Southern Hemp News

By Maureen West, General Counsel/Compliance Officer, Functional Remedies Creating a regulatory framework is a major undertaking. The 2018 Farm Bill, which authorized the USDA to regulate the cultivation of industrial hemp, has proven to be a big job for USDA regulators. Many state departments of agriculture are also busy creating their own regulatory framework. Individuals, many of whom have never been involved in a regulatory process, have become passionate about promoting the interests of hemp farmers and are working side-by-side with others including lobbyists and special interest groups. The challenge for all of these “players” is to strike the right…

By Doug Fine, Independent Hemp Farmer and Goat Herder Excerpted from Doug Fine’s sixth book, American Hemp Farmer, along with the author’s reflections on America’s hemp producers, rural communities, climate change, and the five-year process behind writing his new book. Six years ago, a bear fleeing a wildfire in our New Mexico backyard killed nearly all of my family’s goats in front of our eyes. It wasn’t the bear’s fault; he was a climate refugee. It was June 2013, and drought had weakened the ponderosa pines and Douglas fir surrounding our remote Funky Butte Ranch. Beetles took advantage, and all…

By Steven Hoffman In the year since hemp became legal in the U.S. under the 2018 Farm Bill, the hemp industry has quite literally taken off. Retail sales of CBD products in the U.S. alone are expected to surpass $1 billion in 2019, a 133% increase over 2018 sales, and Hemp Industry Daily projects retail CBD sales will increase to $10.3 billion by 2024, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate of 54%. Indeed, “2019 will forever be remembered as the year that launched America’s CBD craze,” observed Patrick McCarthy, CEO of ValidCare, a market intelligence and research platform for…

Brian Koontz, Manager of the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Industrial Hemp Program (right), shares the state’s concerns over USDA’s Interim Final Rule for U.S. hemp production at a public hearing in Broomfield, CO, on December 10. Photo: Compass Natural Colorado’s CHAMP Hemp Initiative Welcomes Public Comments in Responding to USDA’s Interim Final Rule on Hemp As state and industry leaders sift through USDA’s Interim Final Rule set to govern U.S. hemp production in order to craft a response in advance of the December 30 comment deadline, a number of common concerns are emerging, not the least of which is the…

Agency Issues Warning Letters to 15 CBD Makers, Releases Consumer Guide Expressing Doubts About CBD Safety By Steven Hoffman As the USDA Takes Public Comments on Its Final Interim Rule for Hemp Production, FDA on November 25 Issued Warning Letters to 15 CBD Makers and Expressed Doubts about the Safety of CBD in a Newly Released CBD Consumer Guide The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seems to have flipped the Thanksgiving bird, so to speak, to the hemp and CBD industry when it issued on November 25 – the Monday before Thanksgiving – warning letters to 15 companies for…

Winona LaDuke and her farm team harvest hemp for fiber and textiles at Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm in northern Minnesota. By Winona LaDuke She’s an amazing plant. You can learn a lot from a plant. For the past four years I’ve been hanging out with cannabis plants. I have a bit of a maternal streak which seems to translate well to animals and plants (children, I am not so sure), and I’ve been growing cannabis. That’s the plant’s name. We all say industrial hemp so that we are not demonized, and people don’t think I have a big marijuana…

Hemp Producers Face Harvest Challenges; Seek Creative Ways to Profit in 2019 By Steven Hoffman States and farmers throughout the U.S. are celebrating the nation’s first legal hemp harvest in more than 80 years, and this year’s harvest is estimated by Vote Hemp to come in at 115,000 – 138,000 acres, up 50% over 2018 hemp harvest levels. However, many first-time and even more experienced growers faced a number of adverse conditions and/or they went through a steep learning curve this growing season, resulting in significant crop and monetary losses for some producers and processors. In addition, among the hemp…

By Steven Hoffman Hemp has thousands of uses including paper, textiles, building materials, food, cosmetics and more. One application that might not immediately come to mind is hemp’s usefulness in the manufacture of musical instruments. Entrepreneur Morris Beegle may be better known as the producer of the world’s largest hemp-centric conference and trade show, NoCo Hemp Expo, held each year in Denver, but with his new company, Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars, he’s combining two passions. In addition to leading the NoCo show and a number of other hemp-related activities over the past several years, Morris spent 25 years as a…

Save The Date: 7th Annual NoCo Hemp Expo, the World’s Largest Hemp Conference & Trade Show, Expands to National Western Complex in Denver, CO, March 26 – 28, 2020 Leading Hemp Event Producer Sponsors Additional Industry Trade Shows Across the Country Loveland, CO (October 23, 2019) – The Seventh Annual NoCo Hemp Expo (NoCo2020) is pleased to announce its expansion to Denver’s famed National Western Complex for its March 26-28, 2020, conference and trade show. The NoCo Hemp Expo features an Investor Forum, Business Conference, Farm Symposium, and an expanded exhibit floor and sets the stage for innovative discussions on the future of…