CYNTHIANA, Ky. — Brian Furnish studied the thick, tan stalks dangling from wooden trellises inside his towering, pitched-roof barn. After years of practice, the eighth-generation Kentucky tobacco farmer knew to check for even the earliest signs of mold on his plants.
But this wasn’t tobacco. Above Furnish was another plant with a long, complicated history in the state.
“This is about evolving,” the 43-year-old said, gingerly pinching stalks of hemp that dangled like light fixtures.
A steady morning rain pattered on the tin roof and slivers of light shone through the plank siding. The sweet smell of tobacco leaves dried here over generations lingered in the air. With it mingled the pungent odor of the new hemp harvest.
“Tobacco here is very much the past,” Furnish said. “Hemp is the future.”
For centuries, tobacco barns dotted the central Kentucky landscape, but as health risks from smoking became clear, sales of the state’s longtime top crop plummeted. Farmers searching for an alternative focused on another crop with a long history here, stretching back to the 1700s. And it’s one that’s grown and dried similarly to tobacco.
Now the conservative state is on the front lines of what is expected to be a booming hemp industry nationwide. Some say the crop is as ingrained in the state’s culture as bourbon and thoroughbreds.