Straw could soon be a mulching material of choice for hemp farmers in Oregon and beyond if the experiment being done by a farmer in Southern Oregon bears positive results. Concerns have been raised about the effect of disposable plastic mulch on the environment, and Scott Diesel wants to offer a sustainable alternative to this eyesore.
Last week, Scott Diesel used a giant blower to spread straw over nearly an acre of land before planting industrial hemp. The blower he used looks like an agricultural cannon.
Some hemp growers had started using straw as a mulching material in the place of plastic, but many opted out of this alternative because it was labor-intensive to apply it by hand and the final cost outstripped the cost of disposable plastic mulch.
Scott Diesel felt that there should be a better way, and so he rented a Finn blower from Portland. This device grinds the straw into small pieces and spreads it over a field at a rate of one acre in nearly an hour. The machine can shoot the cut pieces a distance of 60 feet, and it churns out seven tons of this material each hour.
Diesel hopes that his method will trigger a 30-40 percent reduction in the amount of water he uses to irrigate his hemp fields since this mulching material covers the ground fully. He also believes that there will be a higher level of activity by beneficial microbes since the straw keeps the soil cooler, unlike the plastic mulch which makes the soil so hot that microbes are killed. The straw will also inhibit the growth of weeds, so Diesel expects to cut his expenditure on weed control.
If this pilot project succeeds, Scott Diesel intends to form a farmer co-op through which hemp growers will team up and rent the machine so that the unit cost of mulching an acre goes down. Currently, the machine costs $300 to rent for a day and someone who wants to rent it for a week pays $1,000.
Diesel estimates that using this new method to mulch a field can cost about $450 an acre, and this cost is similar to what people using biodegradable plastic incur. However, disposable plastic is much cheaper.
Pete Gendron, the president of a hemp growers’ guild in Oregon says that the method being piloted by Diesel could be hard to apply on larger tracts of land. He predicts that as hemp prices plummet due to the growing interest in the crop, farmers will be compelled to use the most cost-effective methods available in order to remain profitable.
For example, Gendron points out that in 2018, there was a total of 50,000 acres of hemp in the entire country, but Oregon alone now has that total acreage this year. Such production levels are likely to result in a glut which will see prices drop from the current $37-$42 a pound to about $9 when farmers harvest their current crop.
Hemp industry analysts wonder what players like Marijuana Company of America Inc. (OTCQB: MCOA) and Lexaria Bioscience Corp. (CSE: LXX) (OTCQX: LXRP) could have in mind regarding how farmers like Scott Diesel can lower their operational costs without harming the environment.
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