The North Carolina Hemp Commission has received an opinion from the state attorney general’s office to allow them to license farmers who want to obtain industrial hemp seeds from another state, according to a report from Southeast Farm Press. The memo allows farmers approved under the state’s pilot program to source domestic seed for their first crops.
Sandy Stewart, vice chairman of the Hemp Commission and director of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Research Stations Division, indicated farmers would begin planting their first crops sometime this month. Farmers who participate in the program must work with either North Carolina State University or North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to meet eleven research objectives outlined by the state statute.
“Every farmer who grows hemp needs to address one or more of those objectives and turn over the information to the universities at the end of the year,” Stewart said in the report. “We’re doing this so we can learn more about the crop.”
Hertford cultivator White Hat Seed Farm has already obtained seeds from Kentucky and hopes to sell seed from their pilot crop to other North Carolina farmers working with the program next year. White Hat is growing 40 acres of the certified Italian variety Carmagnola Selezionata.