Texas hemp farmers find struggles familiar to Arkansas hemp industry September 9, 2022 By Griffin Coop Arkansas isn’t the only state where the hemp industry is struggling. Texas hemp growers are finding struggles similar to the ones we recently found in a story about the Arkansas hemp industry. The Texas problems go even further as their industrial hemp plants that were touted as being drought-resistant have struggled in the Texas climate, according to a report in the Texas Tribune. “The farmers have been doing this for a long time and they just recognize that this is too volatile of a market for us to make sense to continue working in,” said Bingham, the farmer growing industrial hemp in Meadow. We reported earlier this month on the boom and bust of the Arkansas hemp industry that left many farmers leaving the industry and others holding onto product with no place to sell it. Texas farmers have similar found a volatile market with few processors and few markets to sell their product. According to one farmer, the industry has a short time to make the necessary changes to be successful. Bingham said time is running out for the hemp industry. Hemp production has “promise and potential” in Texas, he said, but the industry has about two years to build a market for hemp before farmers bow out altogether. “If we don’t do it right, we will squander this opportunity,” Bingham said. “And if we ever try to come back and rebuild this, it will be so much more difficult to build the industry.”
