By 1920, Black farmers were thriving in Dearfield, a town in distant Weld County with 300 residents, a school and two churches, with crops such as alfalfa, Mexican beans and a slew of vegetables and fruits. It makes you wonder how they’d do if they grew hemp.

Two Boulder CBD companies are willing to put resources toward answering that question. They probably can’t create another Dearfield: That tiny town, wiped out by the Dust Bowl years, may have been the only example of a Black farming community in the area, if not the state. The only thing marking it is a monument at the old site.

Evo Hemp, based in Boulder, and Charlotte’s Web Inc. are both companies that produce CBD products such as oils, candy and powders, and they have both partnered with 40 Acre Ranch and Cooperative, an agency that aims to help Black farmers make it in the hemp industry while building generational wealth through land ownership.

They want to help in different ways. Evo Hemp plans to use 40 Acre’s hemp in its products and gives the agency front-page play on its website, while Charlotte’s Web — headquartered in Denver but with operations in Louisville — hopes to help by lobbying to ease red tape and restrictions placed on hemp and farmers in Minnesota, where 40 Acre is based.

The exciting thing, according to leaders of both companies, is that they have the power to make a difference. Hemp is one of the few crops that small independent farmers can grow these days and make a good living. Hemp, in fact, makes it possible for 40 Acre to not only help other Black farmers but survive.

“It really takes more care to grow a really good cannabis plant,” said Ari Sherman, president and co-founder of Evo Hemp. “There’s a lot of factors, such as how much this plant will produce and the quality of it, that matters how much you can charge per acre. The more care you put into it, the more dollars you get. There aren’t many other crops that really reflect this. As a result, we really see a much better product from the small farmer than the big guys.”

The partnerships also excite Angela Dawson, the founder of 40 Acre, for different reasons. Evo Hemp, on a very basic business level, gives her a place to sell her product, which makes 40 Acre self-sustaining and successful: “We have someone purchasing our product. That’s what we really want,” she said.

But Charlotte’s Web has been “great” as well, Dawson said, with mentorship classes and some help with lobbying and other ways to make it easier for her to grow and produce a product that still makes the more straight-laced uneasy because of its association with pot, even though there are strict guidelines that prevent hemp from carrying any THC, the chief intoxicant in marijuana and hashish. In fact, any hemp crop that contains THC has to be destroyed.

“Organizations are still trying to figure out how to help us,” Dawson said. “I think it’s time for institutions such as the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and companies to step up and make these systems more sustainable.”

Indeed, policies rooted in systemic racism and the way Black farmers were treated by landowners throughout history makes Dearfield remarkable even after it only lasted a decade before the Dust Bowl era did it in. But there are no other examples like it, as those policies have continued to block Black farmers from building anything close to a Dearfield ever again, Dawson said. She would know.

Strong roots

Dawson was working to be a corporate attorney, but her own family roots were too grounded.

“Farming chose me,” she said. “It was in my family for many generations. In the 20th Century we lost a million Black farmers. That included my grandparents.”

Dawson was a member of local food co-ops in Minnesota, a sign that her history was always calling to her, when she noticed that the co-ops were run by white people in white communities. In fact, she learned, a Black-owned co-cop had not been in operation since the 1800s. It was a bit too much to take.

She put all her life savings in a farm in northern Minnesota by a river with tough soil, the only place where she could buy 10 acres of land. She applied for the USDA’s “socially disadvantaged farmer microloan” program and was denied. When she appealed, they told her she wasn’t eligible, and it hit her why Black farmers make up only 1.3% of all farms, according to the USDA. It hit her even harder given what happened to her paternal grandparents.

Her grandparents ran an orchard, supplemented by her grandmother’s cooking and baking skills. They had fruit and livestock and 10 kids, all with a specific job.

“They were very talented and skilled, but they didn’t have ownership,” Dawson said. “They were promised things that didn’t come true.”

Bad sharecropping deals like the one that did in her grandparents happened all over the U.S., depleting Black farmers and, later, forcing them into concrete buildings in large cities, where they had no hope of starting anything as simple as a garden. That migration, she said, wasn’t good for her father but offered no other details.

“I’ve picked it back up, but I couldn’t get funding and ended up having to create a movement and a national conversation around it,” Dawson said. What she’s doing is “a big healing point for my family.”

The co-op now has 35 members, with a waiting list of more than 300. Black independent farmers with land they’ve inherited or are already farming learn about farming hemp and get help processing paperwork and obtaining loans. She would like to have more members, but funding and time are real issues with her, as she puts in hours at the agency when she isn’t working her farm. That farm has grown to 60 acres and includes animals and vegetables. She is still the only one who processes the applications, for instance.

“Farmers in general are skeptical of everyone,’ she said. “People take advantage of them. But if they do what we say to do, they are generally happy with the results.”

The USDA is trying to make changes to encourage more farmers of color, but those changes come slower than a crop, and even today, there are frustrations: Dawson said 97% of all COVID funding went to corporate or white-owned farms.

“It’s a long, slow push,” she said. “These are decades-old practices we are trying to change.”

Independent farmers in general struggle regardless of their skin color, but hemp is one of the few crops, other than specialty herbs, gingers and veggies, that can make them a good living. Most crops, such as soybeans, corn and wheat, make 10 cents on the dollar, which is why corporate farmers absolutely dominate the farming industry.

“Hemp is you harvest it, and at the end, you count your money,” Dawson said. “There are so few crops like it.”

Cultivating social justice

Charlotte’s Web has a core company mission to “unleash the healing powers of botanicals with compassion and science.” It’s good PR, as that’s both an altruistic and profitable message: Greater access to hemp oil means more people feel better, in theory, and it also means the company makes more money. But after George Floyd was murdered, Charlotte’s Web began to think about its mission in other ways.

“As the company has grown, access has evolved into other areas,” said Mary Ann Rounsville, the head of communications. “We are looking into social and economic equity for communities. That word ‘access’ now has a larger definition for us.”

The company specifically now wants to support and improve the lives of Black people, and workers believe hemp and their production of it could be a part of that. That’s when they discovered Jones and 40 Acre: Her mission seemed to match their new goal.

“She was one of the very few people out there working on that, honestly,” said Matt Lindsey, the head of impact. “Working in the hemp industry really narrows the scope. There are some Black-owned brands out there, but the cultivation, someone like Angela who is doing the right things, there’s not very many people out there.”

In a year, the partnership evolved into rolling back the onerous state legislation that continues to make it difficult for independent farmers to operate. The theory, of course, is that if it’s difficult for white farmers to make it, Black farmers will have an even harder time. Even in Minnesota, considered one of the more liberal states in the country, policies restrict and even prevent hemp production because of the worry that pot farms will spring up like weeds. Minnesota, in fact, is one of the worst states for access for Black farmers, Lindsey said, calling the state “the land of 10,000 mistakes,” a play off its state nickname.

“We need to support Angela at a policy level,” Lindsey said. “We can offer a lot of shared skill, but what’s more meaningful is a change in policy. Systematic racism is very real.”

It’s true that urban areas have made progress and continue to fight restrictive politics and racism, and under President Biden, agencies such as the USDA have shifted. But rural areas, where most of the country’s agriculture takes place, including the cultivation of hemp, still foster the kind of systemic racism that stole land from Dawson’s family and made it hard for her to start her ranch. The company doesn’t expect to profit from its work with Dawson: It just wants to help after the shock of Floyd’s death.

“Urban areas are more progressive, but we want to bring that awareness to rural areas,” Lindsey said.

Hemp farmers and companies spend years working with genetics to avoid having to destroy their crops for a trace of THC and improve the effectiveness of their CBD offerings. This prevents Charlotte’s Web, which does nearly all of its own organic cultivation, from purchasing Dawson’s product, at least right now.

“Our cultivation is so specific to genetics,” Lindsey said on working with 40 Acre, “but certainly that’s a beautiful concept we’d love to execute on.”

Social justice can be a good product

Ultimately, 40 Acre needs buyers if the business model will work and Dawson’s agency can continue. Evo Hemp hasn’t purchased a lot yet, she said, but it’s just starting, and the potential is there. The company just began using her work three months ago, and already it’s in three-fourths of their product.

“They produce a superior product,” Sherman said. “We wouldn’t be with them if they didn’t. The extracts are top-notch.”

The partnership makes good business sense, which is one of the best ways to ensure that 40 Acre continues to grow, both Sherman and Dawson said.

“We didn’t want to create some social equity program,” Sherman said. “We wanted to walk the talk.”

Dawson sells what she calls a “Wonder Woman” strain that is remarkably high in the beneficial components that make CBD a possible natural solution for pain, anxiety and other maladies, and she is good at teaching others to put that care into their plant, the kind of care that produces big profits and high demand in the hemp industry, Sherman said.

Hemp is so profitable that it has revitalized and created a market for small, independent farmers, even those who initially quit or left the family farm, like Dawson. This also excites Evo Hemp because most of these farmers use regenerative and organic practices that tend to flummox much larger corporate farms.

Still, Evo Hemp isn’t treating Dawson like just another business partner. They’ve created a podcast to raise awareness about the issues 40 Acre hopes to diminish and is launching a Black Farmer’s Index, a map that lists Black farmers, what they are producing and how to reach them, to encourage others in the industry (and anyone else) to connect with them.

“A year-and-a-half ago, we fell in love with what Angela and her team was doing,” Sherman said.

40 Acre likes to see the small resurgence in independent farming, but Dawson believes there’s a long country mile to go before Black farmers can expand beyond a small niche. Still, she has seen Black farmers returning to the land to re-establish their legacy. COVID-19 helped with that.

“The pandemic let us know how fragile our food system is,” she said. “It’s not sustainable to rely on corporate farming. Independent farming will save the food system in the U.S.”

Black farmers are famous for inventing solutions to many agricultural problems in the U.S., including work on the Cotton Gin and sustainable practices.

“Maybe we’d have solutions to some of these global crises if we allowed agriculture to do what it is supposed to do,” she said.

It’s frustrating, but that’s a big reason she keeps her farm. There’s nothing the land, when it’s cultivated right, can’t fix.

“When you talk to any farmer,” she said, “there is no other feeling than working in the field with the plants.”