Sutter County halts industrial hemp grows after six-figure loss, neighbor complaints

After numerous complaints, illegal pesticide concerns and a six-figure loss, Sutter County’s foray into the world of industrial hemp may be coming to an end.

Supervisors on Tuesday approved a 45-day ban of industrial hemp grows in the county as officials weigh whether to ban permanently large-scale production of the crop.

County officials cited more than $400,000 lost to the program, which began in 2019 and was expected to pay for itself, although other community concerns factored into the decision.

“The cost of running the program, despite the fact that it has a cost for the program, has been woefully inadequate,” said Taylor Kayatta, deputy county administrator.

Complaints about smells

The Sutter County Sheriff’s Office received almost 200 service calls related to industrial hemp since the program began, according to a county report. Supervisors and county workers have also fielded complaints, particularly from residents of Sutter, a small unincorporated town near the Sutter Buttes, where smell from a nearby hemp field wafted into the community, lingering in homes and outside of the town’s high school for several weeks toward the end of summer and early fall.

Some of the hemp plants violated county regulations by containing greater than hemp’s low 0.3% THC threshold, Kayatta said, with levels high enough to be considered marijuana, of which the county does not permit large grows.

The county’s agricultural office found that during the program more than 500 acres and 30 greenhouses of hemp had either too much THC or otherwise violated the ordinance, according to a county report.

‘A non-viable agribusiness’

“The crops are consistently violating the ordinance due to having high levels of THC, so they become cannabis products, which is not allowed in this county,” Kayatta said. “And perhaps more importantly and more worryingly for our agriculture community is that there’s frequent use of unpermitted pesticides which are dangerous to public health and also to our reputation as a farming community.”

Hemp grown in 22 greenhouses in Sutter County was destroyed in July after county agricultural workers found illegal pesticide residue on plants grown in each of those structures, according to a California Department of Pesticide Regulation news release from August.

The owner of those plants reached a settlement with the state pesticide department and voluntarily destroyed the hemp from all 22 greenhouses.

The Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau came out against the hemp grows in a letter sent to the county in November, not long after Sutter residents aired concerns about the smell, calling hemp “a non-viable agribusiness for our region.”

“When initially introduced, there were proposals for a processing plant and a clear market for the product,” the letter said. “Since then, there has been no identified market or processing plant to support the crop in the county.”