The first time the Campos family realized their Jamul hemp farm might be in danger was around 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 5. “We started to see smoke but didn’t think it was too much of a risk,” says Brooke Campos, co-owner of No Boundaries Farm.
By 3 p.m., Campos’ brother, Blake, and her father, Eddie, along with a few other farmworkers were battling the blaze themselves. Not long after, they evacuated. No Boundaries eventually burned to the ground in the Valley Fire along with a neighboring hemp farm, Inya Hemp.
Though those are only two farms out of many scattered throughout rural areas in San Diego County, a variety of factors make hemp farms particularly susceptible to California’s fire season, which becomes more intense with each passing year.
“Fires occur annually throughout California but for San Diego’s legal hemp industry, which is really still in its infancy, the location and span of this year’s fires could greatly impact our current outdoor cultivation, which is often harvested in October,” says Stuart Titus, CEO of Medical Marijuana, Inc.
Read more at pacificsandiego.com