1 of 3
Josh Hendrix, a young hemp farmer and active advocate dedicated to furthering hemp production in Kentucky and beyond, grows 10 acres of hemp on the Mount Sterling farm where his grandfather grew acres of tobacco for years. Photo by Tatiana Aristizabal
2 of 3
Josh Hendrix, a young hemp farmer and active advocate dedicated to furthering hemp production in Kentucky and beyond, grows 10 acres of hemp on the Mount Sterling farm where his grandfather grew acres of tobacco for years. Photo by Tatiana Aristizabal
3 of 3
Josh Hendrix, a young hemp farmer and active advocate dedicated to furthering hemp production in Kentucky and beyond, grows 10 acres of hemp on the Mount Sterling farm where his grandfather grew acres of tobacco for years. Photo by Tatiana Aristizabal
On a warm and sunny day last September, Kentucky farmer Josh Hendrix stood immersed in hemp. Clad in blue jeans and a white polo, he pulled up a few stray weeds and paused to admire the progress of his crop, spread across the 2.5-acre field before him on the same Mount Sterling farm where his grandfather grew acres of tobacco for years. Hendrix is well over six feet tall, but the hemp plants tower over him, some reaching more than 10 feet high.
“This is it,” he said, turning a hand toward the land. Almost three months after planting the seeds in June, Hendrix’s hemp was ready for harvest.
This summer, Hendrix enters his third year of growing industrial hemp at Mayflower Farm, and his second as a grower for CV Sciences, a cannabinoid-based research company based in San Diego, Calif. In all, he has 10 acres, spread across four fields in Montgomery County.
Following a longtime interest in hemp dating back to college, Hendrix became one of the first farmers in the state to grow industrial hemp upon the 2014 passing of the U.S. Farm Bill, which authorized the Kentucky Department of Agriculture to launch a pilot research program. But an element of his career that’s been just as noteworthy has been his role as a connector for others who want to get involved in the industry, whether as a farmer, buyer, seller or researcher.
Growing up, Hendrix never saw a future for himself as a farmer of any kind, much less as a hemp farmer.
“When I worked out here as a kid, it was punishment – or beer money in college,” he remembered with a laugh.
Hendrix had read Gatewood Galbraith’s book, “The Last Free Man in America,” in college, and had also watched the 2003 documentary “Hempsters: Plant the Seed” during that time. Both had piqued his interest in the possibility of resurrecting hemp as a cash crop for Kentucky, but after doing some research and reaching out to a few of the crop’s advocates – including the folks behind that documentary – he decided the outlook wasn’t promising and put hemp out of his mind for a time. Upon graduating from the University of Kentucky, he followed job offers to Charleston, South Carolina, then Richmond, Virginia; however, he was unhappy, and frequently made the seven-hour drive back to Lexington for UK football games and Keeneland. During that time time, he spent hours, he said, watching documentaries about “people who quit their jobs to go farm and grow gardens and stuff.”
And when Hendrix was home for Thanksgiving break in 2013, SB-50, a bill that established guidelines for hemp research and planting in Kentucky, passed through the state Senate. When the Farm Bill passed the following February, authorizing the cultivation of hemp for research on a federal level, he put in his two-weeks notice the next day. Eight years after leaving Kentucky, Hendrix was headed back to Mount Sterling to take the plunge on industrial hemp.
“I just kind of convinced myself if I didn’t do it now I never would do it,” he said.
Though his Mount Sterling operation has proven that he’s a capable grower, Hendrix’s gift as a connector has been his greatest asset in driving forward the industrial hemp movement within the state. The year he moved back from Virginia, Hendrix started a Kentucky state chapter of the Hemp Industries Association to help other farmers network. He also helped start, and now serves as a board member of, the U.S. Hemp Roundtable (formerly the Kentucky Hemp Industry Council), which lobbies for legislation that brings Kentucky and other states closer to being able to fully cash in on the economic potentials related to hemp. He and other council members regularly travel to Washington D.C., to meet with state politicians like Senator Mitch McConnell and Congressman Thomas Massie.
Hendrix said he recognized the importance of cooperation among Kentucky’s new generation of hemp farmers early on.
“There were a handful of people farming [for research], but no one wanted to tell each other their plans,” he said. “I knew this would take years to really push forward. We had to work together.”
Hendrix formed a relationship with CV Sciences at an industry networking event a few years back, and upon learning of the company’s interest in helping develop a domestic supply of hemp – particularly in Kentucky, which is known among hemp enthusiasts worldwide for its ideal growing conditions – he helped recruit four more farmers to grow under the company’s research umbrella in 2015, each in different terrains around the state. Farming across the board in Kentucky is down 40 percent over the past 10 years, and the average age of a farmer in the state is 58. But with dedicated people like Hendrix serving as catalysts of the hemp movement, he thinks that trajectory can change.
“Historically, farmers are some of the best innovators there are,” Hendrix said. “Add in some young people and technological advancements, and it’s a good all-around synergy.”
The industry still has a long way to go, but Hendrix has high hopes that hemp will reemerge as a profitable enterprise for Kentucky farmers.
“Right now, it’s only research,” he said. “But once it’s completely legal, hopefully the research will come to fruition and it can be a real commodity for the state.”
More than that, however, Hendrix is aiming for hemp to recapture its place as a pride-worthy trademark of the state’s longstanding farming heritage.
“We want to make hemp something we own,” he said. “We only have a few things that we, as a state, can hang our hats on. It’s basically bourbon, horses, and basketball. I’m trying to add hemp to that list, and make Kentucky a hemp state.