By SANDRA EMERSON | semerson@scng.com |
PUBLISHED: August 19, 2019 at 7:00 am | UPDATED: August 20, 2019 at 1:33 pm
The company behind a controversial water pumping project is adding hemp to its farming operations in the Mojave Desert.
Cadiz Inc., which owns about 35,000 acres of land with water rights in San Bernardino County, has partnered with Glass House Group, a Long Beach-based cannabis and hemp company, to find out how well the newly legalized crop grows in the desert.
Hemp is related to marijuana, but doesn’t get you high and can be used to make textiles, clothing and body care products. Once planted, Cadiz officials say the farm would be the largest in San Bernardino County and potentially the state.
In July, the companies, which formed SoCal Hemp Co., planted five acres of hemp on Cadiz’s 9,600-acre farm in Cadiz Valley, about 60 miles northeast of Twentynine Palms.
The goal: figure out what works, what doesn’t and ultimately expand to 1,280 acres by the end of 2020.
“We really liked (hemp) for a number of reasons,” said Scott Slater, CEO and president of Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. “The first reason, and the most important reason, is we think it’s a long-term sustainable crop that’s compatible with the desert environment.”
Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. has partnered with Long Beach-based Glass House Farms to plant five acres of hemp on Cadiz’s agricultural property in San Bernardino County. (Courtesy of Cadiz Inc.)
Cadiz, which is facing a new hurdle from the state on its proposed Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project in the same area, has held agricultural permits for about 9,600 acres since 1993. It has grown organic grapes, citrus and seasonal crops relying on groundwater for irrigation. Today, the main crop is lemons, including pink lemons.
The hemp will be organic and sun-grown on property surrounded by vacant federal land. This eliminates the concern of offending neighbors with the plant’s odor or the risk of pesticide overspray from surrounding agricultural farms, Slater said.
The plants also use 20% of the water needed to water a lemon tree and there’s fewer pests in the desert, he said.
