PHOENIX, Ore. _ Ajit Singh strode across his 16-acre hemp field toward a broken-down harvester. He'd been hoping all day that the mechanic now crouched beside the machine could get it back up and running.
It was late October and Singh still had thousands of stinky green and purple cannabis plants across 425 acres to pick, dry and sell before winter. Like many hemp growers here in Jackson County, Ore., he was harvesting slowly, facing a mold problem and unhappy with prices offered by potential buyers.
"We want a better price," said Singh, a soil scientist and former garden store owner _ and, he said, he was prepared to hold out for one. He sold 50 acres of hemp for $70 a pound last year and now was being quoted prices less than half that.
Hemp growers nationwide scaled up this year after Congress legalized the non-psychoactive cannabis. They hoped to cash in on the booming market for cannabinoids such as wellness darling CBD, an ingredient in oils, tinctures and salves. But as harvest winds down, it's likely that many growers will go bust.
More than half a million acres were licensed for hemp production this year, though Vote Hemp, a hemp advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., estimated in September that less than half that was planted.
Some of the more than 16,000 licensed growers will profit from their crops and say hemp is a better investment than traditional commodities such as corn. However, because of crop failure and other factors, Vote Hemp estimates that between 40% and half of the crop planted this year won't be harvested.
"People went in thinking they'd be instant millionaires," said Matt Ochoa, founder of Jefferson Packing House, a cannabis drying, processing and distribution business in Medford, Ore. "But the reality is, they're broke."
In late October the mood was so grim in Jackson County, home to about a quarter of Oregon's 1,957 licensed hemp growers, that rumors were swirling of husband-wife growing teams divorcing, farmers selling in a panic to low bidders and despairing entrepreneurs dying by suicide (the Jackson County Sheriff's office told Stateline that it investigates all suicides in the county and is not aware of any involving hemp growers).
"I've literally had a tightness in my chest from all these failures the past few days," said Mark Taylor, founder of the Southern Oregon Hemp Co-operative, when he met with Stateline at a Medford restaurant last month. He still thinks the hemp industry has a bright future but worries that a lot of the crop planted in Oregon this year isn't going to make it. "I believe we've lost a substantial amount of hemp," he said.
Nationwide, bad weather, mold, disease, pests and inexperience have crushed some crops. Now lack of capital, harvesting equipment and drying space _ challenges affecting rookie and veteran farmers alike as growing expands _ means that some healthy plants may not make it out of the ground.
"People can't get it out (of the fields) because there's not the infrastructure, the capital or the labor to get it through," Ochoa said.
Wholesale hemp prices, while higher than for other agricultural commodities, are expected to decline for key cannabinoid products this year as new suppliers flood the market, according to Washington D.C.-based cannabis industry research firm New Frontier Data. And even farmers who thought they had buyers lined up are finding there are no guarantees.
Singh is optimistic that he'll find a buyer for the crop he spent millions of dollars planting, even though much of it is blighted by mold. Moldy hemp, while less valuable than the unblemished stuff, can still be processed into CBD oil.
Other parts of the country have faced different diseases and pests. Bipolaris leaf spot, which limits the photosynthetic area of the plant, was widespread in Tennessee, said Katy Kilbourne, a plant pathologist with the state's agriculture department.
Zach Hansen, an assistant professor in the entomology and plant pathology department at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has seen about 10% crop loss in worst case scenarios to another fungal disease, Southern blight. "It's basically a death sentence for the plant," Hansen said.
Corn earworm, a common pest to sweet corn in the South, has transitioned to hemp nicely, according to experts, prompting growers to hire people to walk up and down hemp rows and hand-pick the pests off individually.
