Hemp Returns to Kansas (Wichita, McPherson: for sale, neighborhood, legal)

[KSinmyrearviewmirror]

23 Dec 2018 Headlines:

Hemp a potential ‘gold rush’ for Kansas farmers but questions linger @ kansas.com &

Wichita-area couple want Kansas to become leader in soon-to-be legal hemp production @ ljworld.com
(same couple, perhaps same story)

I've seen some KS farm acreage recently for sale touting its registration for hemp farming. Not sure that registration remains when the new property owner takes possession.

The National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame, Bonner Springs, KS, had a hemp combine on display (indoors) when we visited some years back. Nowhere near the scale of what John Deere is now offering.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3rolyiTPr0

I had a 1974 edition of a popular growing guide, with index of US hemp researchers
going back to WWII days.

When I took Plant Science @ KSU in 1976, the prof. named one of those researchers whom he had done graduate work under. I was likely the only one in the large auditorium class who knew what hemp was (clue, I wasn't wearing a seed co. ball cap, nor spitting juice into a coke can & leaving under my seat for the next occupant to kick over => happened to me).

So, in the past 42 years, no US researcher has kept pace with international researchers. As a biologist, I'm glad the US is finally attempting to catch up. Thus:

Centennial Seeds, Colorado, We have a quantity of Industrial Hemp Seed for sale at $5,000 per kg (~68,000-70,000 seeds).

In 1987, I worked for 3 months, planting ~ 40,000 tree seedlings in 4 KS counties under the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). My partner was the retired McPherson Co. USDA Soil Conservation Service County Agent, a graduate of KSU.

I don't recall how the subject came up, but he related the story of the time our employer (KS Fish & Game) directed him to bush hog a barnyard overtaken by hemp. He hadn't gone far, when the blades of the rotary mower were wrapped to a stop by hemp fiber. Took him the rest of the day to cut the fibers free. A good example of agricultural ingorance on his part.

Hemp was grown in NE KS under the Hemp for Victory program. None of those combines is quite like what I recall @ that museum, perhaps it was missing the wooden flails.

Volunteer hemp can be seen along many rural roads. It is considered a noxious weed, & targeted for removal by county noxious weed depts. Following the flood of 1993, vast fields of hemp took over the dried lake bottom @ Tuttle Creek Reservoir here, looking much like that KY river bottomland in the film. I would estimate it was ~ 14' tall.

Most of my farming relatives in SE KS had no idea what hemp looked like. Hemp farming will be legal in KS again in 2019. I look forward to seeing IF KSU will have demonstrations plots, as their Argronomy fields surround my neighborhood; so I watch test plots of corn, wheat, grain sorghum, & even a field of rape, grow every year. KSU has undersized combines to harvest 1-2 rows @ a time.

[Happy2019]

Same happened in Europe. From lots of hemp fields to 0 nowadays, and it gives a lot of profit.