Money was tight, I had to figure out how to grow hemp with limited funds, you could say that I was on a shoestring budget.  A little knowledge and experience growing up on a farm went a long way.  Prior to me going to the Danville Hemp Conference, I knew very little about growing hemp other than what I had gathered off of the internet.  In this post I am going to show you how I broke it down in my mind to make this venture work for me.

My starting point I had a major leg up because we still own the farm, so land is not an issue.  The issue was getting the seeds or plants at the very beginning I was ignorant to all of the ins and outs of the hemp growing game.  I had to get knowledgeable quickly or come up with about 10k to 20k.    I got knowledgeable, I started combing the internet and I found that I could seeds from one to two dollars and fifty cents per seed and on a 6'x6' grid on an acre of land you can get 2000 plants that's still 2k-5k dollars to plant one acre of hemp, not including the cost of preparing the land for planting fortunately that was went gas prices were much lower than they are today.  These numbers were very expensive to my way of thinking because I was equating it to planting and acre of corn.  A bag of seed corn cost starts at about $85.00 and plants right around 3 acres.  Now hemp has the potential to gross 60 times more revenue per acre than corn, I was not thinking about at the time.

Before I purchased any seeds online, I went to the Hemp Growers conference in Danville, Virginia and that it when it all came together.  My purpose for going was to get educated on the hemp growing process and the regulations that needed to be followed and mainly where to get seeds and see if I could reduce the start-up cost.  By the end to the conference, I had the plan that would complement my shoestring budget.   That was at the end of the day not the beginning of the day.

During the break, we were able to walk around and view all the different vendors, I saw a vendor that I was familiar with from Chesapeake, Virginia. He started telling me about the grow houses and their plants were $7.00 per plant. Wow!  That would cost me $14,000.00 just for the plants to plant an acre of hemp. In hindsight that price is not outrages now knowing what a hemp plant has the potential to produce.

That thought only lasted a moment, if you have been following this blog, you will remember the story of an old man introducing me to clones and mother plants, he was right around the corner.  You will also remember, that before he could finish telling me about clones and mother plants that we were called back to the conference, while I was listening to the speaker, I was going over in my mind that was the key to reducing the cost of planting an acre of hemp.

I was almost there I just needed a little more information I needed to find the old man and finish talking to him but as fate would have it, I was unable to find him.  I was not out of luck, on the opposite side of room was a fella from North Carolina with a display as big as day advertising clones.  Can you guess where my next stop was?  To the opposite side of room, and he gave me the information I needed to grow hemp on a shoestring budget.

I now knew what clones and mother plants were, and how to produce my own clones and mother plants.  In my opinion the key to reducing cost and increasing profits.

Til Next Time