Farmers and researchers across Ohio are learning some of the most basic agricultural information about hemp after the state’s first year of legal cultivation.
Unclear growing conditions coupled with unpredictable market forces mean even if farmers successfully grow a crop they sometimes don’t know much about, processing it into products that consumers can buy could be prohibitive to running a business. “[Hemp] grows well in Ohio,” said Sano Ti Amo co-owner Karen DeLuca. “We had great success in our field even though it was an experimental field, but you need a place to take it.”
She and her business partner Paul Ammoroso planted a three-quarter-acre hemp field during the first legal hemp growing season this past summer into fall. They experimented with a variety of hemp strands so that they’d be able to find out what might grow well in Ohio for their line of hemp pain relief products for humans and animals that are part of their Healing Heros with Horses non-profit.
“That actually worked out really well because some of them really did horrible,” said Ammoroso, referring to some of his strands.
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