Naked Barley
Robotic Weeder
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Growing through Mentorship Page 9
Dicamba Drift Page 10
TM
Volume 27 | Number 5
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service
September | October 2019
Growing hemp for CBD presents opportunities, challenges for farmers By Chuck Anderas
Markets Hemp is a wild new frontier for McHugh likened marketing CBD American farmers. Having only to marketing hay. “If I have highrecently been legalized state by state quality hay, I have no trouble finding in the last few years and nationally in buyers,” he explained. “If I can produce the 2018 Farm Bill (still to come into a high-quality product people will be effect), farmers, marketers, processers, pounding on the doors.” and researchers are scrambling to figure That being said, finding markets out best practices and develop reliable for hemp for CBD can be complicated. supply chains. This is especially true for Since hemp is such a new crop, it does hemp harvested for cannabidiol (CBD). not have the infrastructure that estabCBD is one of the medicinal comlished commodities, like corn, have. pounds in hemp, which is a form of Farmers will have to be more proactive cannabis sativa that is low in tetrahyin their marketing than with typical drocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive Patrick McHugh is growing 20 acres of hemp for CBD at his farm outside La Crosse, Wis. Plants grain crops. Jay Fentress with Higher compound in marijuana. While CBD Yields Consulting recommends that has been getting a lot of attention for its are spaced widely to reduce pressure from pests and diseases. Photo by Stephanie Coffman farmers do the work early to connect pain-relieving properties, the Food and with people and look around for good prices. Drug Administration (FDA) cautions that dosing, drug year on his certified organic farm outside Onalaska, If you sign a contract, make sure to look at it careWis., which was a focal point at a field day this suminteractions, and other questions about CBD use have fully. According to FL Morris and Steve Acheson of mer hosted by MOSES and OGRAIN. McHugh said yet to be answered. The FDA announced in May that South Central WI Hemp Cooperative, there have been he added hemp to his rotation “first and foremost for “under current law, CBD and THC cannot lawfully be diversity, the ability to incorporate another crop in our some bad actors in the hemp market. They have seen added to food or marketed as a dietary supplement.” contracts written by companies backed by venture rotation, positive health benefits, and the challenge.” While CBD works its way through the federal capital that put all the risk on the farmer. Morris said With production costs ranging from $5,000 to arena, many states, including Wisconsin, are issuing that “the narrative that you shouldn’t plant anything $10,000 per acre, it is important to know the risks of licenses to grow industrial hemp and hemp for CBD. until you have a contract to sell it puts all the power production and marketing before planting. Patrick McHugh grew 40 acres of hemp for CBD this
‘Meatless’ farms not ideal for regenerative system By Rachel Henderson
PO Box 339, Spring Valley, WI 54767
With the Amazon burning, the call is out to abandon beef, or meat altogether, as the most effective way to save the rainforest. This is because the fires have been credibly attributed to actions by cattle ranchers and loggers who, backed by multinational corporations, are attempting to claim land for beef production or other forms of industrial-scale agriculture. Some activists have called for boycotts of Brazilian beef, while others suggest that reducing the global demand for beef would make it less profitable to burn down forests. In either case, beef consumption has come under scrutiny. People concerned for the health of our planet and the people who live in rural communities that are impacted by the spread of large livestock farms are examining the role of animal agriculture in deforestation and other types of land degradation. Meat production has been widely identified as a contributor to climate change. In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
identified the livestock industry as a greater emitter of greenhouse gasses than the transportation sector, making it the largest contributor worldwide. This generated a lot of global and national attention on the heavily meat-based diet common in the United States and increasingly common around the world. This has fostered a sense of alarm about the implications of such a diet. Many environmental and animal welfare organizations have advocated for “Meatless Mondays” or other ways to cut back the amount of meat we purchase each year, and to encourage people to find vegetarian protein sources (as well as just eat more veggies). Studies suggest that adopting these practices could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if we don’t all switch to a completely vegan diet. The website MeatlessMondays.com says, “Skipping one serving of beef every Monday for a year saves the equivalent emissions to driving 348 miles in a car.” At the same time, there is another narrative emerging about cows and land. Advocates for grass-based meat and dairy production point to actual ecological benefits of well-managed grazing on soil and water quality. They point to historically successful farming systems that combined animals with crop production that were sustained over centuries before industrial agriculture separated them. Further, there is evidence that healthy soil in perennial grass cover serves to sequester carbon, though the complete carbon cycle is very complex and difficult to summarize in simple talking points. The FAO has specifically pointed out that the use of carefully managed grazing to improve poor soils is one of the areas for the greatest potential improvement in carbon cycling. Farm fields in perennial cover for grazing also have much higher water-holding capacity and soil organic matter than fields of annual crops. Many farmers say the jump to condemn animal agriculture misses the point; the question shouldn’t be whether or not we eat meat, but how and where animals are raised. In fact, the FAO report that seems To Regenerative Systems on page 8
To CBD Hemp on page 6
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Oct. 17-19, 2019 | St. Paul, MN KEYNOTE:
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