Alabama has approved applications from 180 farmers who want to grow hemp, and the first crop will be planted by April, said Alabama Department of Agriculture Commissioner Rick Pate.

“The people who have applied are serious farmers,” Pate said. “These are not people who have been growing marijuana.”

A couple of applications that didn’t include the $100 application fee, or were not from qualified farmers, may have been rejected, Pate said.

“There may been one or two who wanted to grow it in their backyard,” Pate said. “That’s not the intent.”

Otherwise, no real farmers were turned down. The deadline to apply was by the start of March.

“We approved all the legitimate applications,” Pate said. “Those notifications are going out this week.”

Alabama also received about 70 applications from people wanting to have hemp processing operations, Pate said. “We ended up approving them all,” he said.

“The idea was to keep out people who didn’t know what they were doing,” he said.

The next step for farmers is to purchase hemp seed, which costs about $1,000, and plant it. “We have to give the certification to get the seed,” Pate said. “It can’t come into the state without a certification from us.”

Although marijuana is a type of hemp, industrial hemp contains far smaller amounts of THC, the intoxicating substance in marijuana.

“It’s industrial hemp,” Pate said. “It doesn’t have the THC. If you tried to smoke it, you’d get sick as a dog before you got high. It has no value to smoke it or use for hallucinogenic purpose. It’s a different species (than marijuana).”

Hemp is valued for its fiber, which can be used to make rope. Stalks and seeds can be used to make fabric, fiber board, carpeting, insulation, livestock feed and automobile components. Hemp can also be the source for cannabidiol, or CBD oil, which some people use as a treatment for physical ailments.

“There’s obviously a market for it,” Pate said. “We’re going to inspect it and test it.”

CBD oil can also be derived from marijuana and the Alabama Legislature has allowed limited exceptions to the law against marijuana possession for the use of CBD oil.

The 2018 Agriculture and Nutrition Act changed the legal status of hemp from a controlled substance to an agricultural commodity.

“It is a pilot program,” Pate said. “We have a responsibility to go out and inspect it. We need to see which varieties are doing better.”

If somebody planted the wrong kind of hemp, “we’ll plow it under,” Pate said.

Pate declined to identify any hemp farmers by name. But clearly, hemp will be coming to farms across the state soon.

“They’ll be planted in mid-to-late April, harvested after about 90 days or 100 days,” Pate said.

So, by late summer, Alabama will have its first legal hemp crop in decades.

Then, in-state processors will have to be able to turn it into a product.

“There might not be any market or processor,” Pate said. “Somebody’s got to process it.”

Alabama’s hemp processing plants will have to take shape quickly for an industry that doesn’t exist yet.

Otherwise, hemp farmers won’t be able to use the crop.

“They need to consult a lawyer before they send it across state lines,” Pate said. “We think there will be processing places, but they may not be ready by this fall.”

The first year of hemp-growing may be full of trial-and-error. “Maybe they’ll learn from it, and come next year, be ready to go,” Pate said.

But the potential for a new cash crop is there.

“I hope so,” Pate said. “We don’t have a good one right now. That could happen. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our time.”