Talk:Midwestern United States

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Discussion for: Midwestern United States • View • Links • Related changes

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Page scope

Midwestern United States is a Growing Region: a named region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It covers the twelve Midwestern states of the United States, from Ohio to the Dakotas and Kansas, where hemp once grown for fibre now grows wild. Kentucky, south of the Ohio River, and the states of the Great Plains further west are outside it.

Data verification

Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the boundary, the states the region takes in, and the accessions, areas and news items that belong to it here.

Discussion

Why the region is on the map

Dewey (1913) says that hemp was abundant as a wild plant in many localities in western Missouri, Iowa and southern Minnesota and often found as a roadside weed throughout the Middle West.
Since 2000: Aina et al. (2025) collected seed from feral plants in 2022 and 2023 in ten of the twelve states (all but Michigan and Ohio); Ford et al. (2024) counted occurrences of feral hemp in each of the twelve, from 61 (North Dakota, Ohio) to 518 (Kansas); a Purdue Extension note of 2010 says that hemp grows wild in Indiana; Busta et al. (2022) studied feral plants from seventeen Nebraska counties; a federal assessment of 2003 describes ditchweed harvested in Nebraska.
Flora of North America lists all twelve states in the principal naturalised range of Cannabis sativa.
Earlier: Brendel's note of 1852 for Peoria (relayed by Haney and Kutscheid), the Minnesota wild hemp of 1938, the Champaign County survey of 1969, Plowman's sheet of 1974, and the federal eradication counts of 1987 and 1989.
The region rests on wild growth. The fibre crops of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are its history, and licensed hemp grown under the 2018 farm law is not what puts it on the map.

The name

Midwestern United States is the form Ford et al. (2024) use in their title. Dewey wrote "the Middle West", Haney and Kutscheid "the Midwest", and the federal report of 1987 "mid-western states". A bare Midwest was not used because it does not say which country is meant.

Growing status

The status is Active. Field collections of 2022 and 2023, occurrence counts compiled in 2024 and an extension note of 2010 describe feral hemp growing in the region. No source says that it has stopped growing there; eradication counts are not read as an end to its growth.

How the border is drawn

The border is a proxy built from whole states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. These are the twelve Midwestern states to which Ford et al. (2024) limited their occurrences, and each of them holds feral occurrences in that study.
Ten of the states are also named by Aina et al. (2025) as places where they collected. Michigan (77 occurrences) and Ohio (61) are named by Ford et al. and by Flora of North America, and Ford et al. place suitable ground on the Great Lakes shores; for that reason the region takes in all twelve rather than ten.
The state outlines are Natural Earth's 10 m states with the large lakes cut out, so the Great Lakes are not drawn. The shape of the Lower Missouri Valley is joined to it, so the area lies wholly inside the region.
Colorado and New York, where Aina et al. also collected, lie outside the Midwest and are left out. Kentucky, south of the Ohio, is left out.
The area is about 1,980,000 km², the figure in the infobox. The infobox point (42.66, −93.94) is the centre of the shape, in northern Iowa.
The border is not drawn from accession or news points.

Growing areas

The Lower Missouri Valley, the hemp counties of Missouri on the Missouri River (about 1835 to about 1890), is a growing area inside the region.
Dewey (1913) also names hemp under cultivation in the region of Waupun in Wisconsin, in northern Indiana and near Lima in Ohio; Waupun may become a growing area when its sources have been read.

Accessions

Plowman s.n., Easton (1974), classed as feral, from a roadside below a hill prairie in Mason County, Illinois, is attached to the region.
No other accession on the wiki falls inside the border. The two Plowman sheets from Roxbury, Massachusetts (1973) are outside it.

Where the sources disagree

The wartime peak: Aina et al. (2025) give about 176,000 acres in 1943, while Ford et al. (2024) write that production rose to 226,000 acres by 1943. The page gives only the state figures of Ford et al.'s supporting table.
The federal ditchweed counts are the states' own returns; the Inspector General found in 1995 that they were inflated in six of the ten states audited.
Haney and Kutscheid (1975) judged that wild hemp was shifting within its range rather than spreading; Ford et al. (2024) project a gain in suitable ground under climate change. The two answer different questions and the page reports both.

Sources

Government: Dewey, Hemp, in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture for 1913 (read in a scan of the printed volume); the Drug Enforcement Administration's programme reports for 1987 and 1989 (NCJRS scans); the Inspector General's audit report 95-20 (1995); the National Drug Intelligence Center's Nebraska assessment (2003).
Botany and genetics: Haney and Kutscheid (1975); Flora of North America; Busta et al. (2022); Ford et al. (2024) with its supporting information; Aina et al. (2025) with its supplementary tables.
History: Filer (2020) on the Minnesota wild hemp of 1938; the University of Wisconsin–Madison agronomy page of 2020 for Wisconsin's last crop; a Purdue Extension note on Indiana's weed laws (2010).

Not used

Wright's bulletin of 1918 on Wisconsin's hemp industry could not be read here; the Waupun district is given only as Dewey gives it.
Haney and Bazzaz (1970), cited by Haney and Kutscheid for the spread of hemp, was not read.
No state ditchweed counts later than 1989 were read, so none are given.
The figure of about 26,000 tons of hemp destroyed on 15,132 acres in 23 states by 1938, which Ford et al. relay from secondary works, is national and is not used for the region.