In a former tobacco warehouse in Kentucky’s horse country, a silver-haired seventh-generation hemp farmer sits with his business partners. As Andrew Graves, the chairman of Atalo Holdings, leads a discussion of seed varietals and soil consistencies, the group snacks on hemp nuts, grabbed in handfuls from a sack. In the warren of rooms just behind them, oils drip from stills as lab techs figure out formulas for supplements and vapors.
No one in the room is younger than 50. No one talks about marijuana, and honestly, they’d rather you not bring it up either.
Kentucky’s new face of hemp looks remarkably like the old one. A really old one. For much of its history, the Bluegrass State grew hemp, otherwise known as Cannabis sativa—the same root that produces marijuana, though hemp doesn’t share its psychoactive properties. (Marijuana’s active ingredient is THC, which can get you high. Hemp’s is cannabidiol, or CBD, which can’t. The plant does contain a trace amount of THC, but not enough to get anyone stoned.) Kentucky grew more hemp than any other state; by 1850, it was producing more than 40,000 tons. Kentuckians spun the fibrous stalks into rope, clothing, shoes, and American flags. Hemp seeds became a food, and hemp oil became a base for medicines and salves. In 1938, Popular Mechanics touted hemp as a “billion dollar crop” and estimated it could produce more than 25,000 products.
A decade later, nearly all the hemp was gone, writes Rona Kobell.
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