Hemp was supposed to boost farmers. It’s turned out to be a flop.

Farmers and manufacturers who wanted to capitalize on the frenzy around CBD, which comes from hemp, were lured into the industry after Congress passed the 2018 farm bill. It legalized cultivation of the crop, a low-potency sibling of marijuana. Hemp acreage in the U.S. more than tripled from 2018 to 2019. McConnell was a driving force behind legalization. “It was a mad rush,” said Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Kate Greenberg. But the boom has quickly turned into a bust. In recent months, several CBD businesses declared bankruptcy — including GenCanna, a hemp processing facility in Winchester, Ky., that McConnell visited in April of last year. “I hope that hemp will be for us some day what tobacco was at its peak,” McConnell told the crowd. But his hope has so far failed to materialize as the industry struggles on several fronts: The gold rush mentality led to an oversupply, tanking wholesale prices. CBD remains unregulated by the FDA. Consumers are left with conflicting messages about the legality of hemp products while unscrupulous businesses tout CBD as a potential treatment for every illness under the sun, including the coronavirus. The 2018 farm bill legalized both hemp crops and extracts of hemp, seemingly opening up a federally legal market for CBD products. There was a “clear expectation” after the farm bill passed that hemp-derived CBD was a new, legal commodity, said Jonathan Miller, general counsel for U.S. Hemp Roundtable. But soon after the bill passed, the FDA made clear that CBD products violated the federal Food Drug & Cosmetic Act — essentially rendering them illegal. The agency hasn’t offered any regulatory clarity for CBD products that are now widely available everywhere from gas stations to grocery stores. In December, McConnell touted hemp provisions in the 2020 appropriations package, including a measure encouraging the FDA to issue formal guidance. So far, all that's materialized from the provision is a March report from the FDA to Congress stating that the agency is "actively evaluating" CBD regulations...MORE

This farmer had a million-dollar hemp crop — until South Carolina bulldozed it

After Hurricane Dorian battered his farm in September, John Trenton Pendarvis faced a costly decision. Dorian's winds had blasted the hemp he had planted in early summer. On one particular 10-acre field and its nearly mature crop, he had already spent over $75,000 for licensing, seeds and labor — a sum that he hoped to recoup by selling the post-harvest hemp oil and flowers for several million dollars. But the flattened plants were not his only problem. Because of water issues, he had used acreage not officially permitted for hemp by the state agriculture department. He called the agency to ask whether he should hire a crew to manually prop up the 25,000 plants. “They said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing,’ ” he remembers. He got a different response several days later when a phalanx of law enforcement officers arrived, handcuffing and arresting him for illegal hemp cultivation, then bulldozing his crop. “It must have been 30 of them coming from everywhere,” Pendarvis said recently, surveying the crushed remains on his farm northwest of Charleston. “Now it’s just all rotted up.” As his case wends through the courts — despite South Carolina not yet prescribing a penalty for what it considers a misdemeanor crime — Pendarvis has become emblematic of the hurdles that farmers face in growing a crop legalized through the 2018 federal farm bill. Laws are evolving across the conservative South, where hemp grows well thanks to the warm weather and fertile soil...MORE

White House approves USDA hemp rules; release imminent

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) federal hemp production rules, Hemp Industry Daily has learned. With approval from the OMB, which must sign off on new regulations from any federal agency, the public release of the interim production rules could come any day. Washington DC-based cannabis attorney Jonathan Havens wrote in an email to Hemp Industry Daily on Monday that he expects the USDA’s federal rules to include:

• Review of state hemp programs (i.e., criteria for USDA sign-off on the same).
• THC testing and, more specifically, the point or points at which THC must be tested.
• Processing requirements.
• Biomass transportation.

One of the biggest questions that remained unclear after approval of the 2018 Farm Bill is the legality of the transportation of hemp and its derivatives through states that don’t have or don’t want hemp programs, including states that still consider hemp and hemp-derived CBD to be controlled substances, Havens said. “Despite the Farm Bill’s language that nothing in the bill authorizes ‘interference with the interstate commerce of hemp,’ we know that law-enforcement officials in at least a few states (such as Idaho and South Dakota) have prosecuted hemp drivers,” Havens said. “Hopefully, the USDA will address this in its rules, although the agency could very well punt on it.” Complications setting nationwide THC testing rules, among other issues, have also caused a delay in releasing the federal rules for growing hemp, the agency has said...MORE

Hemp industry expected to blossom under new Farm Bill

The U.S. hemp industry is expecting business to expand and investors to beckon after Congress on Wednesday passed farm legislation that included a provision to legalize and regulate the plant under the Department of Agriculture. "This is a monumental bill for hemp farming," said Lauren Stansbury of the Hemp Industries Association. The bill, awaiting President Trump's signature, opens the door to state-by-state regulation, removes hemp, which is part of the cannabis plant family, from the federal enforcement of outlaw drugs and gives hemp farmers access to banking, crop insurance and federal grants, experts said. That could open the industry, which produces therapeutic cannabidiol (CBD), fabric, rope and even ethanol, to a wave of investment...MORE