A look at the total number of hemp growing licenses issued this year gives us an important glimpse into the rapidly growing hemp industry.
More people than ever are interested in growing hemp now that the crop is legal. An amendment to the 2018 Farm Bill legalized hemp after decades of prohibition. Even though the Department of Agriculture didn’t issue formal hemp growing guidelines until late October, interest in the crop is already booming.
We’ll have a closer look at the new USDA hemp farming guidelines in an upcoming article. First we wanted to take a look at the past year of hemp growing, as reflected in the number of hemp growing licenses issued.
According to a report by Vote Hemp, U.S. states issued 16,877 hemp growing licenses in 2019, across 34 states, for a total of 511,442 licensed acres. From these numbers, we can learn a lot about the state of hemp in America, and what’s going right or wrong.
Hemp growing licenses up over 400% since 2018
The increase in hemp growing licenses reflects a massive increase in the number of hemp farmers and a growing awareness that hemp could be a profitable commodity crop. Vote Hemp reported a 455% increase over 2018 in the amount of acres licensed for legal hemp growing.
