MILTON, N.Y. (1010 WINS) — One of New York’s oldest active farms is applying 200 years of experience to the state’s newest industry — cannabis.
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Hepworth Farms, founded in Ulster County in 1818, has been a leader in sustainability and labor practices for decades, and the state hopes the family-owned business can help forge an equitable and environmentally-friendly cannabis industry as part of the most ambitious legalization plan in the country.
Over the course of their tenure as the 7th-generation stewards of the farm, twin sisters Amy and Gail Hepworth transformed a retail fruit farm across the river from Poughkeepsie into an industry leader for sustainable agriculture. Their team now produces organic vegetables for grocers and restaurants all over the Northeast.
“In each generation, there has to be innovation. We’re not doing the same thing we did 200 years ago here,” Gail told 1010 WINS.
She speaks of cannabis with the love and poetics of a Bordeaux wine maker.
“What we’re going to create is a product that has its own terroir, its own flavor,” Gail said, while standing proudly in front of the farm’s first crop of adult-use cannabis. “The terpenes and the cannabinoids will all play in a fantastical way, and you’re going to have safe, regulated cannabis to consume and feel good about.”
The Office of Cannabis Management said New York is on track to open the first dispensaries by the end of the year.
The state issued special licenses to farmers like the Hepworths and 222 other local farms across New York State in time for them to grow and harvest weed to be sold in those dispensaries as soon as they open.
According to Amy, 100% of Hepworth’s first crop will be sold in New York City.
“We’re well positioned, and people want to know where their weed came from,” she explained. “We’re going to grow high quality weed. It’s going to be legal and you’re going to know everything about it — where it comes from, how it’s grown, track and traceability. What we do is very transparent, and I think there’s going to be a demand for outdoor weed because it’s going to have characteristics that are natural — everything from the profile of the genetics, the terpenes will be expressed through the growing practices and having a very high quality outdoor grow in New York is going to be a really spectacular experience.”
Amy and Gail, who serve as the farm’s President and CEO respectively, applied for a license to grow adult-consumption cannabis through the state’s Seeding Opportunity Initiative.
SOI’s approach to equity in dispensaries has been making headlines with its first-in-the-nation plan to give people with prohibition-era cannabis convictions first dibs on dispensary licenses.
It’s a trailblazing approach, but the OCM’s goal of creating a just and equitable cannabis industry extends to cultivators as well.
Chris Alexander, the OCM’s executive director, said the goal is for half of all licenses, dispensary and cultivator, to be held by “social and economic equity applicants.”
That means service disabled veterans, minority and women-owned businesses, those who have been directly impacted by prohibition and distressed farmers.
Many businesses that fall under the “distressed farmers” category also have experience in cannabis growing due to New York’s poorly-timed and chaotic hemp industry rollout.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a law that allowed for farmers to grow hemp in 2017, during the peak of a hemp boom driven by the popularity of CBD wellness products.
In 2017, hemp was selling for a tantalizing $40 a pound, according to the public policy research group Pew Charitable Trusts.
In 2021, an influx of producers who rushed to capitalize on a crop that was just starting to find legal standing in certain states caused the market to crash — bringing market prices below the break-even point.
“So many of our hemp farmers are distressed farmers, and that’s part of our equity definition,” said Alexander. “The hemp market crashed a couple years ago and folks made some investments hoping that the industry would take off, and it hadn’t. So we have captured farmers, who are the backbone really of New York’s agricultural community, and given them a new opportunity to bring these farms back to life.”
Hepworth was growing 200 acres of hemp when the market crashed and suffered the fallout.
The legalization of cannabis with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, represents a lifeline for some of the hemp producers who were hurt by the crash.
“The CBD market had some challenges. I know I had challenges.” said Damian Fagon, the OCM’s Chief Equity Officer and a former Hudson Valley hemp farmer. “People took on a lot of loans, a lot of partners in pursuit of the CBD market, so I really see this THC opportunity, this adult-use opportunity, as something to undo a lot of the harm that was done from the instability of the hemp industry.”
For the rollout of the adult-use cannabis industry, New York State has gone out of its way to prioritize small and struggling farmers — two categories with a lot of overlap as small farms compete with powerful agri-business behemoths and grapple with climate change.
Climate justice and sustainability are key goals for the OCM that go hand-in-hand with its equity mandate.
“It’s the climate, it’s healthy soil practices here on farms like this that are going to make a big change. It’s making sure that we are not increasing our energy usage for things like cannabis — a high energy usage market,” said State Sen. Michelle Hinchey. “If we’re doing outdoor grow, we’re limiting that tremendously. So if we’re really serious about hitting the goals of the CLCPA [Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act], if we’re really serious about having a planet for our future generations to live on, it’s grow like this.”
Marijuana is often grown using indoor hydroponic systems that are extremely energy intensive, so even the choice to grow outdoors reflects a commitment to sustainable agriculture.
Hepworth also uses solar power, regenerative growing techniques that preserve soil quality and geothermal cooling in an underground packing facility to reduce energy costs.
“We’re building an industry based on equity, public health and sustainability. There’s nothing else like it,” said Cannabis Control Board member and former State Sen. Jen Metzger. “The Hepworths are a model of sustainability. They have so much to teach the rest of the industry about this plant.”
Beyond its sustainability goals, Hepworth is a vocal advocate for fair labor practices in agriculture.
“Our farm is made of our people. The people who feed you are the people who are going to harvest our cannabis, which we consume. It is a food for us, and it is our team that does it,” said Gail. “Agriculture workers do not make enough money. They are essential workers in our state, they are critical to food security, they are critical to the future and we need to do better by them.”
The farm offers 401(k) accounts and profit sharing options to staff, but Gail sees the budding New York cannabis industry as an opportunity to add to the financial security of workers at Hepworth.
“Farm workers deserve to be a part of middle class America, and we are hoping that the cannabis industry does something by allowing the economic disruption where all the money isn’t being siphoned out of our economy into the hands of a few,” she said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do right.”
Amy Hepworth, who works as the farm’s lead grower in addition to her responsibilities as president, agrees with her sister.
“An important part of growing cannabis outdoors is environmental justice too — for the plant to be liberated. It is known to be grown indoors because it had to be, but it can be released to the people,” she said. “What made us do it, was that there’s distressed farmers, there’s economic opportunity for the workers, and this is a perfect plant and the perfect time to have an economic disruption here in an industry where the land based community can prosper, if it’s done correctly.”
By fast-tracking licenses for small and struggling New York cannabis cultivators, the state has given local farms a head start.
“We have to make sure that we have New York product,” said State Sen. Hinchey, the sponsor of the bill that established the Conditional Adult-use Cannabis Cultivator licenses that prioritize small farms. “We cannot create an incredibly new, exciting industry if we don’t have New York product and we’re not bringing our incredibly knowledgeable, special, insightful family farms here in New York with us.”
The Hepworths plan on harvesting their first crop between mid-September through November, depending on the strain.
Amy estimates the yield-per-acre will be between 500 and 1,000 pounds.
The first set of licenses are for one acre, according to Amy, but the Hepworths say they’re ready for more.
They already grow 500 acres of organic vegetables and have grown 200 acres at a time in hemp, so once they’re given the greenlight, they intend to drastically increase their output of THC cannabis.
“They need to let us grow more so that we can supply the market,” said Amy. “Our capabilities are huge here, and what we can provide for the state launching and have that money and all that work go back into our community is going to be a big, big time for New York.”
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