{"id":93839,"date":"2019-05-22T19:31:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/could-colorado-lose-its-industrial-advantage-over-hemp\/"},"modified":"2019-05-22T19:31:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:31:00","slug":"could-colorado-lose-its-industrial-advantage-over-hemp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/could-colorado-lose-its-industrial-advantage-over-hemp\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Colorado lose its industrial advantage over hemp?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hemp
Hemp farming in Montezuma and La Plata counties is off to a good start, but some worry Southwest Colorado lacks the processing plants necessary to allow the region and Colorado to maintain its industrial advantage.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the crop was featured this year at a talk during the annual exhibition, the number of interested people nearly tripled, said Scott Perez, one of the first hemp farmers in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

In the past five years, the plant has only grown in popularity, with hemp products and CBD oil \u2013 a nonpsychedelic extract \u2013 being featured in supermarkets, health boutiques and pharmacies throughout the state.<\/p>\n

This expansion was accelerated with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized it on the federal level. Growers are still required to obtain permits from the state agriculture departments and ensure the THC in the plant does not exceed 0.3%.<\/p>\n

\"Sam
Sam Green\/The Journal file<br><br>Colorado has experienced an explosion of sorts in the number of registered hemp farmers, from 259 registrations in 2014 to 1,075 in 2018.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Many states have looked to Colorado\u2019s hemp industry as a model, as the plant and products associated with it continue to multiply. But farmers and industry experts worry the state \u2013 which also led the country in marijuana legalization \u2013 is letting their industrial advantage slip away.<\/p>\n

Expanding acreage<\/div>\n

In 2018, 52 of Colorado\u2019s 64 counties had at least one registered hemp farm, according to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. The number of registrations has nearly quadrupled in four years, from 259 in 2014 to 1,075 in 2018, according to the Department of Agriculture. The agency reports 40 registered farmers in La Plata County and 22 in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

The bulk of growth has occurred in the past two years. In 2016, the Department of Agriculture tracked almost 9,000 acres of registered hemp. That number increased to 12,024 acres in 2017, a growth rate of almost 34%. Colorado accounted for more than half the country\u2019s 2017 production, according to an annual report by the Hemp Industry Daily, an online trade publication.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the state Department of Agriculture tracked a growth rate of over 157%, as the number of registered acres leapfrogged to 30,950.<\/p>\n

Colorado is already set to expand the hemp acreage in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just beginning our busiest time for registrations, and we are already pretty close to having just as many registrants as last year,\u201d said Rob Donald, a field services inspector with the Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n

With so many new farmers and a rapid expansion of acreage, some worry this could have a negative impact on the industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe market is probably going to get saturated, and then it won\u2019t be as profitable,\u201d said Abdel Berrada, a hemp researcher and specialist with Mesa Verde Ag Solutions. \u201cThere are so many businesses and entrepreneurs jumping in.\u201d<\/p>\n

As farming novices turn to growing hemp, there\u2019s going to be a pretty big learning curve, said Dani Fontaine, owner of Colorado Hemp Project, an education and consulting company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people who don\u2019t know what the (explicative) they\u2019re doing,\u201d Fontaine said. \u201cBusinesses are going to be a little behind the curve and learning the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

An industry in need of processing<\/div>\n

Hemp, the genetic cousin of marijuana minus any psychedelic effects, has more uses than cannabis. In addition to medicinal products, hemp can be processed into hundreds of products, including oil, paper, building materials, rope, fuel and food.<\/p>\n

Despite being one of the first states to legalize industrial hemp, Colorado risks losing its advantage to other states.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest problem is we don\u2019t have a processing plant here,\u201d said Perez, who owns his own agricultural consulting company. To take advantage of the wide products available from hemp, like fibers, oil and wood, the plant must be processed more extensively, Perez said.<\/p>\n

\"Hemp,
Hemp, a genetic cousin of marijuana, can be processed into hundreds of products, including oil, paper, building materials, rope, fuel and food.<\/span>Katherine Frey\/Washington Post file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Berrada, a retired researcher with the Colorado State University Southwestern Colorado Research Center, echoed Perez\u2019s concerns. \u201cThe processing is not there for fiber yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This has led many farmers to ship their product out because there is no processing plant or infrastructure in the area to take advantage of the full potential of the plant, Perez said.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Commissioner Julie Westendorff said the uncertainty around federal enforcement of industrial hemp before the passage of the Farm Bill led many potential farmers and investors to move with caution.<\/p>\n

\"Gardner\"
Gardner<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m not sure we have the competitive advantage I thought we would have,\u201d Westendorff said. \u201cWe weren\u2019t able to take as much advantage of it as we could have because of the fears around the federal enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Westendorff said she isn\u2019t aware of any plans for a potential processing plant in La Plata County. But she acknowledged it\u2019s a big investment to start a facility and there might be some lingering nerves around investing in the hemp industry, despite the Farm Bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want there to be enough product, a steady supply of the baseline plant,\u201d Westendorff said. \u201cThe environment that constrained hemp was based on the fear of consequences, so a lot of people weren\u2019t willing to take the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Durango Herald<\/em>, Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said he was aware of a processing plant that closed in eastern Colorado because of a supply or regulatory issue. Gardner, along with fellow Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., pushed for the inclusion of hemp legalization in the Farm Bill.<\/p>\n

\"Westendorff\"
Westendorff<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI think that\u2019s the big challenge. Some of the big processing facilities I\u2019ve been familiar with have struggled in terms of maintaining their viability,\u201d Gardner said.<\/p>\n

But with the federal legalization of the plant, there\u2019s noticeably more confidence from other industries to move forward with hemp, Fontaine said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on our way to partnering with paper mills,\u201d Fontaine said. \u201cWe\u2019re just starting to expand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maintaining the expansion through development of new products while minimizing federal regulations will be key to the growth of the hemp industry, Gardner said. \u201cWe need to make sure we\u2019re capitalizing on Colorado\u2019s advantage in getting a head start before we lose that head start,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Berrada predicts these new markets will only increase in the next three to four years, but without a system to process the plants, Southwest Colorado could stand to lose out on the economic benefits. \u201cHopefully, there will be more processing plants in the area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

To some, moving Colorado\u2019s hemp industry forward comes down to simply trusting in the accumulated wisdom from the previous years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re better or we have better farmers. We have more experience, and people come to Colorado to learn about it,\u201d Fontaine said. \u201cWe pioneered this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liz Weber is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

farming in Montezuma and La Plata counties is off to a good start, but some worry Southwest Colorado lacks the processing plants necessary to allow the region and Colorado to maintain its industrial advantage.Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file When the crop was featured this year at a talk during the annual exhibition, the number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[281,2547,21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-arable-farming","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93839"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}