Planting Ahead

Businessman/

Farmer Sees Future In Industrial Hemp and its Products 

By Guy Fletcher

Photography by Turner Photography Studio

ADAMSTOWN—Andy Bennett reaches into a pile of reed-thin plant stalks and fine fiber sitting on the floor in his barn. To the uninitiated, this could be straw or hay or many other plants grown on Frederick County farms. To the initiated, it is hemp.

“I play with it all the time,” Bennett says, rolling the stalks and fiber in his fingers. The wall of bales stacked high in the cavernous barn are destined to be used as bedding for horses and smaller animals. Hemp can also be used as a solvent for cleaning up industrial spills. But in Bennett’s eyes, this is just the beginning.

Bennett’s Hart Hemp is the first licensed industrial hemp grower in Maryland. Last year, he harvested some 715 bales of the plant, partly from a small patch of plants on his farm but mostly from a network of farmers he uses throughout the region. This year he estimates increasing production to 1,600 bales. 

“We’re making a good go of it,” he says with a smile.

In hemp, Bennett sees almost the perfect crop. It doesn’t require pesticides or fungicides and instead of draining nutrients from the soil, hemp adds them when the unharvested parts of the plant decompose in the field. The deer and other animals that enjoy feasting on corn and other farm crops have no taste for hemp. Once harvested, hemp can stay stored in tightly bound bales for up to a year before its commercial use.

Hemp’s biggest drawback is its public image, mainly because it’s often confused for its better-known relative, marijuana. Both hemp and marijuana belong to the same species and the two plants look somewhat similar, but the main difference between the two is their content of the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Hemp has .3 percent or less THC, while marijuana can be as much as 25 percent.

Nonetheless, hemp was included in the federal ban on marijuana enacted in 1937 and it would remain outlawed until 2018 when agricultural legislation allowed its use. Hemp legalization created a “green rush” among those seeking to profit from cannabidiol (CBD) products, Bennett says, but the market was smaller than anticipated, leaving many plants unsold. Meanwhile, many hemp entrepreneurs didn’t realize there was value beyond CBD. 

 “They were just taking the flower off the plants,” he says. “They were leaving the rest of the plant in the field.”

Bennett purchased these 61 acres from the Chuck Wade Sod Farm in 2021. The land includes a home for his family and his in-laws. His ready-made Bullfrog Sod business now has customers such as municipalities, golf courses “and a lot of landscapers,” he says.

For Bennett, whose day job is running the Piedmont Group farm insurance agency, adding hemp was a natural fit. He already had the industry contacts and had just bought a farm. He also saw so much potential in the product. And one other thing. 

“I needed something new,” he says, laughing.

The uses for hemp have not been fully explored yet, Bennett says. Fabric is one obvious market, but the next frontier can be bioplastics, using hemp to create consumer products that are now mostly made from petrochemicals. Bennett points to the 50 million plastic water bottles Americans use and toss away every year, most of them destined for landfills where they linger for centuries.

“We can switch to hemp and make those plastic bottles 100 percent biodegradable,” Bennett says. “That’s where I want to play.”