Home Grown: Will farmers start growing Hemp in the Desert Southwest?
In this week’s Home Grwon segment, we explore the potential of Hemp being grown in our local agriculture industry.
The question many people wonder is if Hemp will ever be grown in Yuma and the desert southwest region?
13 On Your Side spoke with Dwayne Alford, who is the program chair of Arizona’s Industrial Hemp Program Rules Committee to get answers.
Alford lives in Yuma and he works with a team on a program that could give local farmers a permit to grow Hemp. If approved by the Department of Agriculture, you may see Hemp being grown in Yuma as early as this summer.
He shares with us why local growers are interested in this crop.
“You know, it’s going to be interesting. There is a lot of interest in the entire state as there is in the country. I think for Arizona, so many of the other crops, especially the summer rotation crops in Yuma are not the best price-wise so I think growers are anxious to look at anything that might be a possibility and make sense for them,” Alford said.
If permits are approved, most of our early Hemp production will be on an experimental basis. Farmers will be testing to see how the crop does in our climate, how much water it takes to grow and if it will serve as a beneficial rotational crop used between vegetable rotations.
“But, we have a lot to learn about growing Hemp because it has been illegal since the mid 40s and no one has done it in a very long time and certainly, varieties have not been grown in this region so finding varieties that work and work in our environment will be the first challenge that we face so I suspect there will be some Hemp grown potentially, even this coming summer, if not this following fall on more of an experimental basis and to start to learn how the crop performs here in Yuma,” Alford said.
It is important to note that growing Industrial Hemp is not the same as growing Marijuana. Regular testing will be conducted to inure that the THC levels in the plant are below 0.3 percent. If it were over that amount, it would be considered Marijuana and would be illegal and must be destroyed.
13 On Your Side will continue to update you as more information comes about on this topic.
