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Tim Fritz can simplify the dozens of seeds and mixes King’s Agriseeds sells: anything a cow eats or improves the soil.
He could see a new niche beyond forage and cover crops for his Greenfield-based company when he saw hundreds of people at Lancaster’s first hemp field day in 2019.
“Wow, this has potential,” he recalls saying.
A lot has changed since that field day, held as hemp was legalized as a crop and offered as a money-making game-changer for farmers. Since then, prices and demand haven’t reached the highs of people’s hopes. The plants and the processing are still evolving along with the supply chain and the rules.
Growers and entrepreneurs are still learning about hemp, making up for the 80 years when this crop was banned. The early days bubble often comes up. Yet, there’s still excitement about this crop’s potential, enough to pack another industry event. The Lancaster County Hemp Circuit recently brought more than 200 people from around the world to three local farms to learn how to grow the industry. The conference included farm tours, hemp business pitches and insight from plant breeders and farmers, with programming at Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum and Penn State Agricultural Research and Extension Center near Manheim.
There’s a lot of opportunity, Russell Redding, Pennsylvania’s secretary of agriculture, told the crowd of farmers and entrepreneurs.
“I think there’s a change in the narrative about what’s possible in crops, the opportunity that’s present in hemp,” he said at a stop at Landis Valley. “It’s not pretty often in American agriculture that you can rediscover a whole crop, that you can rediscover the power of a crop, right?”
What is hemp?
“To say that hemp was a vital influence in the history of mankind is a very mild way of expressing its importance,” reads a report in a 1928 edition of the Sunday News. A strong and durable material, hemp was turned into things like grain bags, Conestoga wagon covers, rope for farms and rigging for ships.
What is hemp’s history in Lancaster County?
With communities named Hempfield, it’s no surprise hemp was grown and processed in Lancaster County before the Revolutionary War and afterward.
In 1937, federal law banned growing cannabis, including industrial hemp, the rope kind, not the dope kind (more on that later).
For years, imported hemp was legal to use in products like Hempzels pretzels. However, hemp could not be grown in Pennsylvania. The state Department of Agriculture pushed to change that, allowing local farms to be part of the $600 million U.S. market for hemp products, including fabric, paper, food and fuel.
In 2017, Pennsylvania started a narrow hemp research program to learn more about the crop, including a test plot at Penn State Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center near Manheim.
The 2018, the U.S. Farm Bill legalized hemp, making it possible for farmers to grow the crop beyond the limited research program. The following year, 180 farms in Lancaster County grew hemp for CBD, fiber and seed. Many focused on hemp for CBD, a nonpsychoactive compound. However, CBD prices dropped, there weren’t enough processing facilities and federal regulations tightened requirements.
The number of permits to grow hemp has dropped, as people continue to learn how to grow, harvest, process and market the crop.
What’s the difference between marijuana and hemp?
Marijuana and hemp are both cannabis plants and look similar. Marijuana has a high THC content, giving it psychoactive properties that classify it as a drug. Hemp must be below 0.3% THC.
The plants look similar enough for a passerby to stop at King’s Agriseeds’ trial garden near Christiana and ask if this was cannabis.
“It is cannabis, but it’s not that kind of cannabis,” said Sarah Mitchell, industrial hemp sales specialist with King’s.
The 2024 federal Farm Bill, which Congress has not passed, includes several proposals about cannabis and hemp. One includes clarifying which hemp cannabinoid products are legal.
The current bill has been extended to Sept. 30.
How is hemp used?
The industry is still changing, along with regulations.
Hemp grown for fiber can be used to make clothing. The textiles go beyond fashion to industrial (construction materials) and medical (high-performance fabrics for first responders).
Hemp grown for seed can make several edible products, including hemp hearts (dehulled seeds), hemp seed oil and hemp protein powder (often made from hemp seed meal). These products are for humans.
In early August, hempseed meal was approved as a food for egg-laying hens. It’s a big potential market with more than 300 million hens in the U.S. Chelsey Keyes of Norfolk, Virginia, is targeting backyard chickens with her Hempy Hens scratch grain treat made with hemp seed.
Prior to the feed approval, Wenger Feeds, Rheems, and Kreider Farms, Manheim, were given permission to use hemp as feed to produce hemp eggs to sell in Pennsylvania. Kreider’s hemp eggs are no longer on the market for several reasons, including low demand, said Byron Shaffer, the company’s director of food safety and quality.
Hemp concrete, or hempcrete, is now part of the U.S. residential building code.
At the hemp circuit, people shared their hemp businesses, including hemp building products, hemp textiles, hemp animal feed, hemp protein powder for humans and hemp as a green alternative to graphene, a material used in construction, electronics and energy industries. Some of business owners said they looked forward to buying U.S. hemp instead of importing from other countries.
Why do people want to grow industrial hemp?
Hemp could be an extra crop for farmers. Hemp trials, including King’s Agriseeds and Penn State, are exploring how varieties grow here and fit into crop rotations.
Brothers Robert and Marlin Miller came to the event to learn more for a possible extra crop for their farm in East Hempfield Township. It would be a new crop for them. Yet for a farm they can trace back to 1717, their ancestors probably grew hemp, Robert Miller said.
Can I grow hemp?
Yes, if you have a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
Applications for one-year permits are accepted on a rolling basis and include a background check and requirements on the hemp farm. For example, the crop can’t be grown near medical marijuana, to avoid interference. There are extra restrictions on growing the crop near homes or schools.
What’s the best hemp for Lancaster County farms?
It’s complicated. Some varieties are great for fiber. Others work best for grain.
Hemp is grown throughout the world, including Europe and China. Canada legalized industrial hemp in 1998, and since then, other countries have as well. But things such as weather conditions and day length play an important role in each variety’s growth in new places. That’s why hemp trials are important to learn how the plants perform in Pennsylvania. King’s Agriseeds, for example, evaluates 28 varieties for things such as quality, growth, yield, disease, weed suppression and soil health after harvest, said Tracy Neff, an agronomist with King’s Agriseeds.
This information helps to understand what works well on each farm while building a domestic seed supply as the U.S. hemp industry grows.
Hemp breeders are also creating varieties with features like fewer males to increase seed yield, higher oil content to boost protein and fast-growing to overcome weeds.
At Penn State Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center near Manheim, there’s another plant trial to learn more about things such as planting density, yield, quality and weeds. Researchers shared what they’re discovering in the field about things like hemp diseases and pests.
In the lab, they’re learning more about the plant’s genetics. While some farmers want hemp varieties with low THC, THC-free plants have drawbacks, said Larry Smart, head of Cornell University’s Hemp Research Team. Over several years, those varieties have been heavily damaged by insects, he said. If cannabinoids play a role in insect defense, that’s important to consider when developing new varieties.
Steve Groff showcased his test plots at his Holtwood farm, including old European varieties and new experiments, some of which won’t move forward. One new variety’s branches weren’t strong enough to stand tall.
There’s a lot to learn.
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