Industrial Hemp in Oregon

[socioecologist]

Watering isn't bad once you get the hang of it. The first two weeks are easy, but you must wield a deft watering wand after that to avoid breakage--the good news is that plants are very, very strong and hardy when they hit the field!

120k pounds is dry, destemmed (23% of wet weight). So delete that previous question; the real one is: how do you dry 520k pounds (wet) of high CBD cannabis (edit: and maintain terpene content)? The early hint: it involves a lot of air!

If the design works out this season, we're confident that we can hit 1 million pounds of dry material next year. That's 106 straight days of harvesting and 10k pounds of dry flower per day. If we've learned anything though, it's the truth embodied in an old fable about chickens, eggs, and premature counting.

 

[oldchuck]

Will this drop prices, I hope?

 

[Oneloverebel]

Watering isn't bad once you get the hang of it. The first two weeks are easy, but you

Watering isn't bad once you get the hang of it. The first two weeks are easy, but you

How many pounds per acre do you average ? What's the national spot price per pound ?

Really like this thread. Very interesting

 

[socioecologist]

Finally got some preliminary test results back on four of our "early" series lines, happy overall and stoked to see them flower out to full completion this summer in the fields across Oregon (these didn't finish all the way and I'm not the world's best grower...).

ET: 11.45% CBD, 27:1 (chunky flowers designed for trimming)
EOII: 12.55% CBD, 29.5:1 (huge yielder, unrivaled vigor)
ES: 14.62% CBD, 27:1 (strongest terp profile)
EA: 14.85% CBD, 29.7:1 (highest overall content scores, see below)

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

Finally got some preliminary test results back on four of our "early" series lines, happy overall and stoked to see them flower out to full completion this summer in the fields across Oregon (these didn't finish all the way and I'm not the world's best grower...).

ET: 11.45% CBD, 27:1 (chunky flowers designed for trimming)
EOII: 12.55% CBD, 29.5:1 (huge yielder, unrivaled vigor)
ES: 14.62% CBD, 27:1 (strongest terp profile)
EA: 14.85% CBD, 29.7:1 (highest overall content scores, see below)

View Image

Nice!
This lab report which you exceeded is the winning entry at the Cultivation Classic last week (indoor CBD). There was a Swiss Tsu with a good ratio too, from East Fork Cultivars. Their Snoozy Cat is worth looking at for a half a minute too.

You can enter your material in these competitions if you want, they aren't OLCC exclusive & the electronic medals & awards will look snazzy on your website.
Our OMMP material apparently came in 3rd in the indoor THC section.

 

[socioecologist]

Thanks for that PDX and congrats on placing in the CC! We don't do festivals or a whole lot of self-promotion...we're considering it for this year though, just so word gets out about where the bar actually is. Our average CBD content on field produced plants is on par with what shows up at festivals...and those are from last year's breeding projects, designed to pass field inspection below 0.3% THC. Can't wait to unleash the lines we designed specifically to maximize resin content in 2018 (they are in our field this year).

More results from 2 separate "early" lines (again, I'm not a great grower, these could be even higher!):

 

[idiit]

I started growing early '70's in the wild hemp area of Kansas. hemp pollen there is dominant and turns seed stock to total shit for smoking. fields of hemp with males left to shower out pollen could devastate geographic proximity smoke quality bud ( seedy product, ruined seed stock).

every grower in Kansas hated hemp for seeding up smoke buds and ruining seed stock. the best growers bought their seeds from some local growers who moved to the Missouri Ozarks where the hemp at that time wasn't a problem where they were growing in the Ozarks.

big difference between academic postulates and years, decades of hands on street experience/knowledge.

i'm likely to get some bad reactions to this post but what I just posted was the consensus opinion of the growers and smokers in the hemp fields areas back in da day.

 

[idiit]

i'm not bashing socioecologist . I am bashing hemp pollen for the devastation it can wreck. socioecologist is operating in an ethical manner. I love hemp. I want hemp in concrete, clothing, etc. it's the possible unethically run hemp fields that cause my concern. I've been on other hemp threads and ppl are reading stuff that is totally the opposite of the growers and smokers experiences operating in areas where there is hemp pollen in the air.

 

[PDX Dopesmoker]

Thanks for that PDX and congrats on placing in the CC! We don't do festivals or a whole lot of self-promotion...we're considering it for this year though, just so word gets out about where the bar actually is. Our average CBD content on field produced plants is on par with what shows up at festivals...and those are from last year's breeding projects, designed to pass field inspection below 0.3% THC. Can't wait to unleash the lines we designed specifically to maximize resin content in 2018 (they are in our field this year).

More results from 2 separate "early" lines (again, I'm not a great grower, these could be even higher!):

View Image View Image View Image View Image View Image

One of the people selling hemp paper at the Cultivation Classic told me that so much of the region's hemp production is going to CBD production now they're worried that there might be a hemp fiber shortage soon. Those are all nice labs results. EA4 is the prettiest one, a field of that turning color in September would be an impressive sight. Which one is the tastiest? Is anyone going to give you a hard time over the THC numbers or is it safe to assume the outdoor lab results will be in the limit? Outdoor field test are done around 4 weeks before harvest, I'm pretty sure I remember reading that somewhere (probably this thread) so I guess that also makes a big difference. Have you found out anything of interest in how harvest time affects THC:CBD?

 

[oldchuck]

Idit, your bad feelings about hemp pollen are understandable. Consider though that your experience with wild midwestern hemp is not the unethical behavior of anybody. The feds have been trying to eradicate it for several generations now and utterly failed. And not so long ago wild hemp has been discovered to be vital food sources for certain birds.

Ethical practice is called for and is also practical. Cannabis is a remarkable species in many ways so the challenge is more difficult than other crops. Growers will work it out, sometimes in court maybe. It's the CBD hemp demand that is new in this. Resinous flowers are not in the traditional definition of "hemp". New stuff is fun.

 

[socioecologist]

One of the people selling hemp paper at the Cultivation Classic told me that so much of the region's hemp production is going to CBD production now they're worried that there might be a hemp fiber shortage soon. Those are all nice labs results. EA4 is the prettiest one, a field of that turning color in September would be an impressive sight. Which one is the tastiest? Is anyone going to give you a hard time over the THC numbers or is it safe to assume the outdoor lab results will be in the limit? Outdoor field test are done around 4 weeks before harvest, I'm pretty sure I remember reading that somewhere (probably this thread) so I guess that also makes a big difference. Have you found out anything of interest in how harvest time affects THC:CBD?

I don't know about the veracity of diminishing hemp fiber availability, not something I've heard of. I will say that quite a few "hempsters" in Oregon tend to belittle and bemoan the rise of CBD hemp production. I get it. The point of "hemp" to these folks--from an intellectual and ideological perspective--is to produce non-psychoactive cannabis to demonstrate the plant's usefulness outside of consciousness alteration. This is great, awesome, and true, but not economically feasible at the moment, particularly in areas that are traditional sensi production hot spots. It takes years to build up expensive infrastructure for fiber handling and, honestly, there's no way that Oregon can ever compete with lower cost producers around the world. The current market is such that breeding advancements (i.e. high resin content, high ratios, novel cannabinoids, predictable harvest timing, etc.) and expensive technology (automated farming equipment, incredibly large scale extraction, etc.) are defining winners and losers at the moment. This is indicative of an emerging, high-tech market. In my former life as a professor of political economy, we'd call this a "core" production process (as opposed to "peripheral"--derived from "World Systems Theory"). High-wealth nations / states tend to capture market share and exploit early-entrance arbitrage in markets like these, until the profit margins decline and it transitions into a peripheral process (where the cost of labor and land determine winners and losers).

As I've said to these folks many, many times in the refrain of Sublime: "Hemp rope good, hemp rope fine, but first take care of head."

The terpene profiles are very, very similar across all 5 early varieties we released this year--the pollinator we used on the 5 different moms link them together. My preferred variety is our "Early Special Sauce", it carries a stronger, sweeter, more consistent astringent berry flavor that we all really dig.

RE: CBD to THC ratios and harvest timing. You are correct that all of the plants that were tested would have passed ODA field testing 4 weeks before harvest. The ratio between CBD to THC is fixed throughout the life cycle of the plant (from seedling to harvest). Previous claims that CBD peaks in production before THC is false, they both rise in concert.

 

[socioecologist]

Got the plastic and drip tape finished up yesterday on our 2017 research field. 280 rows @ 1200 feet long on 60 acres--about 63 miles in total if linked end to end. After turning on irrigation to the first 2 zones, we got our first plants of the season in the ground this morning. The 2017 season is officially kicked off!

View image in gallery​

 

[oldchuck]

Good show, S. May they grow fast and furious. It's been a difficult spring.

 

[socioecologist]

Welcome to Juneuary, the latest addition to Oregon's unique palate of weather months. Instead of flowers and bees following the warm weather early in the month, we're getting near-frost, driving winds, and pissing rains. The R&D field is at a slow crawl since finishing plastic mulch / irrigation, with about 2.5 full days of planting over the past week. Why so slow? Waterwheel planters don't track well in deep mud...luckily we only shredded the plastic off of one row figuring that out--keeping the water reservoir topped off seems to help with traction, but you can only push it so far when nature says "nope". The lack of discernible progress (an issue when you can't see the horizon over your rows) has my brother properly frenetic, a ball of energy loping around like a coked-up badger.

We got in a little over 10 acres so far, which covers our R&D photoperiod trials for the year (field testing of 2018 seed release varieties--~17k plants). We're getting our 2017 production lines in next (mostly for terpene extraction), followed by our larger scale autoflower test plot that will provide diverse genetic material for sequencing.

All of which is pretty kick ass, but the most fun projects we have going are back at our current and yet to be built greenhouses....

 

[socioecologist]

Eastern quarter of the R&D field via drone flyover:

https://youtu.be/9K9W7Bqk0b8

 

[oldchuck]

I liked that, S. Your plants look about the same size as mine.

 

[jonnyfli]

 

[socioecologist]

Something to consider in the ongoing “we the people vs. big pharma“ non-psychoactive cannabinoid (i.e. hemp) drama : the two biggest players on the pharma side (Insys Therapeutics and GW Pharmaceuticals) are publically traded companies, which means they are required by law to provide investors with yearly updates on their activities—these are publically available via the SEC. After pouring over their financials and forward-looking statements on product pipelines, the following realities emerge: (1) both companies are deeply in debt, (2) neither have good prospects of turning a profit without massive federal intervention, and, despite cozy relations with the DEA/FDA, (3) their respective production capacities are laughably small.

GW is building out a $40m production facility in Carlsbad CA to produce “pharma grade” CBD oil for children with epilepsy (“Epidiolex”) and state that they can provide up to 50k average daily patient doses per year. At recommended doses (20mg / kg body weight, mean weight = 50lbs.), the average patient requires about 500mg of CBD per day or roughly 1g of raw oil (30g per month). The cost to patients is estimated to be $2500-$5000 per month if/when their drug is approved. That’s between $83-$166 per gram of raw oil using their own numbers. I guess you have to charge that much when it costs you $40m to produce / extract / compound 1000 pounds of CBD flower per year? Any knowledgeable farmer can produce that much CBD on ½ an acre and get an equivalent product into patients’ hands for 10x-20x less.

Insys spent tens of millions on a facility in Texas to produce synthetic CBD and can churn out up to 650 pounds per year. That’s a pretty big lab operation, but still relatively small compared to the scope of hemp production in the US. It’s the equivalent of less than 10 acres worth before extraction—not even a drop in the bucket.

GW’s desperation to generate a profit (which neither company has EVER accomplished) has led them to hire lobbyists in many states; they are pushing to ban sales of CBD that are not “FDA-approved” so that “Epidiolex”—if it receives approval—would be the only option. Of course, being an FDA approved drug, it would only be available to people with qualifying conditions (in this case, about 50k people who suffer from a rare form of epilepsy), which means that CBD would essentially be unobtainable in those states to anyone (or animal) that could benefit from it.

This is just one of many battles to come re: the future of cannabis, but the background data helped me feel a bit more confident that real people have the upper hand right now—through diligence, additional legal challenges, and (most importantly) consumer education, I think we can keep our momentum up.

 

[oldchuck]

Thanks for that information, S. This is something quite personal for me and I am still trying to find my way through the bushes.

The significant thing GW has done in my view is solid clinical trials with quantitative results although for a much different and presumably more severe form of epilepsy than I have. They ran trials with not just 20mg per kg but also 10 mg per kg and got slightly better results with the higher dose. A 10mg per kg dose (presumably daily) for me would run over 600mg. I can buy 20mg CBD caps at a local herb shop for a dollar a cap. To get a 600mg dose would be about thirty of those huge double O caps for $30 a day. Simply not affordable. I think I need a much higher dose than 20mg, a much more concentrated medium and a much cheaper price. How to get it?

Okay, grow my own. But obstructions remain. How do I translate CBD content of a flower into mg of CBD in concentrated form and how do I get maximum concentration? I am just a guy not equipped to do that. Just being a legal grower seems inadequate to me when there are so many sharks and hustlers in these waters.

 

[socioecologist]

How do I translate CBD content of a flower into mg of CBD in concentrated form and how do I get maximum concentration? I am just a guy not equipped to do that. Just being a legal grower seems inadequate to me when there are so many sharks and hustlers in these waters.

While the "do it yourself at home" instructions will not yield as consistent of a product or an unwavering dose, it will do the trick and get you between 10mg-20mg / kg of body weight--I'd recommend titrating as necessary to reduce symptoms, but I'm not that kind of doctor .

A simple quick wash ethanol extraction followed by air evaporation will give you what you need. The resulting oil will be 40%-55% CBD by weight with the varieties you have. You'll need about 1g of oil per day to hit your mark at those concentrations, but it would fit in two larger pills without trouble. Keep in mind that you will need between 10g-15g of raw flower material per day to achieve this (or 12 pounds per year).