County approves $25,000 for hemp event
EL CENTRO — Recognizing that hemp could be a moneymaker for the county in the future, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a $25,000 Agricultural Benefit Program grant to the Imperial Valley Economic Development Corp. for the Imperial County Hemp Summit and Expo event scheduled for Sept. 27-28.
The $25,000 will be returned from the proceeds of the expo, said Imperial County Agriculture Commissioner Carlos Ortiz.
The event will have panels with networking and tours at the Imperial County Fairgrounds.
Panel topics include best farming practices, local opportunities and resources, legislation and compliance, processing and manufacture, and banking, financing and insurance.
Currently, cash is required for produce hemp and hemp products because banks will not loan money or provide credit for anything associated with the crop, the supervisors were told Tuesday.
Supervisor Ray Castillo said the goal is to reach out to people with knowledge in the industry.
Ortiz pointed out that Colorado just held a hemp summit, so the county is not doing anything new.
Castillo said the expo is intended to get more information.
“It’s more business orientated,” he said. “It’s a new industry.”
Ortiz said the country needs to try to look at new crops with crops like broccoli not doing as well.
Castillo and the rest of the board thinks if Imperial County reacts quickly enough with the resources needed it could be very profitable.
The county, he said, was once known as the carrot capitol of the world, and while carrots in the county are still a profitable crop, they are shipped out to Bakersfield for processing. The hope is hemp could be processed in the county.
If hemp is grown and especially processed in the county, it would result in a lot of good-paying jobs due to all of the uses and ways it can be used.
“We used to make rope out of hemp,” he said, adding that hemp can even be used to make plywood and clothing.
Castillo is also a big proponent of CBD oil that is taken from the plant, which has a miniscule amount of THC, the main ingredient of cannabis.
The supervisors are aware that hemp was removed from the list of controlled substance in the 2018 farm bill, but until the regulations are ironed out it still is not allowed.
Supervisor Jesus Eduardo Escobar said more information is needed to sign off on another summit for next year.
“We have not set milestones on what we need to accomplish from this conference to justify the needs of a second conference,” he said.
“We are going in blind, and we don’t know what we (are getting out of our) investment.”
Supervisor Chairman Ryan Kelley also thinks hemp could be a profitable crop.
“Twenty five thousand dollars is seed money to get this going,” Kelley said. “Hemp will grow in this valley.”
Escobar wanted to ensure the public understands there is a big difference between cannabis and hemp, with cannabis still considered a Schedule 1 drug on the federal level.