Kentucky College Offers Hemp Production Course

Kentucky’s Maysville Community and Technical College is set to offer a course on hemp production in the spring semester, Morehead News reports. The class – Introduction to Hemp Production – will focus on foundational concepts and theory applications for field production and distribution.

The class will also focus on science-based cultivation strategies related to cannabis or hemp, such as temperatures, sunlight, soil, growing cycles, how the plant absorbs water and nutrients, and how these inputs affect the plant’s chemical make-up and genetics.

Carrie Taylor, Horticulturist and Workforce Solutions instructor at MCTC, said that after the 2019 growing season, farmers indicated a need for more information related to hemp and that the state’s industry has a variety of training demands and that the program looks to fill those needs for hemp farmers. Taylor added that farming is a mixture of cyclical demands which need to be identified by the industry as it evolves.

“Many farmers who’ve grown tobacco and other crops in this region recognize the challenges that exist in nature. They understand there are basic science-based criteria that improve crop production.” – Taylor, to Morehead News

Andrew Culbertson, CEO of Acela Bio Medical Inc, a hemp processing facility in Maysville that contracted with 120 Kentucky hemp farmers last year, said that “education is the only way to survive” in the “new and daily evolving” hemp industry.

In 2018, industrial hemp sales in Kentucky saw a three-fold increase from $17 million in 2017 to $58 million. Hemp processors purchased $18 million worth of hemp from Kentucky farmers in 2018.