Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Additional Plants: hemp

Target Pests

• Target Pests: fungus, insects, weeds

Practices

• Pest Management: economic threshold, monitoring/scouting, pesticides, traps, weed ecology

Hemp has not been legal to grow in the United States for several decades. Production resumed with the 2014 Farm Bill’s pilot program and several states signed up right away. Most recently, the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act and classified it as an agricultural commodity. Consequently, licensed hemp acreage increased more than 445% from 2018 to 2019. The hemp grown today is vastly different than that grown in the 1940’s, as the majority of the crop now is composed of plants grown for harvesting flowers and extracting cannabinoids. The southeastern United States has become a major producer of hemp, with almost 100,000 acres planted in 2019. With this sudden increase of acres planted, comes new growers, new pest problems, and inevitable yield losses caused by a variety of factors.

Due to the ‘newness’ of this crop, university researchers and Extension personnel are unable to offer up-to-date, research-based information to our stakeholders. Growers are left with online information and anecdotal management strategies, often from outside the southeast. It is also important to note that hemp has attracted a whole new generation of farmers with little to no agricultural experience. A recent grower survey in the southeast showed that less than one fourth utilized their university Extension service, prompting concern of misdiagnoses of pests. These factors present both challenges and opportunities and it is imperative that we work together to research practical solutions for growers.

This proposal brings together over 25 university research and Extension entomologists, plant pathologists, and weed scientists to identify the needs of growers in the region. We represent ten states across the southeast and have formed a regional-specific working group that will prioritize the needs of our stakeholders. Many members of this working group have already been tackling hemp-related issues for the past couple years and are familiar with this unique crop and the urgent need for information.

This group will create and distribute surveys in each of our states to understand the needs of the growers. We will use information gathered from the surveys to guide future research projects and educational programming. It is crucial that we tailor our approach to match the needs of our audience, ensuring we reach those experienced in agriculture and those that are brand new. A needs assessment will help us gauge what programs and information will be best suited for our audience. In each state, members of the working group will survey hemp fields for pests related to their discipline (i.e. weeds, diseases, and insects). Surveys will take place in grower fields and on research stations and the sampling methods will be standardized within each discipline.

All information collected throughout the duration of this project will be housed on a centralized webpage. It will include any publications, fact sheets, videos, or pest alerts created by the working group. We will create bookmarks to direct growers to this website to help with pest identification, pest management, as well as familiarize them with the resources offered by Extension. Information and publications will be disseminated at grower meetings in each state throughout the field season. In the 2020 season, we aim to increase grower knowledge on pests affecting hemp, increase scouting for pests, and develop uniform sampling methods for pests in each of the disciplines. Our goal is that growers will adopt a more integrated management approach to pests in hemp that will save time and money and help pave a more sustainable path for this crop moving forward.