According to Oregon’s preliminary data, industrial hemp plants escaped huge smoke damage emanating from West Coast wildfires that ravaged through Oregon, Washington, and California, choking outdoor marijuana operations during 2021.
Based on research published late last year by Iverson Family Farms and FSOil, hemp crops cultivated as close as 8 miles from the wildfires were safe for human ingestion and had zero contaminants.
The firms’ internal studies’ objective was to analyze the potential effects of ash and smoke contaminants on CBD oil extracts and the hemp flower.
Iverson Family Farms and FSOil said that their results indicate that hemp cultivated about 8-10 miles of the Beachie Creek Forest fire didn’t suffer any damage.
They added that they know this is a result that has to be evaluated and tested on the West Coast, and new information will be collected regarding what exactly got burnt.
The results underscore what various cannabis growers in the west coast’s three states uttered. That their plants suffered relatively zero smoke and ash damage, and they didn’t expect hasty lab-test failures or commodity shortages.
Several sources said the fires mostly engulfed vegetation and trees, not building structures. Burnt buildings usually emit more chemical-saturated ash and smoke.
California
The smoke culminated in minimal crop damage to crops grown at a specific distance from the West Coast wildfires. However, Indus Holdings is among the grow operations that’ve had to tackle fiscal decline from the fires.
Apart from Indus, other multiple California-based cannabis growers lost their facilities to the blazes.
Oregon And Washington
According to Washington Sungrowers Industry Association’s executive director, Crystal Oliver, Washington’s biggest effects on multiple marijuana farms were product delivery delays to retail stores.
Nathan Howard, the president of Oregon-based East Fork Cultivars, said there is ‘definitely a fire impact’ that’s being evaluated; however, it’s largely limited to harvested flowers’ smoky scents and potentially declined yields.
