Feral hemp seeds: A roadmap for resilience

Editor’s note: Welcome to the Cultivated Sunday Read. These are narrative stories by great writers exploring little-known, but fascinating corners of the world of cannabis. So grab a cup of coffee and hang out with us for a little while — and email us to let us know what you think!

This story is 1,360 words or about an 11 minute read.

Bursting from an abandoned lot, growing tall along a roadside in Iowa, by a stream, or at the fringes of farmland, hemp has learned to survive on its own after decades of criminality and destruction. These plants have persisted and adapted to their environments from Minnesota to the rocky hills of New York. Hemp pollen can travel up to five miles, and over time it dispersed from its industrial home of the 1930’s in the midwest, across the country. 

Feral hemp are the ancestors of the industrial crop that was made illegal in 1937. The seeds are small, no bigger than a bead of sweat, even smaller than their cultivated relatives. These feral seeds have become a deep brown, with darker brown lightning bolt patterns surrounding them. Within these small seeds hold innumerable plant variabilities, from hundreds of cannabinoids (active compounds found in the cannabis plant), to leaf size and shape, to quality of the hurd and perhaps qualities we have not thought to apply to hemp. Hemp has learned things about the environment over these decades. The ditchweed, common in the midwest, may have things to teach us about how to work with hemp in a changing environment. 

The fact of climate change affecting crops is not new. Vulnerable to the changing climate, farmers, breeders, and botanists are faced with the unique challenge of cultivating crops that can withstand various pathogens, and be resilient in a changing climate, while growing with predictability and producing high yield. 

Much of this research in the future of hemp crop is being conducted at the top of Seneca Lake, in Geneva, New York, where the Plant Genetics Research Unit, a plot run by Cornell University and the US Department of Agriculture researchers, is situated. This historic location is focused on the experimentation with cultivars housing over 600,000 different seeds.

Zachary Stansell, a USDA geneticist who has the enviable title of hemp germplasm curator, and Tyler Gordon are heading a team that formed in 2021 on a mandate by the USDA to research hemp. With the science at a 70 year disadvantage, the team has work to do collecting seed from all over the world, observing it, and experimenting with them. The bank now holds 600 hemp accessions, and millions of seeds, stored in a vault held at 0 degrees: It’s one of the largest banks of hemp seeds in the world, behind places like Vavilov Institute in Russia. These are being bred and observed for a variety of characteristics. The outcome from some of these experiments are aimed at finding their way to fields throughout the United States with the variables filtered from many feral hemp varieties. 

“Does this seem evil to you?” Stansell asks in the greenhouse surrounded by plants from Germany, Afghanistan, Sudan, and ditches in Omaha, plants he and his team are self pollinating and engineering to focus in on specific genes and create seeds with a range of specific and hopefully predictable, genetically diverse, even audacious plants. This, according to Stansell, is some of the most in depth and formalized study that has ever been made on hemp. And the clock is ticking, as this wide range of feral hemp in the midwest faces climate shifts, or simply destruction as an invasive plant. 

Tori Ford, intern with the USDA Agricultural Resource Service, has been mapping niche ecological models in a variety of climate scenarios across space and time. These feral varieties reveal interesting resilience. Feral hemp has proven to be resilient against a range of pathogens and mildews, according to the team’s study this summer. The feral hemp is often a fiber variety. After decades, this hemp has become attuned to the latitude where it grows, so it is easier to grow in those specific regions.

“There is a potential that you could see a lot of loss in these under-sampled areas and if you don’t have the data now there is a potential that you are never going to be able to.” Ford said, even though feral hemp varieties trend towards a gain in the worst case climate scenario Ford has mapped. Studies are beginning to show that hemp is not only resilient as the climate changes. It seems to enjoy the catastrophe. “No one wants to see 8.5 degree warming by 2050. I think we’d have much larger concerns than the collection of feral hemp at that point.” Says Ford. 

Feral hemp in particular shows a unique promise for Stansell and his team to study. Anthony J. Barraco, a research technician with USDA, is interested in fiber hemp varieties. “[Feral hemp] are some of our tallest plants…so you have more of that vast fiber yield…they are definitely among our tallest.” says Barraco. The many uses of hemp are still revealing themselves.

Feral plants occupy an agricultural gray area. Where once they were planted, bred, and refined by human hands, they fold themselves into the rhythm of the local ecosystems. This can be a good thing and a bad thing for growers. On the one hand feral plants are stronger and more resilient, on the other they can’t be included in the same production timeline that homogenous seeds have been bred for. Feral plant seeds, including hemp, can stay dormant for longer than cultivated seed. 

But studies are learning to track the inconsistencies. A recent post doctoral fellow with the USDA working in the program found that feral varieties had a seed dormancy that could be broken with six weeks of cold storage and bathing them in a light acid that got them to wake up. These techniques may be useful information for growers to implement into varieties that may have a higher genetic ‘ferality’ content than others. 

The reality on the ground looks more precarious to Amy Hepworth, the head grower and president of Hepworth Farms. “All I need is a stray plant to make my crop zero.” Hepworth says. Hemp is a wind pollinated seed, so managing the crops can prove difficult for growers, highlighting the sheer importance of working with crops that are decidedly not feral, and predictable to grow. She mentions how she got into a lawsuit about one stray plant growing in a neighbor’s field. “You plant an F1 heirloom tomato, you’re going to get an heirloom tomato, you plant a feral hemp plant, you’re going to get something completely different. They’re like people,” she said.

The hemp alleles are so diverse, they can very easily change from generation to generation, and for farmers of CBD or fiber varieties with large crop, and millions of dollars invested in their operation, one “hot plant” — meaning its THC level is above .03% — and they will need to destroy their entire crop. While planting feral, wild seeds, with unknown variables “like Johnny Appleseed” Hepworth says, these qualities within the seed may lend to plants that are resilient, strong, and highly adapted to their environment.  But the research and breeding process must be exact and streamlined. 

For the last four years The Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute has been working with The University of Minnesota to work with feral varieties from Minnesota, a region with long winters. “Feral grew under really tough conditions, because we had that lack of water last year.” Executive director Jerry Lee Chilton says of the crop last year. The science, in many ways, is starting from the ground up. “We are figuring this out as we go, because there are…not many experts.” Chilton continues. 

This is a rich moment for understanding the wide range of possibilities for hemp as a staple crop from textiles and building supplies, to medicine and recreation. But perhaps, more importantly, a model to look at how seed diversity can affect and strengthen a cultivar. These kinds of conversations could even open up more discussions.

Editor’s note: This story was edited to reflect that the Vavilov Institute is the largest hemp seed bank in the world.