Members of the Justice family are used to staying on their toes. Their nimbleness has helped them pass the family farm down three generations and pivot from growing cotton to ornamental planting to cattle and, now, hemp.
Read more: How the Justice Family Transitioned Into Hemp
Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic hits America, the Justices are continuing to operate the best they can while also working on contingency plans amid uncertainty over the future of the and hemp industry and the economy at large.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my whole life,” says Allison Justice, Ph.D, co-owner of The Hemp Mine. “I would’ve said that a month ago even before thinking about the virus because of the regulations. …We’re trying to provide [hemp clones], and we’re not just knowing our plants, we’re knowing the regulations of 50 different states so we can sell to these farmers properly. And throwing this virus on top of that is just mind-blowing.
“There’s so much projecting and trying to figure out which way to move next because every wrong move is money wasted, but it’s impossible to guess how to make the next move correctly.”
Justice, along with her mother, Deborah, siblings Amanda and Matthew, and family friend M. Travis Higginbotham Jr., created a brand called The Hemp Mine to sell the cannabidiol (CBD) they were producing from hemp grown on their farm. In August 2018, the Justice family sought to diversify their business. They partnered with cannabis company OutCo and an investor to create their own CBD extraction facility called SC Botanicals, which now also extracts oil for other farms in addition to The Hemp Mine. And recently, the Justices, ever-aware of changing market conditions and the need to carve out new niches for themselves, have turned their attention to another growth venture: genetics.
The Hemp Mine is a vertically integrated CBD company, so employees are still fulfilling orders of hemp CBD oils, salve, prerolls, flower and pet CBD products. Justice says direct consumer CBD orders are actually higher than normal. That may or may not be related to The Hemp Mine’s current sale of up to 30% off plus free shipping over $30, which it’s offering because “everybody’s struggling right now,” Justice says. She adds that the plan is to continue until they can’t ship any more.
However, Justice predicts the effects of COVID-19 will start to be felt by her family business soon. Sales to stores have drastically decreased because many of them have, at least temporarily, closed.
On the genetics front, employees are working to fulfill pending orders of cuttings, but Justice says orders are more delayed than the industry has ever seen before. Last year, the industry mostly completed orders by the end of February.
Justice speculates that could, in part, be because of the novel coronavirus but could also be a reflection of state applications timelines. For example, Georgia and Alabama just released applications for permitting a couple weeks ago, so farmers received the green light to plant as coronavirus cases started presenting in the United States.
Future permitting and licensing could also be delayed as state governors issue orders for residents to shelter in place. The sales slowdown could also be a reflection of farmers' decision, for whatever reason, to plant less hemp than they initially planned.
Every day farmers delay their orders is one fewer day the Justice family has to get started planning. She says that the average time to plant hemp in the Southeast is the first week of June, plus or minus two weeks. Growing from clones means working backwards: It takes eight weeks to grow mother plants to supply liners and two weeks to root those plants.
“Plants don’t get to take a break,” she says. “We still have to do our maintenance and watering. Whether it’s me or whether it’s somebody on our team, we can’t stop, or else they’ll just drop dead.”
That means the Justice family must soon decide whether to ramp up production in the hopes that demand picks up or reduce their risk of upfront investment—and potentially lose out on future orders.
“Every square foot we grow on is input costs, and we don’t want to spend that input cost if there’s not going to be orders,” Justice says.
In the interim, the Justices have collectively decided to plant vegetables on one-third acre of land instead of commercially producing hemp. They have always had a family vegetable plot, but the Justices haven’t commercially grown vegetables in many years.
“Right now is the time to plant some of those cold season crops, so it just made sense to us to go ahead and make use of that field space,” Justice says. “[We] just made a hard decision that may or may not pan out to be useful.
“That’s one way we’re pivoting because of the virus and due to the slowdown of the pricing in the hemp industry.”
Justice says they have the land and the manpower to grow the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, turnips and beets. They're starting tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse, too. If nothing else, they can eat the food. But since a lot of vegetables are imported from overseas, if imports slow or stop, American farmers will need to fill the void—and they want to do their part. Plus, it’s a way the Justices can give employees hours.
They have increased cleaning and temporarily reduced staffing at SC Botanicals to maintain social distancing, though Justice is hoping the stimulus plan can help bridge the gap.
“Right now, it’s a lot of day-by-day and week-by-week planning because everything is so up in the air, we don’t know what to expect next,” she says. “Nothing too terrible has hit us yet, but it could get to that point. Fingers crossed it doesn’t.”
