There's a huge movement in Tennessee agriculture, with many people planning to grow or already producing hemp. But as we find out in this episode of Agcast, hempin ain't easy. Hello, I'm Charles Denny. This is Agcast, brought to you by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.
There have been trendy crops in Tennessee agriculture, various grains and barley, exotic fruits, even giant shrimp. But perhaps nothing quite like the hype over hemp. And growing soon in a field near you, it looks like more hemp is on the way. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture projects our state will produce more than 50,000 acres of hemp this year, 10 times the amount from 2018.
Also, the number of growers is growing, 3800 Tennesseans applying this year to plant hemp. Keith Allen of Macon County is part of UTIA's Upper Cumberland Extension Team, organizers of a recent hemp expo at Tennessee Tech's Ag Pavilion. So anyway, it's just been a huge response here. We have well over 100 or so attending the speaker sessions and we have speakers from several states away, presenting here today.
Allen is one of 11 county ag agents putting this meeting together and all those agents from rural areas where hemp farming is really taking off. Right, exactly. And you know, I was in one of the sessions there and one of the speakers said, how many grew it in last year in a few hands, you know? So how many did not grow it in a lot of hands?
So it's all about education, just like with Extension, you know, we're hoping that they'll gain something that they won't get into an act because the enterprise that they will have trouble with and be able to move and market. So education is what it's about today. And I think they all gain from start to finish again in the industrial hemp. Here at the workshop, people interested in hemp could learn about soil prep, planning, harvesting, marketing, and legal issues with a representative from the Tennessee Highway Patrol on hand to talk about law enforcement's role in curtailing possible illegal activities.
Sometimes visually mistaken for marijuana, hemp cannot exceed certain levels of THC under the law, 0.3% to be exact. Hemp can be used to make rope, clothing, and biofuels. Also the oil is sold for everything from diet aids to pain relievers and other medicinal purposes. At the Cookville Expo, hemp growers were also able to sell their CBD oil products.
Okay, so we started in 2018, actually at the end of 2018, we did a small indoor grow and from there we moved it outside. We actually worked with a couple of sister farms, so we're actually a seed to chill from. We actually grow the hemp, we process the hemp, then we compound it into the different oils, make it into sags, and that's what we're doing in most of the sags and oils. Jeff's sales business, Mountain Hemp Farm in Picket County, includes the slogan, hemp and ain't easy, and ain't that the truth?
Growing hemp is hard work, both in production challenges and being physically demanding. That's something you don't have to tell Jeff's sales. I heard that it is fairly leaver and... Yes sir, yes sir.
We were told, we were told as we went to the different meetings and so on around the 2018, the winter of 2018, you know, it was probably three times more labor intensive than tobacco. I grew up on a tobacco farm, it's about five times as labor intensive. If you do everything by hand, and we did. About 3,000 people in Tennessee grew hemp in 2019, and some had difficulty finding quality seed, dealing with pests, and even thieves raiding their fields, thinking they were stealing marijuana.
But perhaps the biggest challenge faced by hemp growers is finding markets for their crop, especially as more and more people get in the business. Some producers still have hemp plants from last year they couldn't sell. Like this, experts believe hemp has potential for volunteer state farmers. In these woods is hemp program coordinator for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.
We all know that farmers need a new commodity crop. Hemp is an excellent soil remediator. It's also a good rotational crop. So however you're looking at hemp, whether medicinally or totally agricultural, hemp definitely has its place in the market.
It's just getting to there. It's a new industry and it has yet to be developed. Well it's obvious from our numbers that the interest is there for lots of different reasons. From creating a farm to saving a farm, it's increased the demographics.
We have young farmers, older farmers, a lot more variety than we traditionally think of our farmers. So that's a positive. Anytime we have a new influx into agriculture, it brings potential and excitement. So we try and work with that.
Look for more UTIA hemp workshops in the future. For now we're about to grow the largest industrial hemp crop ever in our state. And interest is enthusiastic and expanding. Thanks for listening.
I'm Charles Denny.