Since Mother Nature has given our area such good weather lately, the local farmers are busy harvesting the fields, clearing them out in just no time at all, it seems. We know this has been a farming community for many years, including planting and harvesting traditional crops of corn, beans, oats and some wheat, but in the fall of 1943, there was excitement about a brand new crop to be harvested in this area for the very first time - hemp.
History tells us that many area farmers agreed to participate in a government program to grow hemp as a 'patriotic crop', and the Lexington area's first wartime hemp crop involved over 4,000 acres.These acres produced a huge crop which was much better than that of most other hemp districts in the midwest.
A Lexington contribitor sent in the information for this September 3, 1943 article in the Daily Pantagraph about the upcoming fall hemp harvest: "The first hemp cutting for the government mill here in Lexington was scheduled to start on Thursday afternoon at the Elmo Jones farm east of Towanda, a good growth of the war crop reported here.
W. H. Kinsella, from the hemp office here, said the first harvesters will be started in all of the eight growers' districts around Lexington within a few days, but the general harvest will not likely start until next week. Not all of the harvesting equipment has been received from the factories. The machine to be started on the Elmo Jones farm was scheduled to move on to the Charles H. Snow farm north of Cooksville, when the Jones field is cut."
This industrial hemp grew to be 7 to 10 feet tall, then was cut and tied, using specialized machines which were brought in by the government. The hemp was dried and the fiber twisted into hanks before being loaded onto rail cars for shipment to finishing mills, often in Kentucky, Louisiana, or California.
The Lexington-area harvest in 1943 produced almost 8,000 tons of hemp, and was considered overall to be quite successful. Excited mill workers made a bundle of hemp into a fine bouquet for display in the lobby of the plant which was located just east of town.
Later in that year, Asian trade resumed again and lessened the need for hemp to be grown here in the states. A crop was planted here and harvested again in 1944, but when the war declined in 1945, there was no longer a need for the home-grown hemp. Area growers checked into prospects for a peacetime market, but little came of their efforts.
Lexington farmers were able to participate in two huge harvests of hemp before the government
shuttered the mill in November of 1945; however, these farmers could certainly feel proud about making such a contribution to the war effort, right from their central Illinois fields and with the labor of their own hands.