Eric Dean of Lakeland Hemp.
A Tough Row to Hoe Michigan hemp farmers face challenges at every turn
By Lynda Wheatley On a cold, drizzly Monday morning, Eric Dean sits hunched over a long folding table inside a cramped room on his family’s property in Williamsburg, doing what five generations of Deans have done here since before the Civil War: farming. Eric’s careful work takes place in a temperature-controlled room, a windowless enclosure teeming with bright lights, whirring fans, and a veritable jungle of plants—hip-high, leafy bushes growing in buckets on the floor and petite sprouts growing from dozens of red Solo cups crowded on towers of shelves. Frankly, it doesn’t look much like traditional farming. But after 162 years of successfully shepherding their land from one generation to the next and adapting their fields to the market’s changing demands—corn, wheat, rye, soybeans, dairy cows, beef cattle, chickens, pigs, and more—it’s safe to say the Dean family farmers share something more than a bloodline. They share a knack for keeping one eye on the soil below their boots and the other fixed firmly on the horizon ahead. That’s why, in addition to growing hay and cherries like his family has for the last 50+ years, Eric convinced his parents in 2018 to add a crop that hadn’t been legal to grow in the United States since before he was born: industrial hemp. The Wonder Weed Hemp, you might say, built America. A
quick-growing, regenerative source of food and extraordinarily durable fiber, hemp arrived in North America with the Puritans around 1545. Early colonists used it for building materials, clothing, ship sails, cordage, and so many other essentials that, by the mid-1600s, several colonies mandated its planters grow the stuff. It was one of the nation’s primary crops through the 1700s and 1800s.
of hemp in 2018, then greenlighting an industrial hemp pilot program through the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) in April 2019. Four years ago this spring, hundreds of first-time hemp farmers planted the state’s first legal hemp crops since 1937. What was predicted to be a mega-cash crop for Michigan farmers boomed and busted in
What was predicted to be a mega-cash crop for Michigan farmers boomed and busted in short order, save for a few scrappy and savvy entrepreneurial farmers who are finding ways to keep their hemp farms profitable while they wait for government and other industries to catch up. In 1937, however, for myriad reasons which largely centered on the fact that hemp and marijuana are actually strains of the same plant—cannabis—President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill that ultimately banned hemp production in America. Minus a brief period during World War II when the government did an about-face and encouraged farmers to grow “Hemp for Victory,” hemp remained planta non grata for the next eight decades. That changed five years ago, when the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 legalized hemp production at the federal level. Michigan jumped on the opportunity, authorizing the growing and cultivating
16 • may 30, 2022 • Northern Express Weekly
short order, save for a few scrappy and savvy entrepreneurial farmers who are finding ways to keep their hemp farms profitable while they wait for government and other industries to catch up. Oh, Pioneers Eric and his parents, Dennis and Barbara Dean, are the founders of Lakeview Hemp and among the first to get in on Michigan’s hemp farming resurrection. Hundreds of others joined the Deans in nabbing licenses to grow and/or process the crop, all of them eager to get in on what looked to be the Michigan agricultural industry’s next big thing. “Big” was not to be. Not in 2019,
anyway. By harvest season, nearly half the 514 hemp licensees MDARD surveyed saw their crops destroyed—half due to crop failure, a third due to THC levels that were “hot” (i.e., not compliant with state and federal limits), and the rest due to complications from unexpected male plants, mold, mildew, or simply a lack of labor. Even growers like the Deans, who had successfully nurtured their first hemp crop from seed to healthy harvest, didn’t fare much better. “We thought you could make around $50,000 an acre,” says Dennis Dean. “Just growing it in, cutting it down, and selling to some processor—and they’d just take it off your hands and give you 50 grand an acre for it. But nobody was doing that.” The Deans weren’t alone—or naïve— in their optimism. According to reports in the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere, hemp flower alone was fetching $45,000 to $60,000 an acre in 2019, with some prices topping $100k. You’d think the dismal results for Michigan’s freshman class of 21st-century hemp growers would prompt the farmers to cut and run. But hemp fever got hotter. In 2020, even more registered for licenses: 631 growers and 517 processors. Then, in 2021, things cooled—a lot. Only 175 registered growers and 297 processors registered. This year, the numbers shrank again: 58 registered growers and 215 processors. (Those numbers could still increase a bit; unlike some states, Michigan
