Crested Butte resident plants first industrial hemp crop in six decades

“I would bet that a lot of other farmers will be jumping on board”

It was a big weekend for Crested Butte’s Ryan Loflin. After years of having his hands in a lot of different enterprises around the valley, he put his hands in the dirt on Colorado’s eastern plains and drew national attention for being the first person to plant an industrial hemp crop in the United States in more than 60 years.

With 450 hemp plants that he started at his shop in the Riverland Industrial Park, along with 70 pounds of seed imported from Europe, Loflin is making history, toting along two documentary film crews and media outlets from Crested Butte to eastern Colorado to document the occasion.
Until last year, growing hemp in Colorado, or anywhere in the United States, was against the law, owing to the plant’s similarity to marijuana, which contains psychoactive elements largely absent from hemp.
Colorado recently opened the door to industrial hemp cultivation with the passage of Amendment 64, which legalizes marijuana for recreational use and allows for cultivation. Then, in early April, State Sen. Gail Schwartz won unanimous committee approval for a bill that would enable farmers to grow up to 10 acres of industrial hemp to find the best strains for specific applications.
That bill still needs to go through the legislature.
After finishing a small “ceremonial planting” of the live plants along with a few additional rows on Monday, May 13 at his parent’s farm near Springfield, Colo. on the state’s eastern plains, where he’s leasing 60 acres of former alfalfa field, Loflin was tired. He hopes to plant the remainder of his crop during Hemp History Week in early June. As a partner in Rocky Mountain Hemp, Loflin is excited about what the future for Colorado’s new hemp industry might hold.
“So far people around here have been really supportive,” Loflin says of Springfield, where he grew up on his parents’ farm. “Things around here have been hurting. I really think hemp production could be one of the things that brings an economic recovery to rural Colorado, and next spring I think more people will be planting it.”
Loflin says the prohibition against growing the plant, prized for its fiber and the oil produced from its seed, dates to the 1930s.
But now that the state has stepped out of the past with the passage of Amendment 64, he’s the first to put hemp plants in the ground.
Because of the prohibition domestically, Loflin had to get his seed from Europe, and he bought whatever was available. “We’re just taking what seeds we can get at this point,” he said. “And it’s so expensive.”
From the 700 pounds of seed he expects to harvest sometime in the late summer, Loflin hopes to start something of a seed bank for what he expects will be a flood of farmers interested in the state’s newest cash crop. There are also plans being laid for other types of hemp production from the seed, including a hemp edible fiber and protein powder.
“I would bet that a lot of other farmers will be jumping on board,” he said.
Already, Rocky Mountain Hemp has sold almost its entire first crop, even before it goes in the ground. Whole Foods, the national grocer, has contracted to buy 50 acres’ worth of the seed, which contains between 33 percent and 35 percent hemp oil that is said to be full of essential omega fatty acids. Another 10 acres’ worth of seed is going to Dr. Bronner’s, a line of hemp-infused body care products like shampoo and lotion.
David Bronner, the company’s founder, was even present for the planting and offered to lend Loflin his hemp seed oil press if their arrangement to get one from Germany falls through.
Amid a decade-long drought and the uncertainty that followed in eastern Colorado’s farming communities like Springfield, Loflin says the hope is that the ground-breaking agricultural pursuit could grow into an industry that will improve the economy in rural parts of Colorado.
While crops like corn require substantial amounts of water that isn’t easy to come by on the eastern plains, hemp needs just eight inches of water in a season to survive, Loflin says, and it doesn’t need fertilization or pesticides.
And by this fall, the first Colorado-grown hemp crop will be out in the market, opening a domestic supply option in the biggest hemp-consuming country in the world, where growing the plant remains illegal under federal law.
“There is federal crop insurance that I won’t be able to get. And there is the potential of [the government] coming in and cutting the crop down, for sure. Then you lose all your time and money and everything … It’s hard to say,” Loflin says. “I think they’ll sit back and watch it play out. They’ll have their hands full with Amendment 64 and big marijuana grow operations. I doubt they’ll bother with a little hemp growing operation.”