The development of a hemp crop can be potentially lucrative for farmers, but it can also be a good source of needed biomass for organic growers. President and Owner of Kings River Produce, Steve Beck noted that hemp production can provide significant benefits for organic systems.
“Hemp is a fast growing, very healthy producing crop. It grows a lot of biomass,” said Beck. “The biomass of a hemp crop doesn’t take a lot of inputs. It uses a lot of nitrogen, but it draws a lot of your nitrogen in your soil to make it available for that plant and a lot of that we can turn back under into the soil.”
Hemp crops have expansive root systems which present an opportunity to reclaim some soils that have become boggy, or soils that have demonstrated elevated levels of alkali. “We can disc those plants back under the soil and those nutrients are cycled through microbes in the soil and released back out to be available for our for-profit plants that we’re growing” said Beck.
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