With parts of New York experiencing record rainfall this year, cannabis farmers are finding extreme weather to be a significant cause for concern as the state moves ahead with its legalized adult-use market. Cannabis plants are particularly sensitive to heavy rain and heat. Many farmers struggled with the former this year, some losing large swaths of their entire crops. “Because hemp is so sensitive to water, the plants literally drowned and died because the roots couldn’t get any oxygen,” Allan Gandelman*, president of the New York Cannabis Growers and Processors Association told WSKG while walking through a cannabis field at his farm in Cortland. Gandelman said he lost nearly an acre of hemp, nearly 2,000 plants, due to flooding this year. The plants that survived, Gandelman said, yielded less usable product than in dryer years. Hemp plants are cannabis with a concentration of THC, the psychoactive chemical that causes a high, less than 0.3%. Hemp growing was federally legalized in the 2018 farm bill, largely spurring a boom of hemp and CBD products.
420 Intel – Marijuana Industry News, 12/07/2021 19:00:00