On a typical day, Brian Nixon arrives at the farm, gets ready and goes out into the field to start planting or harvesting. With corn, soybeans and hemp on 3,300 hectares of land, the workload is always there. Whether he’s chopping freshly dried beans in the wind blowing from lunchtime until nightfall or shelling corn “as late as the elevators are open,” he said the days can be long and just mother nature can tell you when to stop.
“When you’re planting and the weather is nice, one day bleeds into two and sometimes two into three when the conditions are really fair … we’ve been known to do a couple of 24- to 48-hour stretches in the spring.” Nixon said.
This is just the beginning of Nixon’s responsibilities as founder of Brian Nixon Family Farms, LLC. It also manages risks, such as weather and fast-approaching deadlines, to ensure yield potential or the highest amount of crop that can be harvested per acre under ideal circumstances is not reduced. Because he farms not only for himself, but also for others in Indiana’s Delaware, Madison and Henry counties, attention to detail is extremely important. He has to get the little things right from the moment the spring starts to avoid the repercussions of not doing it in the fall.
This is not how Nixon’s life has always been, but it is how his life began.
Nixon’s relationship with agriculture began when he was growing up on his grandfather’s farm. He worked alongside his father and brothers from the age of five until his high school graduation.
“I was always working there, riding with my dad and going on the tractors,” Nixon said. “That environment and that experience gets in your blood.”
After graduating from high school, he attended college, where he studied to become a physical therapist. In making this decision, agriculture took a back seat for the first time in his life.
While Nixon said she loved her job, she could tell she always yearned for something more entrepreneurial. Despite this, he still had no idea that farming would later become his life’s work.
It wasn’t until 2009 that Nixon had the opportunity to buy land around the corner from his grandfather’s farm, which he described as a “blessing and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“I did it full time both ways,” he said. “I had a full-time physical therapy job…and I was growing big enough to be a full-time job as well.”
Even with the help of his father and a part-time worker, the workload eventually became too much, forcing Nixon to quit his job as a full-time physical therapist in the late spring of 2012
When Nixon met Kyle Crabtree, whom he would later refer to as his “first in command” for having worked with him the longest, Crabtree was a custom applicator—a person in charge of operating the spray team for to the application of pesticides and fertilizers. . In 2018, Nixon invited Crabtree to join the farm as a permanent, day laborer, and Crabtree accepted the offer and quit his job.
“It was a good move for me,” Crabtree said. “We all pretty much share most of the duties and work [Nixon] it’s just been phenomenal.”
Crabtree was not the only permanent addition made to the farm during this time. Following the passage of the 2018 Federal Farm Bill, which legalized the cultivation of hemp and the transportation of hemp-derived products (including lotions and oils) across state lines for commercial use, Nixon made the decision of starting to grow hemp as a way to diversify the farm. . He said he heard a lot of discussion about the plant during some of the forums and conference sessions he attended.
Nixon said the decision to start growing hemp was experimental at first because of the risks of the industry.
“There are 101 pitfalls on the road to breaking and losing in this part of the business,” he said.
However, after a year and a half of preparation and securing good people around him in the process, Nixon said they “hit a home run.”
Hemp stands in a field on August 29 at Brian Nixon Family Farms. Following the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp cultivation was legalized across the country. Amber Pietz, DN
According to Purdue Extension hemp specialist Marguerite Bolt, the hemp industry is growing, but there is still a lot of room for development.
“There are people who are trying to build this industry; it just needs more awareness and more people wanting to process and manufacture,” he said. “That’s like one of the missing pieces: the supply chain.”
Bolt said he sees beans and fibers expanding greatly if the supply chain improves, and he also predicts a permanent place and a growing market for hemp-derived CBD products.
Although the legislation allowed the cultivation of hemp, the process is still highly regulated, according to her. He said a license is required to grow hemp in every state, and the Indiana State Chemist’s Office manages Indiana’s licensing program, tests the hemp and sends the necessary reports to the Department of Agriculture. of the United States. A federal background check is also required before licensure.
Bolt said much of the hesitancy surrounding cannabis as a plant stems from the inability of many to differentiate between hemp and marijuana.
Although both are cannabis, hemp and marijuana are not the same for many reasons, first of which is the levels of THC in them. THC is the main psychoactive compound found in marijuana plants, meaning it produces a “high,” while hemp must contain less than 0.3 percent of the compound, according to federal law .
“People get very caught up … not recognizing that the plant as a whole is much more than just the compounds it produces, and those are important and valuable,” Bolt said. “It can be used for thousands of different products and applications in so many industries, such as human foodstuffs and cosmetics, building materials, automotive industry applications, the textile industry… it just has so many facets in which can fit.”
Since making the decision to grow hemp, Nixon has begun using it to produce CBD oil and other products for his business Wellness Tree, LLC, which he launched with one of his high school classmates, Billy Tabor , in 2020. They offer sleeping jelly. , pet treats, CBD oils and creams.
“Our product line is always moving forward, and the production of each product was a little slow at first, but we have seven products in just over a year, with more coming online every six months,” Nixon said .
Although both compounds are present in the cannabis plant, CBD is very different from THC. It does not produce a “high” effect and has no potential for dependence, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, animal studies and human research suggest that CBD may help those with anxiety, insomnia or chronic pain, according to Peter Grinspoon, an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
On growing hemp, Nixon said the response was welcoming “with maybe a raised eyebrow.” This was due to factors including odor during plant growth and vegetative state, he said.
“There’s so much stigma attached to growing it,” Nixon said. “There’s a big stigma about using it.”
In order to help the community better understand the plant and its many uses, Nixon and others at Wellness Tree, LLC, have produced educational events at places such as doctors’ offices, chiropractor’s offices and rotary clubs in Yorktown and Muncie.
“It was a real honor to be able to talk to people,” Nixon said. “They asked really good, educated questions. So people are starting to drop the stigma, but we use [the word ‘stigma’] all the time…”
As for the farm’s future, Nixon said he hopes to add additional acres for hemp cultivation, ideally between five and 20. He also invests in sustainable agriculture, meaning he avoids excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals, he said. . It also monitors the soil through soil sampling on a regular basis.
“What we’re trying to do is be able to do things with a certain administration that we’re very proud of,” Nixon said, “so that we can continue to grow into the future and do things with sustainability in mind so that it’s good for the earth and good for my children and good for the way we do things.”
Contact Evan Chandler with comments by email at eachandler@bsu.edu or on Twitter @evachandler.
