In her first 16 years as a University of Vermont agronomist, Heather Darby tried in vain to get farmers to diversify from corn, hay and dairy into crops like dry beans and grains for brewers and bakers. But for most of those farmers, the risk just didn’t seem worth the likely reward.
That changed last year, after the USDA reclassified hemp as a legal agricultural commodity in 2018. As spring approached, more than 1,000 growers registered with Vermont to grow hemp – more than double the year before – covering 9,000 acres of land.
Some of the growers were seasoned farmers; some had never planted anything or were recent arrivals from out of state. They flooded Darby, a PhD agronomist and educator, with questions about plants, seeds, land, processing, and other elements of the new business. Darby has been growing hemp since 2015 through UVM’s farm research program.
Caught up in a gold rush mentality, many of those hemp entrepreneurs ended up losing money last year. Many acres of hemp ended up unharvested.
This year, things are getting off to a more orderly start. The first-ever UVM Extension hemp conference that Darby organized last year sold out at 500 people; this year’s conference, held in Burlington Feb. 20, drew just 350. Darby, who herself grew an acre of hemp last year on the family farm in Alburgh, doesn’t expect to see as many farmers lose money on the crop this year. In a conversation with VTDigger, Darby talked about her expectations for Vermont hemp. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
VTDigger: What were you seeing at this time last year?
Heather Darby: The enthusiasm was way beyond where the industry was at. To see so many people trying to grow a crop without any farming experience or even any land or know-how … I had never seen anything like it. Apparently, the potential to make millions is what really drives experimentation.
The phone calls, the buzz started immediately after the Farm Bill was passed. Four months later, people were planning on growing half a million acres of hemp in this country. The price paid for CBD was really high, so if you ran the numbers, you could gross $45,000 to $60,000 an acre. There’s no other crop that could produce that kind of revenue.
VTD: Why did so many people lose money?
HD: There was definitely a lack of credible scientific research. We don’t have hundreds of years of research like we do on corn. There was information from the marijuana world, but a lot of that is from indoor growing, growing in pots.
There were a lot of individuals who didn’t have any farming experience who thought they could make a business plan and implement a schedule. But farming doesn’t work that way. You can make a plan to get your plants started, and then you want to put them in the ground in the third week of May, and have the field prepped on this day, but it was a terrible spring and early summer. People had bought land, and it was in grass, and they couldn’t get it prepped. They had been planning to plant 30 to 50 acres, the plants they had ordered and paid 5 bucks a piece for were ready on schedule, but nothing else was ready. And people didn’t have the right equipment. It looks easy until you actually have to do it.
The more hardened farmers that deal with this on a regular basis tried to rebound the best they knew how, but they were still dealing with a plant they have never grown. A lot of people had plants that were overgrown because they couldn’t get them in the ground. If they paid $3 to $5 per plant, and you figure 1,200 plants per acre, that’s a hefty investment.
And then, last fall was tough because if they finally got their plants in and things were growing, there was still a lot of excitement, and then they couldn’t get it harvested. I did tell people it’s really labor-intensive, but it didn’t matter, because of the vision of the profit on the other side. They were going to try anyway. The potential reward was just blurring their vision. They didn’t acknowledge obstacles, which is really different from all the other crops we work in, because the potential reward at the end is so much less.
There is a lot of hemp still in the field, a lot of hemp in storage, a lot of hemp that has not been sold. I always want people to find a market before they put something in the ground, but that has been challenging for hemp. Some states actually won’t give you a permit unless you have an identified market for hemp. It’s still highly regulated, and it’s a lot to regulate. Vermont was thinking about doing that, but I don’t think they’re going there.
VTD: What do you expect in the coming season?
HD: This year, things have been pretty quiet. Last year it seemed like I got calls from everywhere. They’re not calling this year.
Last year, there wasn’t a lot of knowledge to pull from for the conference. The university represents good science, and unbiased information, and I wanted to hold true to that, which is really difficult to do in the hemp world because there hasn’t been a lot of university research or involvement.
This year we were able to bring in scientists from around the US and Canada who have more to offer. We’ve been putting out materials and webinars, primarily on agronomy and production. We’re also looking at storage and drying and other post-harvest aspects.
VTD: What next for hemp?
HD: People are still interested. Hemp’s not going away. You can’t create an entire value chain and an entire industry in less than a year, right? People were expecting that everything would fall into place but that’s not realistic.
At the conference this year we had farmers, processors, people who are selling ag supplies, and to me those are the people who are in it for the long haul. This year the vibe was different; it wasn’t like spring fever. It was more grounded, like a normal conference where people come to learn. Our keynote speaker was the same as last year, and the audience this year was like, ‘Oh, I wish I had heard that last year.’ They did, but they didn’t, because nothing that anybody could say could keep them from going for it.
Hemp is moving towards commodity-type farming faster than people would like. In Vermont, the focus isn’t going to be on growing as much as we can. We’re not going to be able to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of harvesting equipment. So smaller individuals are thinking how to develop a niche, high-quality hemp market for Vermont.
Just like anything else, how you grow hemp, how you harvest it, the varieties you grow, processing, all of those things influence the quality. An artisan might grow a specific variety that not only has high CBD but it might also have other components to it, and cure it and dry it in such a way that really protects the overall qualities of the hemp plant, and then it might be sold locally.
