(crickets chirping) - As you probably know, there are many uses for industrial hemp.

My particular interest is in the paper industry.

Industrial hemp is the strongest of all natural fibers.

So it is an ideal fiber of all paper making.

Industrial hemp is a renewable resource producing fiber, seed and oil.

Hemp is a cash crop grossing $500 to $800 per acre.

- As the government is looking at cutting down the federal subsidies for our farmers, we need to look at alternative crops that are gonna help them out.

(suspenseful music) (wind whooshing) (engine revving) - All we're doing right now is we're growing this corn and we're selling it wherever they're taking it.

Overseas, feed lots.

Whether it goes to beef and then the beef gets sent overseas.

But we're pretty well just exchanging our water and putting it in crop form and selling it one dollar for a dollar or one dollar for a dollar o' one.

Like nobody's getting rich off raising corn.

And at the end of the day, we're just depleting our resources and nobody's making hardly any money.

And we're just kicking the can down the road for some day when our wells do dry up.

'Cause every year it don't matter.

You talk to any farmer around here.

Wells continue to decrease in production.

I'm fifth generation.

My son and my nephew will be six generation.

My great, great grandpa homesteaded up here.

And yeah, they seen the depression and he never left.

They toughed it out.

That's why we're still here today.

(birds chirping) (engine revving) (cow moos) Just bring like six or seven at a time.

- My name is Rafe Schroder.

I'm a fifth generation farmer and rancher in Campo, Colorado.

I farm with my brother, my dad, my mom.

Now I'm married and my brother's married and we both have kids, so they'll be six generation.

And we run cattle and plant corn, wheat, alfalfa, milo and hemp.

Those are some of our most notable crops.

I wouldn't say we're huge, but we're not small.

We're right in that mid-sized family farm operation, can't be small anymore and make it work.

It takes so much equipment to make this work.

And we have three families trying to live off our farm.

So it takes a considerable amount of acreage to even make the operation work.

A lot of parents that are in ag and farming, they don't want their kids to do this.

And after I've seen a few hardship years trying to do this, I can understand it's really, really stressful.

And it's hard to come home at the end of the day and know how hard you worked and how many bills are still left to be paid.

And at the end of the day, I mean, we still got our family and our health and we know what's important, but it still doesn't justify the fact that you just work nonstop to try to barely get by.

(engine revving) (wind whooshing) (engine revving) - That planter cost $170,000 just the planter, not the tractor.

The tractor is another $150,000.

When you talk about equity, that's where all of our equity's at.

It's in our equipment.

So we work, work, work all of our life and buy this equipment and pay for the equipment.

And then at the end of it, our life savings is the equipment or the land or whatever we work for.

And that's what we sell off or leave it with the kids, so then they can start ahead and not behind like us.

It's really hard to buy all the land, buy all the equipment and operate it and farm it.

(engine revving) - This the big town of Campo?

- This is Campo, yep.

Born and raised here and nothing's changed.

Not even the highway, it's the same.

(man chuckles) And my kids, they act like they wanna do it some days.

But you never know, just keep building it.

That's what my dad said his whole life, he always built it for the family.

In hopes that his kids would want to take it over and keep going.

CBD has changed his life for sure.

I've noticed just going through cancer, he had throat cancer.

He had a tube in for six months.

He couldn't eat, drink, nothing, so he had that tube and it brought his appetite back, his demeanor, his attitude.

I mean, everything was just back to normal once he started taking that stuff.

So he was using it and Ryan Loflin contacted us to see if we'd be interested in growing some.

And we said, yeah, for sure, we will.

Within nine days of saying yes, we have seeds in the ground starting to grow.

I had never even seen a hemp seed or marijuana seed for that fact.

It was all new to me, how tiny they were.

(vehicle engine revving) One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

(woman counting faintly) Five or six hundred down, many thousands to go.

(Bethleen laughs) - Will says, "Hi, Bethleen, my business account is being shut down my business account is being shut down and they aren't giving me a reason."

"What bank should I use?"

(man laughs) Well, I think we all know the reason.

I'm just gonna call him.

Hey, Will.

We are planting 30,000 seedlings right now, it's super exciting.

Yeah.

(Bethleen laughs) So are you in Colorado right now or are you in Oregon?

Oh, you're in California, okay.

Yeah, it doesn't matter, you're dead to them, so move on.

I was gonna say, if you were gonna be in Colorado, you should go to the Chase bank on Boardwalk in Fort Collins because they are a hemp friendly bank.

And Chase is branch by branch for accepting hemp accounts or not.

And so I would say shop around at Chase.

That's probably your best bet.

(sarcastic) You don't want people in Yuma knowing your business?

(Bethleen chuckles) That's so funny.

I had a girl at Tractor Supply ask me today: She's like, "You don't grow marijuana, do you, Bethleen?"

I was, like, "I wish!

I would have so much money."

(Bethleen laughs) And she looked at me funny.

(machine whirring) My name is Mike Sullivan.

I'm a co-owner and operator of Hemp Farm, Colorado.

We do outdoor CBD acreage and year round greenhouse production for trimmed flower, some biomass, and seed production.

(crickets chirping) I grew up in Yuma county.

I'm actually a fifth generation ag producer here.

Like what Mike said, we have an indoor grow as well as field specializing in high CBD seed.

And also just high cannabinoid in general.

(engine revving) What is the date today?

The 13th.

(Ryan laughs) Today is May the 13th, and we're planting hemp.

This crop is the actual first industrial hemp crop that's planted in a commercial farming application.

In 60 years, so it's pretty significant to Colorado and to the nation.

My name is Ryan Loflin.

I'm a fourth generation Colorado farmer.

In 2013, I challenged the federal government, the DEA, by planting 60 acres of industrial hemp.

We actually had two different plots planted and the first plot was on Mother's Day actually.

My mother and my friend's mother, actually helped us plant seed in the ground.

So that was a special day for all of us.

That was our first seed in the ground for 57 years almost.

And so it was pretty tremendous day.

- The majority of people agree that the drug war has to end.

- Right.

- At least as it pertains to marijuana.

- Sure, right.

We need to de categorize the hemp from the marijuana.

- Yes, exactly, the DEA hasn't made that distinction because it behooves them not to.

But what's happening I think is that as we can't continue to spend a trillion dollars, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars every year on the drug war, a trillion dollars so far that has failed.

- Yeah.

- That it really is beneficial to the entire country for us to get this done.

Well, what happened initially was that I was taking a class.

I was still working as a yellow page salesperson in the day.

I took a class for fun and it was a political science 101 class.

There was a gentleman that year, while I was watching the legislature, named Lloyd Casey, who was trying at that point to get hemp legalized.

- Senate Bill 67 by Senator Casey consuming production of industrial hemp as an agricultural commodity.

Would you please explain that Senator Casey.

- The bill will permit in 1996, should it become law, one person, a farmer in Weld county, Bob Winter, President of the Weld County Farm Bureau to plant a crop of industrial hemp.

Industrial hemp is defined in the bill as having .5% or less of THC.

- How much different does this look growing in the field than the other hemp?

And how easy is it gonna be for people that need to regulate that other kind of hemp?

- The bill didn't pass because the DEA swept in, in the last committee.

Up until then it was passing through the committees and the very last committee, they came in and put the fear into the legislators who were looking to run for reelection and emphasized that they would be looked upon as soft on drugs.

At the end of my career, when I retired, I gave myself about a year to relax after a very stressful job.

And about a year later, I thought, okay, I'm ready.

What do I wanna do?

And what do I care most about?

And it was like I wanted to go way inside and not try to think of something to do that had anything to do with what I'd done before.

And so, well, what do I care most deeply about?

And I knew it was the environment.

And so I thought, well, okay, how can I have the most impact besides my daily choices about paper, plastic or whatever.

And I knew that the answer was hemp.

I mean, it came just like that.

I just saw so many opportunities for agriculture, for the environment and for the economy.

I just thought here's one thing that can have such a huge impact on all three of those areas.

- Industrial hemp is used for industrial uses for various amount of products that could be very beneficial to our environment.

- Industrial hemp is a renewable resource producing fiber, seed and oil.

And whereas hemp is environmentally friendly.

One acre of hemp saves four acres of trees.

- So if you really want to protect forest, if you really want to protect the rain forest, one of the best substitutes in the making of paper, which is our biggest user, is hemp fiber.

- Hemp seeds in comparison are 25 to 35% oil.

And an oil which has been described by some as possibly nature's most balanced oil because of its extremely high essential fatty acid content.

- As you probably know, there are many uses for industrial hemp.

Industrial hemp is the strongest of all natural fibers.

- I noticed at some point, we got past what I call the giggle factor.

In the early years, when I would have a conversation with people, it was always, we'd have to get past and oh, can I smoke my drapes?

It's like, well, you can, but you won't get high.

So that was a frustration, but usually I could get past it enough to educate them that there was a difference between hemp and marijuana and what the difference was and what the incredible potential uses were for hemp.

So I got a little, little education into each person I talked to.

- Right now, they're sweeping the ground, which basically runs an implement just below the surface of the dirt and turns it same time.

And it kills all the surface weeds.

(machine beeps) There he (police car) is.

Speeding, too.

And then we'll fill up the air seeder and start planting hemp seed.

(wind whooshing) - It's gotta be blowing 30 miles an hour.

- Colorado had just passed Amendment 64 and it just felt like the time was there to push this industry in the right direction.

And I had a connection in Europe.

Was how I was able to bring in my seeds and to plant the 60 acres.

So, it was just the perfect storm, everything came together.

(gentle music) - This is where all the industrial hemp will go.

Here pretty quick.

It's gonna be 60 acres of two varieties.

And yeah, it's the future of American farming.

- Well, when we was told what we was doing, it was like, are you sure this is all okay and stuff.

- I don't really know.

I just, I mean, here to help.

- It's all kinda exciting.

- Yeah.

It's pretty exciting.

- See if this little county we live in, take it or throw this away or whatever.

It's kind of been a hush hush deal.

It's been real quiet.

The only ones that knows just us few.

- Viable hemp seed at that time was literally sitting next to cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines on the list of controlled substances.

It's really what we needed was just the push to get through it.

- We got 1500 pounds of hemp seed.

It's the start of the first American hemp crop.

Pretty exciting.

Getting ready to go put it in the air seeder here in about 45 minutes, hopefully, to an hour.

It's been an hour for the last two hours.

(gentle music) (engine revving) - Whoo.

(Ryan laughs) Whoo, it's 500 pounds up the hill pretty quick.

Whoo.

What?

500 pounds of love baby.

(Ryan laughing) Hemp seeds, American hemp seeds.

Whoo.

Well, I think that farming has a future now because of industrial hemp.

And you've seen it with other young people that are interested in it now, because it's a new option.

It's not corn, it's not, wheat, it's not soybeans.

This new option, it gives hope to the farmer, which is invaluable right now.

That alone, you can't put a price tag on.

When I was 18, I left the farm.

I didn't see a future in agriculture as a young man, it was 1991 and farming was hard in the '80s.

A lot of our neighbors lost to their farms to bankruptcy.

And so I just didn't see a future in it.

And so I left the farm and when I did that, I got out in the world and I smoked cannabis and I experienced life.

And as a farming kid, I was always connected to farming and I saw what Canada had done and the profits that Canadian farmers were doing in the early '90s.

It was pretty impressive.

They were getting $400 an acre to where wheat was $30 an acre.

So it really opened my eyes.

And I had always said, if it ever became an option, that's what would bring me back to the farm was hemp farming.

- Big conversation in the United States right now, actually, because the average age of a farmer is, geez, I'm not even sure what it is now, it's over 60.

And when I was a kid, the majority of people with family farms, they sent their kids to college.

And they said, there's no future in farming.

You need to get an education in something else and you need to go work in a different industry.

And maybe one child could come back to run the family farm.

So most of the people, my age that you see coming back that are on the farm now, went to school and they have an agronomy degree.

So that's always a backup for them if they need to go be a crop consultant or something like that.

But the farms just don't make enough money, even at the size that they are these days to support multiple families like they used to be able to do.

(crickets chirping) - People in the farming community are excited about hemp coming in.

You have a lot of pessimistic people that are against it, just for the mere fact, it is related to marijuana in a way.

I can see the benefits from my family, personally, and people in my life that the CBD has helped.

So overall, I'd say more people are excited than aren't, but a lot of people, they have a hard time with change too.

So the book is still to be wrote on hemp.

And there's no good book of saying this is how you do it when you do it.

Maybe in other countries, but the hemp crop has been so suppressed in the United States for years on end, there's not a lot of research done to tell the American farmer, "Hey, this is what you do when you do it."

- Picture of Laura Kriho.

She was a student at the University of Colorado when I first met her.

And she's the one that said, you need to learn something about hemp.

I was a brand new Senator and I was 66 years old.

And I was a free spirit type guy.

"Hey, would you, Senator, sponsor bill to legalize hemp?"

I said, "Sure, I need to know something about it."

So they set up a meeting and Laura ran the meeting and that's how I met her.

And so she educated me.

The bills were '95, and then '96.

My God, I had every district attorney.

I had every chief of police.

I even had people from mad mothers against drunks, getting after me.

Because you're promoting a gateway drug.

Well, (expletive), THC in Cannabis is no more a gateway drug than alcohol is a gateway drug.

- And it is not new information that marijuana is also a gateway drug.

A youngster who smokes marijuana is 85 times more likely to use cocaine than one who does not.

- The Netherlands legalized marijuana to be sold in 2000 coffee shops, student drug use increased 250%.

People will be able to take a hemp product and manufacture a street drug.

We have proof of that in that .1% THC has been used and mixed chemically and formed a tobacco type char for the street drug, 40% THC.

It has been proven that marijuana causes schizophrenia.

That there is not any safe way to use marijuana.

Even .25% THC was found Woodstock.

That's what they all got stoned on.

Senator Casey is on record in the newspapers as saying that he's going legalize it come hell or high water.

And he is also saying that he is doing it because we have too many people in jail on marijuana offenses.

(fast piano music) - It's just mind blowing to me that industrial hemp, this non psychoactive plant that can feed you, clothe you and house you, was literally listed with the hardest drugs known to man.

And treated the same way.

And anybody who grew it was a criminal.

And so, it's just insane to me, I can't even understand it, how we got to where we are.

But thank goodness, we're on the right path to correcting that.

Right now, currently in the United States, our THC limit is .3% of THC content in the plant.

And that's the psychoactive component that will get you high.

Unfortunately, a lot of these feral hemp that we grew back in the '40s, which is very, very good genetics.

A lot of 'em are a half a percent, so .5.

So we're just not able to utilize these whole genetics that I guarantee in 1942, they never did THC analyzation on a hemp crop.

And didn't force a farmer to actually pay money to do that as well.

Yeah, I mean, it really is insane that here in Colorado, especially here in Colorado, that we are required to follow this .3% limit because we have legal cannabis that literally has 30% THC in it.

It averages 20%.

On average at your dispensaries, that's what you get, 20%.

So, there's no benefit to a marijuana grower to grow 1% hemp for THC when you can grow 30%.

So it really just does not make any sense other than it's another regulatory set by states and governments.

(Ryan laughs) - So this is greenhouse one and in it, we're growing our most popular variety of trimmed flower.

It's called the golden cherry and it's a very nice producer.

It's got a few more weeks to go, you can see that the buds are filling out very nicely and, significantly, down the stem as well.

Okay, and this is greenhouse two.

So this is a new variety that we've been working on and it got a lot taller than we anticipated.

The top of the greenhouse is 12 feet tall.

The greenhouses themselves are 24 by a 100-foot long.

Pretty interesting to work in here.

There's a very limited workspace now.

(banjo music) Last year, on our irrigated circle, we used about nine applied inches of water on our hemp.

And traditionally for the area, if you look at corn producers, they're anywhere in the range from 18 to 24 inches throughout the season annually.

And some of that does depend on soil type because your sandier soils.

They don't build up that cone of depression as fast.

And so they need to apply more water just to properly saturate the root zone.

But in theory, more of that does travel and make it back down to the aquifer as well.

The Ogallala Aquifer is the nation largest underground reserve of water.

And it is underneath eight states.

It stretches from the Dakotas all the way south to parts of Texas.

A lot of farm ground is located on the aquifer and for many communities, it's their only source of water.

(dramatic music) So part of the solution for what we do about the ongoing depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is growing low water use crops.

Corn is a high water use crop, and it's not valuable now, like it used to be.

People are actually losing money on it yet they're still growing it.

And part of it is just generational mentality.

Like, "I don't know what else to do.

My grandpa grew corn and my dad grew corn.

And so I know how to grow corn."

And so taking on a new crop is challenging.

Pretty much every farmer out here, how they afford to farm is they have an operating loan.

And so whatever they want to do, their loan officer at the bank has to approve of and say, yes, this should make money.

And so we've seen instances where a producer is interested in growing an alternative crop and his loan officer says, "Absolutely not, we won't lend you the money."

And so most people just take the path of least resistance because things are hard enough.

And so that's one of the biggest obstacles I think for adapting for some new lower water use crops like industrial hemp.

(engine revving) Never put your hands in the back here, if it jams or anything like that, if you're gonna put your hands back here, unplug the machine first.

And so, they are variable speed controlled, but we do run them at 100%.

(engine revving) And then you just push it down.

I'll try this one again.

You can see, it just kinda breaks it off smaller like that.

And so that'll get it appropriately processed.

And so we've got over 10 acres left of plants that we have to get dried in the warehouse.

And so the idea is to get the process or get them dried and off the lines as quickly as possible.

So we can get more of the material in out of the field.

And, we are a little bit concerned about the weather that's coming up as well, because if we have a hard freeze, have a hard freeze, it could really impact the quality and we could lose acres worth of material.

And so, that's why we're just gonna try to move it through as quickly as possible.

- All right.

So we need to get this pile of hemp off the trailer so we can hook it up.

And the field crew can start heading to the field to get the next load.

(gentle music) (man heavily breathes) (engine revving) - Harvest time is definitely no joke.

We've been running 12 to 16-hour days, seven days a week right now.

A few days, the days that it's too windy to run, or if there's weather, then we still work a 12-hour to 16-hour day just doing maintenance and keeping the equipment up.

From the first time it freezes, you have seven to 10 days to get the product out of the field.

Before it starts losing its quality.

(machine beeps) So we are definitely in a push right now to get all of the crop out.

And we still have 10 circles to go.

And we're trying to do a circle a day.

We're averaging about 35 acres per combine, and each circle's 125 acres.

So you can do the math on that.

To do a circle a day, takes a lot.

We've had some breakdowns and some things that have slowed us down, but when everything's running right, we can knock out 125 acres a day.

(crickets chirping) - How about this one, will you clip that one?

- Yup.

We started harvesting Saturday and today is Wednesday.

And tomorrow there's going to be a storm coming in.

They say, it's gonna get about 15 degrees.

And so the snow is not what our main concern is.

It's just the cold temperature for a prolonged period of time, 'cause it can really damage the plants.

And so it may make them so we can't harvest them and do anything else with them and everything that we don't get out of the field today and tomorrow morning will just be a total loss.

(dramatic music) (wind whooshing) (engine revving) (engine revving) (engine roaring) (man speaks on radio indistinctly) - I'm just on their harvest crew.

I'm helping them with this, but they have so much.

(Austin L. laughs) And it is hard, it's definitely hard.

Long days and damn near every days.

Or nights, I guess, whatever.

We're a little over halfway done.

But we're not done yet.

It's just a game, you just have to roll with the punches every day.

(wind whooshing) - Yeah, and they were saying on the news this morning, it was like 30 or 40 degrees below normal.

So that's pretty cold.

Not very professional, but we didn't have our heater hooked up.

Our propane heater hooked up for the greenhouse and then everything grew bigger than we thought.

So we weren't able to get it hooked up, so making due.

I just finally got this thing working.

Pain in the (expletive) to get it hooked up.

But that should be enough heat.

Push the air through a little bit and keep 'em alive through the night.

And then we have our greenhouse wide heater for the other greenhouse, so it'll be all right.

- And, you already went and like checked the field?

How as that?

- We haven't checked the field yet, but it's gone.

Yeah, the one out here it's frozen.

You can like touch the leaves and they just break off.

So they've frozen.

Yep, I think it'll still be okay for biomass, but not for anything else.

- How do you feel about that?

- It is what it is.

It's not good.

(Mike laughs) You work all season and then you get an early freeze.

And we've probably got like 20% of the field out, maybe 30% or something.

But it is what it is.

Not much you can do about that.

Maybe there'll be some insurance for a freeze.

They have it for just about everything else, but they should have insurance for early freeze too.

So at least you can get your cost back.

(dramatic music) - 2020 and 2019 were definitely challenging years for the industry.

We saw a large amount of growth of the industry all over the nation.

And unfortunately, the infrastructure for processing wasn't set up to take advantage of all of those acres grown.

And so a lot of producers were unable to sell their harvest or portions of their harvest.

And so it left a sour taste for a lot of people that in combination with the continuing bureaucracy and trying to figure out how to regulate this plant.

With hemp to really open it up for wide scale adoption, you've gotta make it more like every other crop and with all of these regulations right now that don't appear to be going away anytime soon, it's gonna keep the amount of growers smaller.

Not often the innovators are really the ones that make out in the end.

It's the larger farms and larger corporations that after you've been through all of the hard stuff and the rocky roads and you've paved the way that they come in and they have the ability to just out perform you.

And that's just being an innovator pretty much everywhere, every industry.

(birds chirping) - Yeah, we had one field go hot.

It went extremely hot.

It was 10 times over the limit.

It wasn't even close.

So we blatantly, got misled and taken advantage of for a lot of money and it wrecked our whole grow.

We had to destroy it.

Whole year's worth of work, an incredible amount of money down the drain.

(dramatic music) - I don't feel like the farmers should be the test dummies.

'Cause I feel like that's what's happening right now.

There's this whole world of hemp that the door's opening on.

And all these people rush to the market.

Nobody's got proven genetics.

And then they're just throwing 'em at these farmers and saying, "Hey, grow this."

And there's no defense for the farmer.

Here he is grasping to try and make a living.

And he is like, yeah, I wanna make a lot more money than I am.

Yeah, I'll do it.

Then when it's a complete failure, he was better off just sticking with what you're doing before, because it was all for nothing.

(dramatic music continues) (kid cooing) (gentle music) (man singing faintly) - So I'm not gonna say we're never gonna grow hemp again.

But if we do grow hemp again, we're gonna be even more cautious than we were before.

And the people wanting us to grow the hemp, they can take the risk, 'cause we've proven that we'll take the risk.

It's their turn.

(engine revving) (gentle music) (crowd chattering) - Oh golly, man, this is my birthday.

Is it Friday?

It was his, exciting.

Man, I've been waiting 20 some years for this.

I mean, I helped the Indians plant it on the reservation.

I've helped harvest it in Canada, but in America, this is a whole different ball game.

This is a whole 'nother species of animal coming across here.

We have a farmer, who's got cahoonas.

We've got a state here that's got leadership in it.

And people that's wide open in Colorado.

This is a breakthrough across the country.

(gentle music) (crowd chattering) ♪ I got two strong hands ♪ Gonna make a better plan ♪ Where every man is a landlord ♪ ♪ Where every man ♪ ♪ Is a landlord - Glasses, glasses folks.

Grab some champagne.

- Champagne.

♪ If we can make it out West ♪ - This is a historic moment.

♪ God will give us the rest - I want to propose a toast to Ryan Loflin for planting the first hemp in decades here in the United States.

(toast indistinguishable) (crowd cheers) ♪ It often seemed like a lie ♪ But the prices kept goin' high ♪ ♪ Maybe the hard times were through ♪ - Anybody who never had a drink moonshine should get a drink.

♪ We were meant to see the sunrise ♪ ♪ The earth shouldn't have filled the sky ♪ ♪ And when the winds would whip us dry ♪ ♪ We could always wait for the creek to rise ♪ - They're real sweet right now.

You get a spicey one every now and again.

♪ We could always wait ♪ We could always wait for the creek to rise ♪