Ah, so many reasons for why to grow hemp
right now, and always.
It grows in so many different climates and places and soil types.
And it is a reparative crop.
It has been used in sites like Chernobyl
and pulled heavy metals from the soil.
To plant in sites
that have been nuclear test sites
or farmed conventionally for many years,
and that it is actually cleaning the soil?
It's a miraculous crop for that reason.
It's an important thing to be a farmer today
because we fell out of sync with nature.
And right now we're experiencing a lot of the damage
and the collateral effects of that.
Marijuana and hemp are both cannabis.
The main difference is that marijuana has above 0.3% THC.
And that really is a legal distinction.
Hemp has been used for millennia
as part of what we grow.
But hemp hasn't been grown here specifically in New York since 1937.
And since that time,
we have implemented industries
that are really destructive and exploitive.
We often think of climate change
as smokestacks and all of the fossil fuels that we're burning.
And we forget about the land we're interacting with.
In farming, that happens to be about 50% of the Earth's surface.
And there's so much industrial agriculture happening on that farmland.
Our country is polluted right now with conventional farms
that have been farming the same land
with the same crop for years and years and years.
The practice of getting there is really hard on the earth.
It is more about treating the plant
more like a machine.
Feed it the right inputs to make a transaction happen.
What happens when you grow the same crop year after year
on the same land
is that same crop is demanding the same nutrients from the soil,
and the soil can no longer give those nutrients to the plant
because it itself is not living soil at that point.
It is dead.
And so, at this farm,
we focus on an integrated crop rotation,
meaning we use multiple crops in rotation with one another.
And hemp has entered that crop rotation.
We believe that regenerative agriculture
can actually create the next industrial revolution.
And there's real power in hemp
as a key player in that paradigm shift.
In 2014, it was written back into the farm bill.
Now, we can use hemp -
not only as a vehicle
for medicine,
food,
fiber,
even as far as biodiesel -
but within that,
we have the opportunity
to reverse the damage and replenish the earth.
If you can change the way that conventional farmers
are farming in this country,
and introduce hemp
as a vehicle to do that,
we can change the earth.
The guy who lent this to us specifically
told us not to do this.
He's like, Don’t push anyone!
Okay, he thinks we’re psycho. - No, get out.
Get out?
Oh my god, get out. He’s seeing us.
Ok.
Ugh, he's never going to let us borrow his wagon again!
September, right now,
is really the height of our harvest.
The buds are just ready to be taken from the ground
and hung to dry.
Regenerative agriculture means that you're going beyond sustainability
to replenish ecosystems and nurture biodiversity.
And a regenerative farm is measured
by the amount of carbon you are sequestering.
It is something that you can track and it is something quantitative.
That is the power of regenerative agriculture.
It can pull carbon from the air
and bring it back into the earth.
Hemp fits into a regenerative system beautifully,
because it can do that and we can still use the fibers.
We can still even potentially use the flowers.
We are feeding our soil.
That is always what we are trying to do.
And when we came here
and began implementing these systems -
cover cropping, crop rotations, animal grazing -
that shifts the land.
But it takes time.
It doesn't just happen overnight.
You're learning every season
what to do.
So, we harvest them.
Then we break down the plant, which is a process known as bucking.
Once we've done that, they hang here to dry.
Once we've dried this,
we'll take them down and we'll further break it up,
removing ultimately the buds and flowers
from the stems and the stock, because that is-
And the leaves.
That's the matter that we'll be extracting from.
And when people talk about industrial hemp
and all of the industrial uses,
that’s for paper.
Textile, this is made from hemp.
The inside of certain BMWs use hemp
because it's so strong and also so light.
As well as hemp wood,
which is great building material,
along with hempcrete, hemp fiberglass.
We can build a whole house from hemp.
Our first experience with cannabis
was cannabis hanging in our closets
as a kid.
We both grew up in agriculture.
Our father owned a farm in the Berkshires called Equinox.
We would spend our summers cutting,
alongside a very large crew.
And of course, we're the youngest ones doing this.
it becomes this full body experience of cutting greens.
Your body is the machine, is the tool.
And this is the best tool that there ever was.
Our father was growing primarily specialty greens and other veggies.
But he also grew cannabis.
I knew it was sort of wrong
and not what was happening in the closets of my friends.
There was like a stigma and shame around that.
It conjured...
Yeah. What did it?
Well, a fear too.
But we justified it because we understood
in I think a broader sense
that he was trying to pay bills.
Because it's not easy making
a livelihood as a farmer.
Along with that, the average age of the U.S. farmer
is about 60 years old.
And they’re male.
And they’re male. - And they're white.
And they're white.
And so, part of that
is that the narrative must progress.
We must continue to eat, to feed ourselves,
to clothe ourselves, to house ourselves, to create medicine.
But there's opportunity right now to create a new space
for how farming exists
and who it exists for.
I think this is where all the real medicine is.
We just
haven't even thought about it yet.
We were so focused on the flower
and the money that came from the flower
that no one thought about the roots.
We'll find a way to sustainably harvest them on our farm.
They can feed us and continue to feed the soil.
- And this farm,
when it was purchased five years ago, talk about dead soil.
I mean, this was dirt.
And you can tell on this soil,
I mean, I was just noticing the earthworms that were existing in here,
which is a sign that your soil is alive.
But this comes at a result of healthy farming.
When it comes down to it,
and you are standing in a field of hemp
that wouldn't have been possible years prior,
there's a gratitude that makes this work easy.
And natural.
When I think of Freya,
I think of coffee in the morning.
She's always there for people in her life.
She is thoughtful in a way
that embodies giving a gift.
But it is her language of giving
that is so natural to her.
Melany, since I've known her,
which I met her when I was zero.
She's always been bold and outspoken.
You know, I have to always remind her,
like, you have to drink water
and you have to feed yourself.
But she is such a martyr to this work.
And she's always been that way.
My mission is cannabis and hemp,
and whenever I feel fear,
I remember that I'm not working for anyone or anything.
It is for a plant.
And it is for what the plant can bring to our soil
and to our culture as a whole.
Wow.
So, here are the volunteer plants.
This seed came from plants that we harvested last year
and the seed voluntarily spread here
and germinated over the winter.
And this, we didn't plant.
This is totally random.
We haven't fed them, we haven't watered them.
There's no irrigation here.
They're totally on their own and they're doing their thing.
This plot embodies
the idea that weed wants to grow.
It wants to be alive.
It wants to share its fruit.
And it wants to be alive here in New York,
a place that for the past 80 years it has not been cultivated.
And it really rings true to the name, ‘weed’.
It is a true weed.
I mean, here we are in real weeds
and there is weed!
It's exciting to also see the other wild plants
that we're so used to in this bioregion,
like clover,
and dandelion.
Grass.
And then to see cannabis as one of these plants.
It shows that we are part of an evolving landscape.
And that just as much as the landscape forms us,
we form the landscape.
And there's a meditation between the two.
I think women right now are rising up and speaking out.
And in many ways, that's what the earth is doing.
Every day, it seems like there is something else
that is in turmoil with our Mother Earth.
And
if we listen to that, if we listen to those signs,
if we see what is happening, we can act.
We can begin to give back.
We can give lend to her voice, to our voice.
And I think women are ultimately the ones
that are going to lead that movement.
As givers,
it is so natural for us to want to give to the Earth,
the ultimate mother.
The world is saying,
Pay attention to me.
Pay attention to the finite resources
that you are extracting from, that you are isolating.
Pay attention that they are finite,
and they are part of something that is infinite.
- And that work feels very inherent.
In my bones, I've known, and my father had known,
and my mother knew, and perhaps my grandparents knew.
And it's reviving in me, now,
in the state of our earth.
Our children
and our children's children
will also inherit these systems.
So, if we can do the work,
the good work, now,
perhaps it won't look so grim
when they are here.
Hey, guys, I’m Maiya May, host of Weathered here on PBS Terra.
We hope you enjoyed this episode,
which is part of PBS' Earth Month celebration.
And if you want more, we'd like to recommend
you check out a new episode on Indie Alaska
on the first marijuana cafe in the United States.
There's a link in the description.
We hope you enjoy it and the rest of PBS' Earth Month lineup.