DANVILLE, Ind. – Joe Doub has one goal when it comes to the 1,000 bales of fiber hemp he’s stored at his farm since 2019: he wants to find a market for it.

As Doub has found, though, reaching that goal has been anything but easy.

The 2018 farm bill allowed for the commercial production of hemp and removed it from the controlled substances list. There are three types of hemp – grain for food products and cosmetics; cannabinoids, including CBD and CBG; and fiber for textiles and industrial applications.

Doub and his son Andrew planted 180 acres of fiber hemp on their farm near Danville in spring 2019. They had a contract with Louisville, Ky.-based Sunstrand, LLC. The contract called for them to be paid based on emergence and canopy; they were also to be paid per pound for storage. The Doubs harvested about 140 acres.

“In January and February of 2019, the corn market was awful,” Joe Doub recalled. “We decided to go ahead and try hemp. There was a meeting in March (2019) at Franklin University. A crop adjuster went for us because my son and I couldn’t attend. The people (who arranged the meeting) talked like they had four to five fiber hemp buyers lined up. They said Sunstrand was a very reputable company.”

Doub said Sunstrand told him in late July or August 2019 he wouldn’t be paid. The company, which processed fiber from hemp and other plants, filed for bankruptcy in January 2020. It was founded in 2014.

He’s tried since then to sell his hemp without success. “We thought this was going to be the next salvation crop,” Doub explained. “But now, we can’t find a market. I just want to get this sold and out of here. There’s no market, no processing facilities. It has just been one nightmare after the other. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

Doub said he’s in the hole about $100,000. He’s out the cost of fertilizer, equipment he had to purchase, cash rent and expenses related to hemp storage. Doub has farmed since 1972 and has corn, soybeans, wheat, hay and cattle.

No one he’s contacted, including area departments of agriculture and state and federal legislators, has been able to help him achieve his goal of finding a market.

Don Robison, seed administrator for OISC, said the situation isn’t unique to Doub. “There is still plenty of 2019 and 2020 crop stored in barns and sheds in the state,” he said. “And, it is not just Indiana that has this issue. OISC and Purdue Hemp do a survey at the end of the production year and roughly 70 percent of the growers are saying they have not made a profit. Much of that issue is the crop isn’t sold.”

Interest in hemp production gained momentum a few years ago when growing the crop was “wildly profitable if you could sell your crop,” Robison noted. “We heard of people making hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre if they could sell it. People saw those numbers and that’s one of the reasons they were telling us loudly, ‘you need to get out of the way and let us grow hemp.’ The market was over-hyped, big time.”

Hoosier farmers harvested about 2,000 acres of hemp in 2020. About 85 percent of those acres were in hemp for cannabinoids.

Robison said it’s hard to know where the market for hemp will go, though he does anticipate eventual growth for fiber and grain hemp. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is researching the possibility of allowing hemp grown for grain in animal feed, but that process takes time, he stated.

Doris Hamilton, hemp program manager for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, said about 200,000 acres of hemp were planted nationwide in 2019. For 2020, the estimate is 100,000 acres. In 2019, more hemp was produced than was demanded by the market, she said.

“A large percentage of the 2019 crop didn’t have a buyer at the end of the growing season,” Hamilton explained. “Most farm commodities have an established market. Fluctuation in production is based on a fluctuation in price. But with hemp, you’re looking at price fluctuations but also at a non-existence of sales. Not only could growers not get the price they wanted but they couldn’t get a price at all.”

The hemp companies that have gone out of business the last couple of years “were casualties of a new industry,” she said. “This is a new industry and it is experiencing growing pains nationwide. Hemp is going to survive. It will stabilize over time. Potential growers should do their homework and weigh their ability to withstand high risk.”

The objective of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) is to determine where the state fits into the hemp industry and what types of hemp will grow best in the state, said Bruce Kettler, ISDA director. “Our farmers know how to grow things. I think we will be successful if we can get processors here to help our farmers.”

Kettler urged farmers to do some research before starting to grow hemp. He suggested studying the types of hemp and the potential markets. He also said growers should have a signed contract for their hemp before proceeding.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for farmers and it doesn’t matter the size of the operation,” he said. “But a farmer really has to stop and say, ‘what are my objectives here. Am I looking for crop diversity or am I looking to get into a new market.’ Because it’s a new industry you have to be careful and do your homework. Don’t get yourself in deeper than you can afford to lose.”

Marguerite Bolt, hemp extension specialist with Purdue University’s department of agronomy, said she thinks the market for fiber and grain hemp will gain more traction over the next five-10 years. “Grain has more potential if it’s approved for livestock feed,” she pointed out. She doesn’t know if fiber hemp has the potential to replace paper-based products, adding, “The problem is those products are expensive and are often outside the reach of most consumers. I’m optimistic but I’m also patient.”

Farmers still storing fiber hemp from 2019 and 2020 have limited options regarding what to do with the crop, Bolt said. “They may have to look outside the state, but is it worth it to move the hemp that far away, considering transportation costs? It’s unfortunate to say, but they may end up deciding they’re just going to destroy it.”

Marty Mahan, co-founder and president of the Heartland Hemp Cooperative in southern Indiana, said that agreeing on a price can be a problem in getting hemp sold. “The kicker can be the shipping costs,” he said. “A processor might say they can only afford to pay 5 cents a pound but a farmer can’t afford to accept 5 cents a pound. The options are to sell it at a loss or sit on it.”

Mahan founded the co-op with five others who had contracted with Sunstrand. They started the co-op to try to create a market themselves after the company closed.

Co-op officials plan to purchase a decorticator this year, which will allow them to have a marketable product to show people, he said. A decorticator separates the fiber from the hurd, or woody core. There is a pretty accessible market for hurd in animal bedding, Mahan said.

For more information about hemp, visit www.oisc.purdue.edu/hemp/index.html or https://purduehemp.org/.