Forging a path with an ancient plant that once dotted the Kansas landscape

Having been in the hemp CBD market for going on 8 years, I can attest to the voluminous amount of hemp being grown today, and the drop in commercial pricing over the past few years.

What I like about this article is that it brings up growing hemp for fiber in the heart of the country. Even just a couple of years ago when we started selling our very own top shelf hemp flower, when we sourced quality product, prices were about 40% higher than they are today.

Last years crop is still being processed in some locations. Many farmers are still trying to unload last years crop, as well.

The fiber crop is quite profitable, and much easier to maintain than a CBD crop. In a CBD crop, it is grown like medical cannabis. Male plants are culled from the fields so that the female plants can focus on trying to reproduce and create all of the lovely cannabinoids and terpenes that we have come to depend on in this industry.

In a fiber crop, the cannabinoids content is not of much concern, so long as the THC content is below the legal threshold. Males are just as fine as females. In fact, the seeds are a secondary stream of income for fiber farmers.

There are varietals of cannabis that are prolific producers of hemp seed for those farmers who prefer to focus on the nutritional value and volume of these healthful seeds.

For Melisa Nelson-Baldwin, data is key. And what this trained crop research scientist sees is hemp is a great crop for Kansas farmers. So much so that Nelson-Baldwin and her partners, husband Aaron Baldwin and brother-in-law Richard Baldwin, are ready to build a hemp fiber manufacturing plant in Great Bend – the first one in Kansas. “We want to be up and running by the end of the year,” Nelson-Baldwin said. The Baldwins grow both industrial cannabidiol oil and fiber hemp at their farm, South Bend Industrial Hemp , in Barton and Stafford counties. Aaron and Richard Baldwin are fourth-generation farmers in Great Bend, while Nelson-Baldwin grew up on a farm in Holton. The three work with both forms of industrial hemp on 55 acres of their traditional grain farm. “My brother and I were looking for other avenues to diversify the farm,” Aaron Baldwin said. Kansas Grown Industrial […]

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