Earlier this month, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law that legalized production of industrial hemp.

District 24 Senator Jerry Behn of Boone voted in favor of the bill and says it’s a way for farmers to diversify their crop, and there’s a market for it.

“They use (hemp) to make rope out of it, they make clothing out of it, there is currently a market (for it). But it’s like any other product, it’s like corn, it’s like soybeans, it’s a commodity. As you continue to have a supply, then the uses for that commodity continue to go up.”

However Churdan farmer George Naylor sees the new law only as a distraction from an underlying issue.

“I think in a sense it’s another distraction, it’s another false answer to our problems here on the farm. Our real problems are low prices of corn and soybeans that ends up taking our livestock off the farm and putting them in big confinements and feedlots.”

Behn says the new law won’t be fully implemented until next year, due to it having to go through the Iowa Department of Agriculture to work out the finer details.