Archey/High Country News

So MacKenzie moved her own family to the ranch, where bills had been piling up. The property required constant labor, from baling hay to irrigating the fields, and tax and insurance payments were coming due. MacKenzie evaluated her options for turning a profit and arrived at a relatively novel solution: growing hemp. For decades, the law had lumped the crop in with marijuana, treating it as a drug even though it contains minute levels of THC, the psychoactive chemical that gets pot smokers high. That meant that growing hemp — which harbors valuable oils, fibers that can be processed into textiles, and nutritious seeds — was a federal crime. Then, in 2014, the farm bill removed some barriers to hemp cultivation, allowing states to authorize itunder certain circumstances, even though, under federal law, it remained a controlled substance.

In conservative Mesa County, where Collbran is located, county commissioners recognized an opportunity. They excluded industrial hemp from an ordinance that banned marijuana cultivation and sales in the county, passed in 2013 after Coloradans voted to legalize marijuana. When MacKenzie planted her first crop in 2015, curious neighbors made their way up her dirt road to peer at the plants, which look exactly like marijuana. “We had more conversations on the fence line that year than work that got done in the field,” she recalled.

Now, that curiosity has blossomed into a growing enthusiasm for hemp in conservative communities and political circles. Just a decade ago, such a stance was considered “political kryptonite” among politicians, according to