Near the end of the Alva Community Coffee June 21, Sen. Casey Murdock remembered something he forgot to mention in his earlier legislative wrap-up – hemp. “We are dependent on oil and gas. It affects our state budget so drastically. You know it’s always ‘we need to diversify, we need to diversify.’ The thing that’s coming is industrial hemp.

“We had a pilot program we passed last year. The feds have basically legalized (hemp) in the farm bill they passed this year. But for me this industrial hemp is, I don’t want to say the end all be all, but it could change Oklahoma drastically. Not just for farmers, but for the town of Alva, because you have manufacturing, you have processing. And I learned this a couple of months ago that your BMW car and your Mercedes car, a lot of the plastics in that car are made of industrial hemp. You can make just about anything out of industrial hemp. So that is the new thing that is coming to Oklahoma. That’s going to change Oklahoma in a good way.

“Your equipment that you use to farm industrial hemp is different than what you farm wheat with because they’ve got to beef it up. I asked some guys I had a meeting with, ‘could you just go out there with a swather and bale it up and truck it to the processor.’ They said ‘no you can have a brand new swather and you’ll wear it out in the first day because it’s like cutting rope.’

“And so the opportunities: You have equipment dealers, you have people building this equipment, you’ve got processing facilities, you have drying facilities. We have the Port of Catoosa. We are not landlocked. We can ship these parts to Germany to the BMW factory. The opportunities – the sky’s the limit.

“We did this year have an issue with FSA (Farm Service Agency). The director of FSA did not like some of the laws we passed last year that did not match up with what the feds do. If you grow it on the industrial side, (hemp) has to be less than 0.3 THC level. If it’s more than that you have to destroy the crop. Well, it’s very expensive to plant the crop. Two hundred acres I think is a million dollars in seed. It’s very, very expensive.

“So if you go out and spend that kind of money and the FSA or the feds come in and say your THC is too high and you’re going to have to destroy it, that’s a big risk you’re taking. So we’re in the process of making rules and getting where the feds are okay with where our state rules are on growing industrial hemp.

“But to me that is the new industry coming to Oklahoma that is not just rural Oklahoma, urban Oklahoma. It doesn’t pit one against the other. I think we have bridges. In the farm area you can grow it, in the cities you can have businesses and manufacturers. It helps both sides.”

Wilson Has Questions

Audience member Carolyn Wilson had a question. “We’re longtime farmers. We have been looking into hemp but once you jump through all the hoops of getting it planted, the question is who processes it. You all know that like this year you raise one of the most fabulous crops but until you get it weighed in and in the bin, you have nothing.

“Right now what we know about it, and people who have farmed for generations, there’s so much insecurity about it you cannot commit to it. There are more questions than there are answers. How long do you think it’s going to take before we get something where people could take the risk?”

“I agree,” said Murdock. “My brother was going to plant it. Had the circle prepared and ready, and he got the contract and the contract wasn’t as good as what they were telling him it was going to be. There was numbers of $5,000 to $8,000 an acre was what you could make. When the contract came, it wasn’t that much. He decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

“The first year I had the secretary of ag come in after the feds passed the farm bill with this in it and I said these rules we’ve got to be lined up on the feds’ level, but we need a salvage avenue. Because if it does test too high in THC, instead of destroying it, I did talk to one manufacturer that said they could process the THC out of it. That’s still in the process, because they’re going to test the crops in the field for THC levels on whether they’re going to destroy it or not. So we’ve got to fix that part of it.

“It’s brand new. It’s kind of the chicken or the egg. We’ve got to have the crop there to bring the manufacturers in, but we can’t have the crop if it’s too risky.

“There was a senator that planted 200 acres. That’s why I knew it cost a million dollars. He planted 200 acres to it and it got flooded out; it was under three feet of water, and it may still be under water. He’s sick to his stomach.

“I don’t know if it’s going to come. The seed's out there, but I don’t know. What will help, since it’s in the farm bill you might be able to get insurance. It’s just so brand new, we’re still working through the process. But I’m confident we will get all these little things addressed and it’s going to be a viable crop.” Murdock said there were a lot of fly-by-night companies out there and advised farmers before they sign any contract to let a lawyer “go through it with a fine tooth comb.”