Tennessee Farmers Are Stoked About Planting Hemp, But Not About Following The Rules

Industrial hemp can look so much like marijuana, even experts say it can be difficult to tell apart. Credit: Arcatan via Flickr

Some farmers are chafing at Tennessee’s tight regulation of hemp, sounding off at a hearing on the rules held by the Agriculture Department Tuesday.

The legislature dropped a decades-long ban on hemp production this year in an effort to revive an old Tennessee cash crop, but lawmakers left the finer details to the department, which hopes to finalize the rules in time for the first crops to go in the ground this spring.

While farmers like Linda Albright of Williamson County cheered when the state opened up hemp production, they aren’t used to this kind of oversight.

“We’ve been growing tobacco and corn and soy and all of this for years and years,” she said. “We’ve never had to apply for a license to grow it.”

A hemp license would run $250 a year plus $2 per acre. Inspectors would be allowed in the field at any time to check levels of THC, which is the only real difference between hemp and its look-a-like cousin, marijuana. The farmer would even have to foot the bill at $35 an hour, including travel time.

But Harold Jarboe, who plans to grow hemp in Maury County, says he doesn’t mind rules like notifying authorities two days ahead of transporting a crop.

“We cannot have an industry here if we don’t invite law enforcement in and make them a part of the process,” Jarboe said. “Because if I’m hauling 50 pounds of hemp tops up to the juice company to be juiced and I get pulled over, I can’t have my crop confiscated while they figure out if its legal or not.”

Jarboe says there will be a cup of coffee waiting for any law enforcement agent who wants to stop by his farm.

A representative of the Tennessee Hemp Industry Association suggested several changes to the proposed rules. Instead of banning anyone who has ever had felony drug charges, the new trade is pushing for the drug-free requirement to go back just 10 years.

According to the group Vote Hemp, 18 states now have taken action to loosen restrictions on hemp, though many states haven’t gone as far as Tennessee to open industrial production.

The most recent Farm Bill opened up hemp production on the federal level, at least for pilot projects for research and development. For that reason, licensed farmers will have to sign a contract with the state to share their yields and market price.