Since 2014 when the Pilot Industrial Hemp Program began there have been several questions come through our office about the use of Industrial Hemp, who can grow it, what does the future look like, can it be profitable, etc. Those questions have seemed to increase over the past year as more individuals in Harrison County have started to grow hemp and more community members have been seeing it in fields which have caused me to have more questions as listed above.  

Seeing a need to answer some of these questions and inform individuals about the uses of Industrial Hemp, I put together a meeting involving Doris Hamilton, KDA Hemp Program Manager, Tom Keene, UK Agronomy Specialist, and Brian Furnish, Director of Global Productions for Ananda Hemp at the Extension Office.  I asked these presenters to discuss the agronomic and economic data of hemp, where the future might be, processing and final products as well as the legal aspects and application process. We had 45 in attendance at this meeting and 100% of the individuals said they gained more knowledge than they had previously had after leaving the meeting.  90% of the individuals are very interested in growing hemp in the next 5 years and 75% of them are interested in applying and growing hemp in 2018.

This meeting was very eye opening for most in learning the regulations and processes that have to be gone through just to be approved to grow and then for obtaining seed, etc. All of the growers there would like a follow up meeting in the spring to discuss some growing techniques in depth.