Steve Jarmok walks around a clapboard white farmhouse in Enfield, Connecticut, where he grew up. Just past the green lawn, rows of greenhouses hold seedling tobacco plants. Farmers have grown tobacco in this region north of Hartford since before Europeans arrived. Steve’s family has grown tobacco here for three generations.
“My grandparents came from Poland,” he says. “They bought this house and the farm in 1907. At that time, that tobacco crop was the cash crop. Tobacco was what they could grow and sell.”
Jarmok’s grandparents grew about 15 acres of tobacco. He grows about 375 acres today – that’s a lot for Connecticut. And he’s still expanding. We walk past rows of greenhouses, where seedling tobacco plants sprout, and barns where full-grown tobacco will dry later in the season.
“I’m fortunate,” he says. “I have a son that’s very interested in the business. Some of the other growers that are in their fifties or so, their children may not be that interested in the farm.”
Tobacco is one of Connecticut’s oldest cash crops. The more than 6,000 farmers who grow it will soon have another alternative: industrial hemp. The state says farmers could expect to sell hemp for up to $150,000 an acre, more than twice what tobacco usually brings in.
Agriculture Commissioner Brian Hurlburt says more than a hundred farmers have already signed up for a pilot program to learn to grow hemp.
“These are small businessmen and women who are looking for the next opportunity and see hemp as one of those possibilities,” he says.
Supporters say hemp has thousands of uses, many of them medicinal. It’s the source of CBD oil, purported to help treat anxiety and pain.
“It can take on different soils, it’ll grow well in different weather events,” Hurlburt says. “And tobacco’s very difficult. It requires a lot of attention, and you need each leaf to be almost flawless. And when you’re dealing with nature, that’s a difficult thing to accomplish.”
Last year the federal government passed a farm bill with language that authorized states to allow hemp production. Some states have done so for years, like Colorado and Kentucky, where more than half of all industrial hemp is grown. Connecticut passed its own bill last month to open up hemp production.
The state and the University of Connecticut reached out to farmers this summer with a series of meetings on how to apply for a license – and how to grow hemp.
Ed Kasheta, a third-generation tobacco farmer, set aside 20 acres to grow hemp. He’ll put seeds in the ground later this summer.
“There’s a lot of people that are starting out that are just gonna do a few plants or a small plot. But ours is gonna be one of the larger operations in Connecticut,” he says.
The state says about there’s about 150 acres of farmland that’s either set aside for hemp or has hemp seeds in the ground now. Kasheta says some tobacco farmers have been slow to make the move because tobacco and hemp share a growing season.
“Unfortunately this year we got off to such a late start with it being legalized, almost all the tobacco barns are full with the tobacco that’s committed,” he says.
Plus, he says it’s just a lot of work.
“You have to trace the seed, you have to stay with the plants, you have to keep records of everything that is done,” he says. “It’s not all just farming, tractors and whatnot. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes along with this.”
Kasheta says he expects hemp to catch on quickly, as tobacco farmers try to diversify.
“With tobacco being so socially unpopular, you need to come up with something that’s going to work and yet still produce enough revenue to keep the farm going.”
Jarmok, the tobacco farmer, says he understands why his fellow farmers would want to make the change to hemp.
“If there’s a demand for industrial hemp, that’s a great thing,” he says.
But he says he’s skeptical. You need a lot more space for hemp, and space is one thing that’s hard to come by in Connecticut, compared to other agricultural powerhouse states.
“The drying of hemp, we could use our tobacco barns to dry it, but it takes a lot more space than tobacco. An acre’s worth of tobacco room will only dry about a third of an acre’s worth of hemp.”
Jarmok says he’s not ready to plant hemp himself. But he knows a lot of farmers who want to get a few seeds – just to try it.
