VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A change in federal policy opened up new opportunities for farmers and businesses around the country.
Hemp is now legal in every state.
Now, local farmers are trying to cash in on the crop.
Jeb Cullipher is one of them. The Pungo farmer's family has a long-standing tradition of growing crops in Virginia Beach.
Now, the 20-year-old is switching gears from tomatoes and planting a new crop: hemp.
“I've always been farming with my parents, and now, this is something I wanted to try,” said Cullipher. “I’m going off on my own here and this is my own personal project.”
Cullipher just became licensed this year. Currently, he has 600 hemp plants. He plans to plant 750 of them by the end of this year.
“A lot of people are talking about big money in it, and it's just an up and coming industry,” said Cullipher.
He's not the only one looking to profit from the cannabidiol (CBD) industry.
In Chesapeake, ‘Everything Diesel,’ a Colorado-based company, has a 24,000 square-foot building waiting to get the green light.
If the company’s hemp processing license is approved by the Virginia Department of Agriculture, the old two-story office building will be transformed into a place to process and extract CBD from hemp.
Andy McFie, one of the company's investors, said the building is located in a location with ample space and accessibility.
“The possibilities are that we have a deepwater port, a rail, a trucking facility that we could transport to the east coast and even overseas, wherever the market might be,” said McFie.
Cullipher said Pungo’s fertile land will allow the crop to thrive.
But first, he needs to learn how to successfully grow it. So far, he has discovered it’s not as easy as it seems.
“It’s a very responsive plant. You can know in a matter of hours if you messed up,” said Cullipher.
“It hasn't been legal long enough to get any kind of conclusive data on it. The other thing is, with the potential for profit that it has, if you figure out how to grow it, you don't wanna tell anyone else.”
His goal is to sell it in order for it to be used for medicinal purposes.
“It's something new. It’s something different and like everything new and different, that's exciting,” said Cullipher.
He's putting in the extra hours, breaking new ground with the hope of seeing the industry take off.
You may be wondering what makes hemp and marijuana different. Both plants are a strain of cannabis.
They look and smell very similar, but the big difference is in their chemical make-up.
Marijuana has much more tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), that's the chemical that gets you high.
Hemp has more CBD. It does not get you high, and it can be used in medicine for a number of treatments.
Hemp can make CBD products, but it's also used in a wide variety of products like textiles, paper and food.