In 2019, there were 26,500 acres of hemp planted in the state by 978 growers, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (KDA). This year, KDA licensed about 240 growers who planted 1,300 acres.
“That’s why we consider ourselves one of the last ones standing,” said Kathy Sanders, who owns Port Royal Plants with her husband, Tim. They grow hemp to create a small line of CBD products which are sold online and at multiple retailers.
She said the health of communities and the health of farms are big priorities to them. And the increasingly difficult marketplace for CBD hasn’t made things easy.
KDA has stated the industry is reacting not only to supply chain issues, but the uncertain future of cannabidiol (CBD) products after the FDA has struggled for years to provide some kind of regulatory framework for these products.
“But this industry — it’s not dead. Obviously there’s still a bright future, still so many benefits that this plant has to offer,” Sanders said. “We just wish more knew, and understood.”
Why CBD
Sanders is also a registered nurse with a master’s in community health. During her almost three decades of experience, she worked for the Kentucky Department of Health and has seen the destruction that the opioid epidemic has left in its wake.
“And one of my sons worked as a pharmacy tech … He would come home and say, ‘Mom, you can’t imagine all the people who are taking all these drugs.’ They have anxiety, they can’t sleep …” the list of reasons goes on, she said, so they’re getting prescribed pharma drugs on top of pharma drugs.
“I knew there had to be an alternative.”
Then her other son hiked the Appalachian Trail and met an 80-year-old hiker who took CBD every day and shared his reasons why.
“We began to look at the health benefits of CBD, the impact that can help others get off of big-pharma meds,” Sanders said.
After the passage of the Farm Bill in 2018, they began growing 6 acres of hemp on the Port Royal farm her in-laws owned for years. “We studied, we did our homework, did the research on cannabinoid receptors …”
Now they grow only 2 acres so they can focus on quality. And the niche they’ve carved out for themselves in the market seems to be working.
Their products are sold in some state parks, and they signed a contract to sell in national parks, too. They’ll soon be inside of Whole Foods, and Sanders said they’re excited to represent the Kentucky Proud label on an even greater scale.
They created balms for joint and muscle pains, tinctures and even CBD dog chews; CBD pet products are now a billion-dollar industry in the U.S.
A new product — a mosquito, tick and bug spray — has been doing well, Sanders said, as a natural alternative to repellants. It’s made using a variety of terpenes, which are the compounds that determine the smell of plants and herbs. They can be isolated to develop different formulas, based on what they’re known to do.
“We’re using a chrysanthemum in the bug spray, as a pyrethrum,” she said, referring to the naturally occurring pesticide found in the flower. “Our skin is our largest organ, we should always be cautious about what we spray on our bodies.”
There’s science to back the benefits of CBD, but the stigma is still there, she said. “They still think you’re going to get high from it, which is a joke.”
It’s even hard for those producing CBD products to get banks to take their business, due to the gray legal areas of selling THC-containing products in Kentucky.
The science
The oil that’s extracted from the biomass of hemp is referred to as a cannabinoid, called CBD — an active ingredient that does not cause a high nor is it addictive. And what some may not realize is those products are already within the human body.
Humans have cannabinoid receptors located throughout, part of the endocannabinoid system (ESC) first identified in the 1990s by researchers studying tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.
A 2021 article, “The endocannabinoid system: Essential and mysterious,” published by the consumer health education division of Harvard Medical School, describes ECS as regulating and controlling many of our most critical bodily functions. Those include learning and memory, emotional processing, temperature and pain control, inflammatory and immune responses, and eating.
No study to date has reported an overdose to CBD. In fact, Sanders said, if too much is used, the body will secrete it out.
And since everyone’s system is different, some may feel immediate relief, based on what they’re using it to treat, while others may take 2-3 weeks.
The farmer’s plight
Sanders attributes Port Royal’s endurance to being flexible, and being able to diversify. “We did most of the work ourselves, and we didn’t get too deep into debt,” she said. They only spent what they had to get into the business, and kept it small.
She said even though she’s a firm believer, she can’t really blame growers for getting out of the game. Many growers say a lot was promised to farmers, and that a lot of those promises weren’t met.
“In 2018, all these big companies came in and got all these farmers to grow for them, and they grew tremendous amounts,” she said.
Hemp is a very difficult plant to grow, Sanders said; way harder than what most people thought.
“Then the males came up. I have buddies in Henry County who spent tons of money on workers — $5,000 cleaning out the fields every week to keep the male plants out,” she said, which ruin the whole crop
“They spent all this money, and when it came time to harvest, these companies said they weren’t buying. So these farmers were stuck, holding the bag.” She knows of one man and his son who lost their farm in Henry County because of a similar situation.
Hemp producers in the CBD business deal in biomass, which is the excess biological material left behind after the flowers are cultivated. Each plant can produce 1-2 pounds, yielding about 2,000-3,000 pounds of biomass per acre.
“But it takes about 35 pounds of material to make a liter of crude oil. That’s a lot of material,” Sanders said. “You literally had barns full of biomass that people couldn’t get rid of.”
She said now what she thinks is happening is that less are growing since they’re still getting through all the excess they were stuck with.
So, that’s why her family is focusing on perfecting their product line to keep that niche carved and going. “The whole family is involved in it. My son, Jed, and I do most of the work.”
Sanders still does some consulting and training as a nurse, “but this Port Royal is taking the majority of my time.” And that’s OK, she said, because it’s something she believes in.
“I’m very committed, and very excited about the future.”
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