During the Snowflake Town Council on July 3, the agenda included for first reading an ordinance on industrial hemp. Hemp is the fiber form of cannabis (marijuana) that is useful in making a wide variety of products such as building materials, food, paper and textiles. Arizona has the ideal climate to potentially make the growing of industrial hemp a thriving industry.
In May, Governor Doug Ducey signed SB 1098 that provided funding for the Arizona Department of Agriculture’s (AZDA) pilot industrial hemp program allowing universities and those with proper licensing from the AZDA to begin cultivating industrial hemp.
Industrial hemp grown under the program will be considered an agricultural product that will require any grower, harvester, transporter or processor to obtain a proper license from the AZDA.
With the possibility of hemp farming becoming more prevalent, the town decided to get a jump on things and have an ordinance in place to regulate the cultivation and processing of industrial hemp. This ordinance is also a way to help protect the medical marijuana cultivators already in the area and help protect residents.
Copperstate Farms Founder and Manager, Fife Symington IV, spoke to the council about the need for keeping industrial hemp and medical marijuana cultivation areas separate. “Medical marijuana is grown using only female plants that cuttings are taken from to grow a clone of the plant,” said Symington. He went on to explain that industrial hemp is grown by just sowing seeds and that includes both male and female plants. The pollen from the male plant can travel quite a distance and if the medical marijuana plants become pollinated it would destroy the crop.
The council approved the ordinance with a final reading at the next meeting but the AZDA will not begin issuing licenses until later this year. In addition to the proper AZDA licensing, industrial hemp sites would require a special use permit, cannot be located within 10 miles of a medical marijuana cultivation location, be within 500 feet of a residential property, or within 1,000 feet of a preschool, kindergarten, elementary, secondary or high school, place of worship, public park, public cemetery, or community center.
