State clears once-illicit crop for retail

PAHRUMP — Baby hemp plants are sending off their distinct skunky smell at a farm in Pahrump, but these weeds won’t wind up in a joint.

The farm is one of the state’s cultivators of hemp crops that have almost no THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high. A new law means plants like these can be grown in Nevada and used for retail products.

Russell Wilhelm, manager of the Nevada Department of Agriculture Industrial Hemp Program, said the state was setting up the new industrial hemp regulations and fielding increased interest from prospective producers.

Wilhelm says production of the crop is expected to double this year in Nevada and is projected to keep growing with the Legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 396, which allows for industrial hemp farming, testing and selling.

“With the passing of SB396, we actually have the opportunity to now start producing industrial hemp seed in the state of Nevada, one, and then two, the other significant opportunity after that is going to be the ability to sell industrial hemp-based products in retail venues in the state,” he said.

The 2014 U.S. Farm Bill Section 7606 and the 2015 Legislature’s Senate Bill 305 limit industrial hemp production in Nevada to research programs certified by the Nevada Department of Agriculture. The department can order producers to pay for the destruction of hemp if their crops’ THC concentrations exceed 0.3 percent.

Hemp can be used to produce flour, fiber, medicine, vitamins and other products. The first hemp cultivation season in Nevada was last year, Wilhelm said.

“Last year in production acreage we saw about 250 acres,” he said. “This season we’re projecting that that number will double.”

Much of last year’s yield went unused, however.

“A lot of the crops that were harvested