Scaling Up the Industrial Hemp Supply Chain as Carbon Negative Feedstock for Fuel and Fiber

This project will help with commercializing and marketing climate-smart hemp crops while driving soil carbon sequestration and climate resilience. The project aims to provide effective valuation and monetization of environmental services, including carbon dioxide removal via implementation of new genetics and management practices to increase sustainability of hemp as an annual crop in the U.S.

The project plans to support small-scale, minority and other underserved farmers by paying producer license fees, incentives and seed costs. Partners are planning Climate-Smart marketing and technical feasibility studies.

Leaf and soil samples will be collected from farm sites. The project plans to use data collection to verify satisfactory model performance of various computer simulation models used to manage natural resources [e.g., COMET-Farm, DayCent, The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), and The Agricultural Policy / Environmental eXtender (APEX)].

Marketing feasibility studies and technical feasibility studies are planned to be conducted during the Climate Smart grant study to determine the scale and location of the plants.The project plans to pre-contract and identity preserve crops. The project plans to support small and minority and underrepresented farmers by paying producer license fees, incentives and seed costs.