD producers Matt Fastuca, Mike Simpson at hemp strategy session.
Extra production costs for a crop like hemp could be a problem for the industry that Williams and Wentzel hope will flourish in Connecticut, due to the small size of operations. Hemp is often grown by small farms that don’t have the advantages of economies of scale or of big money that sometimes exists in the medical marijuana industry.
Hurlburt told the Independent that 100 years ago, many farms in Connecticut grew a few acres of tobacco in addition to their other crops because it brought in extra money. That meant that a dairy farm or vegetable farm might have had a tobacco field. He said that might be a model for the fledgling hemp industry.
Mike Simpson and Matt Fastuca had come for the event from Providence, where they work for Lovewell Farms, which makes CBD products. They said that since hemp has not been legal for very long, it hasn’t seen the large-scale investment that the marijuana industry has.
Simpson said that, as far as he could tell, “there’s bigger money in THC right now than there is in CBD.”
Amanda Williams, who is married to Dylan Williams, said she hopes that small-scale farmers like her and her husband will be able to maintain control over the industry. “If we have smart, educated people,” she said, “we have some shot at having control over the industry.”
Farmer Amanda Williams.
It’s not just large-scale investment that could threaten small hemp farms. Wentzel said that pharmaceutical companies have opposed hemp because they’re worried that a transition to natural health products like CBD could mean less dependence on pharmaceutical companies for medication.
“There are professors taking money on behalf of the most dangerous drugs in this country,” said Wentzel. The same companies that produce drugs like Fentanyl have professors on payroll who espouse the evils of CBD, he noted.
Though the road might still be tough, Wentzel said he hopes the new industry may come to Connecticut this year. Hemp, he mused, “should be something open to everybody. It can create diversity in agriculture — a new generation of farmers.”
