Hemp farming in Tennessee is growing exponentially. The crop is used to make lotions, fabric, cooking oil and, of course, CBD. But the number of companies processing hemp hasn’t kept up with the growth, and neither have the regulations.
Corinne Kennedy, a reporter with the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, has been digging into the hemp industry in Tennessee, and she talked to WPLN’s Jason Moon Wilkins to help us understand more.
JMW: Let’s start with the numbers. Can you walk us through how many hemp farmers there are in Tennessee right now compared to just a few years ago?
CK: Yes, so there’s been pretty much an explosion of hemp farmers in the state of Tennessee. In 2018, there were 226 farmers who had a growing license from the state. That doesn’t mean all of them did grow. But there were 226 with licenses to grow. As of Oct. 15 [of this year], there are 3,730, which is a 1550% increase.
JMW: That’s insane! So what was the genesis for what seems to be kind of a gold rush happening in the state right now?
There’s a couple factors that kind of all lined up at once. But in December, President Donald Trump signed a law that federally decriminalized hemp, removed it from the Controlled Substances Act. And this is important because it opens hemp farmers up to federal crop insurance. Or, researchers who want to study hemp can now get federal grants to do so.
JMW: What types of people are doing this?
CK: The vast majority of license holders are small family farmers. Some of them are people who are just curious about the plants, and maybe they’re growing literally three plants. Some people are growing up to thousands of acres, or at least they are licensed to grow up to thousands of acres.
The big problem is that there is a big learning curve to growing hemp. So if you are growing and you don’t have a contract in place with a processor, that means when it comes time to harvest your hemp, you might have no one to sell it to, and you could be left with a lot of crop that you don’t really know what to do with.
JMW: Why has the number of processors not kept up?
CK: Yeah, that’s a great question, and I’m not exactly sure. Part of it could just be because everything about hemp is so new that there’s a learning curve the whole way down the supply chain from growing to when it gets to a store.
JMW: Well, your story really points out the state of flux Tennessee is in right now, too, when it comes to regulation. Why has the state been behind, and what’s being done about that?
CK: One of the things that officials from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture have said is that they don’t want to make too many regulations before the federal government starts regulating hemp.
A lot of states, Tennessee included, are kind of stuck in this position where they have these industries that are growing at a rapid pace, and there is some need to regulate them. But they don’t want to go too far and then have to roll things back once the federal government comes out with their own regulations.
JMW: It seems like that could present some problems for consumers.
Yes. So I’ve heard from, you know, dispensary owners that I’ve talked to that a lot of the people who come into their stores have never been in a dispensary before. Some of them don’t even know that hemp is legal. And so a lot of dispensary owners have told me that they’re kind of in almost like a public advisory role there. They’re not only trying to sell their products; they have to educate the people who come into their stores about what exactly they’re selling.
On top of that, with the limited regulations that are in place, consumers really have to be reliant on the people they’re buying from, that the products are what they say they are. So, it can put people in a position where they’re seeking something out because of a health care need in their life, but they might not be exactly sure what they’re buying.
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