Growing pains for new farming crop Hemp farmers struggle with low returns on big investments

Dec 31, 2019 at 08:37 AM CST
CENTRAL, S.C. — Tom Garrison wants you to know he’s a realist, not a pessimist. But from where he stands — on the 1,000-acre farm his family has worked for 150 years — things are looking bleak. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, with the hemp crop ... and I’ve never seen a more depressed ag (agriculture) economy than I’m seeing right now. It’s just gloom and doom, man.” In 2018, Garrison, who owns Denver Downs farm in Anderson, S.C., was one of the first South Carolina farmers to be issued a hemp license. “I just was trying to be an entrepreneur just like my dad was,” Garrison said.

Dec 31, 2019 at 08:37 AM CST

CENTRAL, S.C. — Tom Garrison wants you to know he’s a realist, not a pessimist. But from where he stands — on the 1,000-acre farm his family has worked for 150 years — things are looking bleak. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, with the hemp crop ... and I’ve never seen a more depressed ag (agriculture) economy than I’m seeing right now. It’s just gloom and doom, man.” In 2018, Garrison, who owns Denver Downs farm in Anderson, S.C., was one of the first South Carolina farmers to be issued a hemp license. “I just was trying to be an entrepreneur just like my dad was,” Garrison said.