Hemp for fiber and grain is becoming more economically viable especially if you can rotate it with your traditional grain or vegetable crops, says Alex Mootz of Complete Ag Solutions in Adams County, a diversified hemp operation.
Mootz has been growing hemp for about four years. He started on 10 acres and now farms 345 acres of hemp grain and fiber. And 200 acres of “flower” or CBD hemp. He also does corn and soybeans. Mootz is getting ready to plant hemp in late May. He says there’s similarities between panting fiber hemp and planting the traditional corn and soybean commodities, starting with the equipment — drills and planters.
“We’ve gotten rid of a lot of labor,” says Mootz of retrofitting his corn and soybean planters for hemp. He says this has improved the bottom line of growing hemp in a competitive market.
Mootz has had good luck integrating hemp with other crops in test plots, notably vegetable crops. He says flower hemp can wait to be planted until mid-June. And fiber hemp is hardier, and can be planted late or early.
He says the infrastructure for hemp for fiber and grain has been improving, making those varieties more viable than they were in 2018-2019, when growers opted for flower hemp for CBD, and the market saw an oversupply.
“Now that the machines are starting to come, there’s a lot of companies doing some amazing things in building materials,” he says, listing off hemp wool for insulation and hempcrete. “As those markets have been developed, the demand as gone up.”
Wisconsin hemp growers planted 870 acres of hemp in open fields in 2022, up 190 acres from 2021, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. Harvested acres for 2022 were
estimated at 740, compared with 580 acres the previous year.
Hemp producers used 76,881 square feet under protection, such as in a greenhouse or hoop house, for production.
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