Southern Oregon Hemp Update

Hemp is going in the ground again.

Less this year than last.

 

Newly planted hemp field

Last year Southern Oregon went crazy for hemp. "Hemp" is the term used to describe the strain of the cannabis plant that is grown for its high CBD and very low THC content. 

It is generally planted out in fields, like a tomato crop, most frequently in raised furrows beneath a strip of black plastic, under which are one or two irrigation drip lines.

Fields like these were widespread last year on any piece of irrigable flat land, and it is going in again right now, but in fewer places. 

Reminder: the hemp plant with CBD is the same plant as the get-you-high THC-laden cannabis plant, rather in the way that a Rottweiler and a Golden Lab are different varieties of the same species. In dogs, one is bred for aggressiveness toward strangers and one is not. The hemp plant is bred to have as much CBD and as little THC as possible, so that the CBD plant can be grown openly and legally as a source medicine without psychoactive properties. The State of Oregon tests the CBD fields for THC. If there is too much THC, the crop must be destroyed.

Hemp fields look like the one pictured above. As a rule of thumb, if a driver can see the crop, it is a CBD crop. THC is grown out of sight, behind fences or in greenhouses.

Last year people grew more hemp than they could sell. There was a gold rush mentality, fueled by suppliers and processors who wanted to encourage farmers to grow, grow, grow, and the area was abuzz with stories of extraordinary opportunity. Grass hay and alfalfa land was converted to hemp. New growers had the farming problems typical of beginners, complicated by a wet period at harvest season that brought mold, and the end-use market was complicated by changes and indecision at the federal level about what CBD can be used for. The price collapsed. I heard from many growers this spring that either they were sitting on unsold harvested/dried inventory, and that they were abandoning plans to plant this year, or they planned to grow reduced amounts. 

Last year--and today--a grower might have had sunk costs of $4,000 per acre into his hemp field at the time of harvest. A hemp grower might find suitable land to plant for a price of $500 to $2,000 per acre for the year, with $1,000 to $1,500 being most typical. The grower would plant perhaps 2,000 plants per acre, and seed prices for CBD again fit into a range but one dollar per seed was typical. The seeds were sold as high-CBD and ultra-low TCH plants. They were also represented to be "feminized" seeds. Then there is  the plastic sheet and the specialized equipment to lay it down, the drip irrigation lines, the fertilizers, the pesticides, the harvesting costs, the drying costs, the storage costs, and the labor costs all along. 

Cannabis is a hardy weed, and bad product can be grown carelessly--but then it isn't sellable. Sellable cannabis take care at every step by knowledgeable growers. That costs money.

THC plants, in a Hoop House, May 17

Southern Oregon has an edge in growing good product, partly because of climate. We have an excellent one for cannabis. The primary advantage, though, of Southern Oregon has is the established base of product suppliers and the knowledge base of experienced growers. People who had been growing THC cannabis for years know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

Growers hoped to get 2,000 pounds per acre of dried "biomass," i.e. dried plant material. At $20/pound that meant gross revenue of $40,000 an acre. Few people got that much. Some got more.

I am personally aware of a grower who had an unusually pretty crop, 2,000 plants per acre, each plant 5 to 6 feet tall, who sold his 25 acre field at $45/plant: $90,000 per acre, sold as-is, to be harvested by the buyer. There may be other examples of gate receipts that high, but that is the highest to my knowledge. Most growers did far worse. Some were wiped out by mold or product that turned out to have seeds in it.

CBD flower has seeds when there is a male plant around that pollinates the females in the field. A male plant--or a male branch which can emerge unexpectedly on a female plant--can pollinate hundreds or even thousands of downwind female plants, making their resulting flowers "seedy" which sharply diminishes the value. Wholesale buyers strongly prefer non-seeded flower because end-use customers strongly prefer it. A young male plant can be distinguished from his sisters by walking down the fields and examining each plant carefully. The difference between the two is about as visible as the difference between this period--.-- and this comma--,--so monitoring plants for males is a significant labor task, especially when a grower bought seed that was imperfectly feminized. Buying bad seed was easy to do last year, since the seeds are identical, the industry is new, and there have not yet been long established, credible, reliable  seed sources with brands and reputations to protect. Seed acquisition was a wild west. Lots of growers bought bad seed stock.

This spring the market opened up and product began selling both as bulk product and as trimmed dried flower, i.e. round buds of CBD for direct smoking. This has encouraged the growers who survived last year to try hemp again this year. It  also caused growers who migrated to CBD farming from THC production, with its burdensome regulatory oversight and plant limits, to go back to growing just the TCH-style cannabis. One must put up with a dysfunctional regulator, but at least one could sell the product--probably. The difficulties of dealing with the OMMP regulator created an artificial scarcity. Only the patient and persistent could put up with the changing rules, unanswered questions, and the deadline crises caused by their failures to examine and process paperwork that had been in their possession for months--my own experience. The regulatory bottleneck lowers supply and improves pricing.

June 29. Net trellis supports the branches

This is a week of transition, visible on rural roads in farm country. One sees bare fields that were in hemp last year but appear unplanted--for now. Other fields are in the midst of being planted--or rather transplantation. Seeds have been growing in greenhouses in tiny seed pods for several months. Plants going into the ground have been pulled from seed pods and are going in as sprigs about one foot in height. Look closely at the first photo and one sees those tiny shoots spaced about every 3 feet in the plastic. This is the noticeable feature of rural roads: hemp growing in strips of black plastic.

Meanwhile, less visible, are the THC grows. I hear anecdotal comments that some of the CBD grows actually have hidden THC plants in them. After all, the plants are identical until put into a laboratory. Rottweilers and golden labs are instantly apparent as different; CBD and THC are not. A hemp grower might place a hundred secretly marked THC plants in a ten acre field of 20,000 plants. The grower would run the risk that Oregon testing authorities would do a random sample test and find those plants amid the legal CBD crop, but the chances are small. There are penalties if caught. Does it happen? Three different sources told me it does sometimes. Growers are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs take risks. Why? Because THC-laden flower is more scarce and therefore far more valuable than CBD flower. 

Newly transplanted. Wire cage will support branches

People growing the THC plant legally, either under the "recreational" or "medical" grow protocols are closely monitored, their crops measured and accounted for, ending up in legal sales at dispensaries. That legally grown TCH variety is grown on small lots, behind fencing. Medical grows are limited to 48 plants per EFU tax lot or the canopy size restrictions on a "recreational" grow sites, which lead growers to attempt to maximize yield as much as possible within those limits.

Southern Oregon drivers might notice well back from the road some Hoop Houses. These are temporary structures built with PVC pipe and sheets of plastic. Growers can grow essentially a second small early crop by planting and harvesting that crop before their larger field goes into flower. Cannabis plants growing THC are counted toward the 48 plants when they are in flower. Normally at Southern Oegon's latitude cannabis plants do not go into flower until the first or second week of August, when the shorter days trigger the plant into recognizing that it is time to get on with reproduction. Plants grown in the Hoop Houses have opaque plastic pulled over them in the evenings beginning in mid-June, creating an artificial darkness for 12 full hours, triggering the flowering process to begin very early. Those "light deprivation" plants are harvestable just before the "long term" 48 on the same site go into flower. That early harvest "light dep" crop is smaller, with perhaps an average of one pound of dried flower buds per plant, but it creates some early product to "beat the season" for an early crop, and to be off the property before the October-harvest crop counts against the plant limit.

The plants that will look like this plant harvested last year are currently two to three feet in height. They double in size every week. 

They are legal and a big part of the Southern Oregon economy. They employ a lot of people, but by law and by practice, this part of the cannabis economy is supposed to be invisible.

Note the size of the "candles," i.e. the stalks holding a strip of buds. These are about  eighteen inches long and the thickness of a wrist.