South’s family farms look to hemp as new moneymaker

As tobacco loses profitability, crop may offer ‘solution’

For more than 100 years, Jane Harrod’s family set aside a corner of their farm to grow tobacco. The 20 acres they grew when she was a girl was only a fraction of the 400 acres the family owned outside Lexington, Ky., but it promised good money — about $1,000 an acre.

“Most all of us farmers raised some tobacco,” said Harrod, 63. “Tobacco definitely put the clothes on our backs when we were kids.”

But tobacco isn’t the reliable cash crop it once was. That has Harrod and hundreds of other farmers across the South revisiting a plant from deep in the region’s past: industrial hemp.

Known as marijuana’s nonpotent cousin, hemp probably won’t replace the billions of dollars that tobacco once provided, but proponents such as Harrod say they’re willing to take a chance on a crop they hope will breathe new life into the South’s family farms.

Those efforts have faced resistance from law enforcement groups that worry that hemp farms could be hiding acres of marijuana, which would become harder to detect.

The South has largely resisted legalizing pot, even for medical use. (Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states, and recreational pot is legal in four.) But in states where tobacco once reigned supreme, industrial hemp has come back into vogue.

Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are among the 20 states that have enacted laws allowing researchers and farmers to revive the long-forbidden plant. And, late last month, the North Carolina Legislature approved a proposal to do the same; that bill is on the governor’s desk.

The end of federal subsidies for tobacco in 2004 and the decreasing popularity of smoking have wiped out much of the crop’s prominence and profitability. The U.S. grew $1.8 billion worth of tobacco in 2014, a far cry from its peak in 1981, when the country produced $3.5 billion worth, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Hemp’s backers acknowledge that the plant probably won’t fill the gap left by tobacco, but they hope it will give farmers such as Harrod a new, potentially lucrative option.

The Hemp Industries Association estimates that Americans bought $620 million worth of hemp products last year — including clothing, building materials and food made with hemp seeds, said Eric Steenstra, the industry group’s executive director.

“It’s not the replacement, but it’s part of the solution,” said James Comer, Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner, a Republican who sponsored the state’s hemp bill when he was in the Legislature.

The crop has set off something of a gold rush in states such as Kentucky, where hundreds have applied for permits to grow it, Comer said.

And Harrod? She said she’ll apply to grow 5 acres next year.