Agronomist Talks Growing Hemp in Montana

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week’s hemp podcast, we talk to Dalton Wittmer, agronomist at IND Hemp, a hemp processing company based in Fort Benton, Montana.

Growing up and working on a farm in southern Indiana and graduating from Purdue University's agronomy program, Wittmer has been chin deep in agriculture his whole life.

“I worked on a farm since I was 12 and just been around livestock — cattle, pigs, a little bit of turkeys. And row cropping, corn and soybeans mainly, so I've had a pretty good learning experience on the farm,” he said.

His interest in industrial hemp was piqued in college where one of his advisers was leading Purdue’s hemp research program.

Wittmer knew there was stigma around hemp, but he said he wanted to help “bring the goodness of hemp to America and across the world” for its environmental and economic benefits.

Wittmer relocated to Fort Benton a year and half ago and has been enjoying his new life in the West.

“I’'m an outdoors person. That's my happy place, and in Montana, you have anything outdoors you could ever imagine,” he said.

“And it's right outside my living room window. I get to see antelope, mule deer, moose, bears, whatever it is,” he said.

The town of Fort Benton is along the Missouri River in north-central Montana, where the land is generally flat but the conditions are dry and often difficult for farming.

Between scant rainfall, destructive hail storms and clouds of hungry grasshoppers, farming in Big Sky Country isn’t a walk in the park.

Wheat is the main crop in Montana, and it’s a challenge to get the small-grain guys thinking about growing a new crop like industrial hemp.

“They like growing wheat. That's what makes them their money. And they know that,” Wittmer said.

But there are farmers in Montana who are willing to put in some acres of hemp and give it a go.

This year, Wittmer said, IND Hemp has contracted farmers to grow around 7,000 acres of hemp.

Five thousand of those acres are what Wittmer calls a dual-purpose crop that will yield both grain and fiber. The remainder of the acreage is a single-purpose fiber crop, he said.

About half of the acreage is under pivot irrigation, but so far this year, the dryland acreage is keeping pace with the irrigated crops.

“The majority of the state is sitting pretty good with moisture this year,” he said. “The rains have been coming, and they've been nice amounts. You know, they've been a half-inch here, an inch there.”

Thanks to our sponsors for their generous support:

IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/

HempWood https://hempwood.com/