HEMP HOPES: ROOTS ARE SPROUTING IN NORTH CAROLINA TO MAKE THE STATE A PLAYER IN A SMOKING-HOT INDUSTRY.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: NC TREND: Agriculture

In Garrett Perdue's estimation, a lot of Tar Heel agriculture's future is in a little bottle that could contain old-fashioned eardrops, except for its $99.99 price. It's hemp oil. "Cannabis," he says, "contains over 120 cannabinoids that are useful in health and wellness products" to treat pain, anxiety and inflammation. At less than two years of age, his Root Bioscience Inc. processes the chemical compounds for retail, wholesale and bulk customers nationwide at its headquarters in Morrisville near Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Those unfamiliar with Perdue's terminology would recognize the five-leaf plant depicted on Root's bottles as marijuana.

Federal law changes in 2014 and 2018 have opened the floodgates for industrial hemp, a new industry in North Carolina potentially worth billions of dollars a year. Valuable in drugs, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, fiber and other purposes, the nationwide market is projected at more than $22 billion annually by 2022. North Carolina has the fifth-largest acreage in the nation, says Perdue, 44, who is the son of former Gov. Beverly Perdue.

Root Bioscience and Hobgood-based Criticality LLC are among the hemp industry's early leaders. Criticality has converted a former tobacco warehouse in Wilson, the state's one-time tobacco-market capital, to process industrial hemp.

The cannabis rush is fraught with possibilities but also economic uncertainty. "We've seen explosive interest," says N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services spokeswoman Andrea Ashby. Licensed growers more than doubled in the last year to about 700, adds Phil Wilson, director of the department's plant industry division. Acreage also doubled to about 8,600 and the rush has fostered a fivefold jump in greenhouse and other inside production to more than 3.2 million square feet.

The ag department has a full-time employee devoted to processing license applications, and the Asheville-based N.C. Industrial Hemp Association, whose members include most growers and processors, is swamped with inquiries. "We're getting 50 to 75 calls a day," says Blake Butler, executive director. "There's tremendous interest in the farming community if North Carolina can apply some of the same principles and techniques we used to become great in tobacco to industrial hemp."

After federal law cleared production, state legislators in 2015 established an Industrial Hemp Commission to regulate and license growers and processors like Criticality...