If we were to go back in time to George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate around 250 years ago, we’d see row upon row of industrial hemp flourishing under the Virginia sun. Washington believed hemp could bring in more profit than tobacco due to its wider variety of uses.

As time progressed and the U.S. banned cannabis growing, Mount Vernon, along with the rest of the country, lost hemp.

Now, with full hemp legalization on the horizon, George Washington’s hemp farm is back. Hemp is once again being harvested at Mount Vernon.

Dean Norton, lead horticulturist at Mount Vernon, partnered with the University of Virginia to bring hemp back. Just like Washington, they see the potential profit in hemp and want to bring attention to the numerous ways it can be used.

“To bring this crop back it just really helps complete our agricultural story,” Norton told NPR.

To understand why George Washington’s hemp is so important, let’s look back at how hemp previously influenced Mount Vernon and the United States.

HEMP HISTORY: GEORGE WASHINGTON’S HEMP EXPERIMENTS BEGAN IN 1760

In the 1760s, Washington explored the profitability of hemp. George Washington’s hemp was used for rope, sail canvas, clothing, and repairing fishing nets (a key necessity for his fishing operations along the Potomac). He had a feeling it could bring in much more money than tobacco. Back then, there were no laws prohibiting growing.

Washington knew hemp could grow in places where other crops withered. He wrote a letter to William Pierce stating, “With this knowledge, I want you to make the most of hemp and plant it everywhere on my farmlands that haven’t been previously reserved for other things on my farming plantation(s).” With that, George Washington’s hemp farm flourished.

During this time, the British Crown also commissioned American farmers to grow hemp. Hemp is highly adaptable and can grow in places that are otherwise left barren. When Washington grew hemp, it would not be surprising if you took a wagon ride down a dirt road only to discover fields of it.

Humans have used hemp as medicine for centuries, but there’s little to no evidence Washington or his contemporaries ever smoked their crop. While both hemp and psychoactive cannabis (‘marijuana’) are forms of the same plant, they’re grown and used in very different ways.

The unfortunate truth is hemp wasn’t as profitable as wheat. The country knew this and so did Washington. Though Washington continued to grow hemp, it wasn’t the sole focus of Mount Vernon.

Hemp remained an important crop until the U.S. banned cannabis in the early 20th century. American hemp became important again during World War II. Otherwise, hemp remained illegal until the 2014 Farm Bill brought it back to America on a limited basis.

HEMP FLASHBACK: GEORGE WASHINGTON’S HEMP IS A SIGN OF A BRIGHT FUTURE

Hemp’s image is so twisted by unnecessary stigma, visitors are startled to see it on Mount Vernon. Tourists now take selfies with George Washington’s hemp. Some gaze in awe at the sight of the plant, with its distinctive leaves.

There’s no doubt Washington would’ve found this a bit ridiculous. But the team involved in growing hemp on Mount Vernon want to end the fear attached to the crop.

Brian Walden, a Virginia hemp advocate, helped petition to bring hemp back to Mount Vernon. He told NPR’s Brakkton Booker that he considers himself a “hemp patriot.”

Walden hopes that bringing hemp back to George Washington’s farm will send “the message across that this is an innocuous plant that has real benefits and our Founding Fathers knew that and they planted it.”

Decades of prohibition have brought ignorance, and required us to fight for legalization, but there’s one benefit to this moment. Hemp has yet to become a commodity crop dominated by corporate agriculture. It’s still accessible to smaller farmers and experimental growers like the Mount Vernon team.

George Washington’s hemp is educating new people about this crop, and aiding the push for total legalization, which could soon become a reality at the federal level.

If one of our country’s most historic properties is benefitting from hemp, why shouldn’t the rest of America?

The post George Washington’s Hemp Farm: Industrial Hemp Returns to Mount Vernon appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

With low humidity and an abundance of air flow, it comes as no surprise that hemp’s found a way to prosper in the Green Mountain State’s countryside. Joe Pimentel, with his family and team, operate the historic Luce Farm and have found more success than they imagined in the ever-changing, fast-growing hemp industry.

First established in 1820, during our visit we learned how this 206 acre farm transformed from vegetable growing to hemp.

FROM VEGGIES TO A VERMONT HEMP FARM

Years ago, Pimentel began growing vegetables and raising goats due to the lack of easy access to good food. After the farming grew substantially, he moved to Vermont to grow food full time at Luce Farm and truck it down to areas in and around Boston.

“We were always able to sustain, but it was hard,” Pimentel told us. “Veggie farming is hard.”

Pimentel had dreams of restoring this 200 year old farm, but it was impossible to do on just vegetables. So, he began looking into a variety of options. Eventually, he stumbled upon hemp and it stuck. Pimentel recalled:

In 2016, we were hired to grow hemp for an R&D [Research and Development] project. We ended up with eighty pounds of it by the end of the year and we didn’t know what to do with it. That’s when we started playing around with the CBD in our kitchen.

After trying some simple recipes and sharing them with friends, people came back to Pimentel claiming the results were “unbelievable.” Many were new to CBD and what it could offer. Some friends who were taking several Ibuprofen a day reported more relief from the healing properties of hemp.

This is what motivated him to continue with harvesting and making Luce Farm CBD products. Pimentel knew if he wanted to make a business out of this, he had to be confident in telling people the exact amount of CBD they’d receive. As a result, he transitioned to using supercritical CO2 extraction, an industry standard method for producing high-quality CBD.

With a professionally produced, labeled and tested product under his belt, he decided to take his CBD to the place he knew best: farmers’ markets.

HEMP SAVED HISTORIC LUCE FARM

Unsurprisingly, he found himself easily making much more profit than he did off vegetables.

“And then we just ran with the ball, man,” Pimentel proclaimed. “It was evident this was exactly what we needed for our project.”

That project, to preserve this important site, is about to take a major step forward. Luce Farm will soon be added to the National Register of Historic Places, with all the protection that brings. Thanks to Pimentel and the possibilities of hemp, a piece of Vermont history will remain in the serenity of this mountainous landscape.

Luce Farm is a piece of the community that was almost taken away. After operating within the Luce family from 1820 to 1950, the last member passed away just when corporate agriculture was taking control of American farming. A pair of caretakers kept the property preserved, then sold it to the Pimentels a few years ago.

Since Vermont legalized hemp through the 2014 Farm Bill, it’s been making more and more appearances throughout the state. When Pimentel first began growing in 2016, there were less than 50 hemp permits within the state. This year, that number has reached an astonishing 249 hemp permits.

In Pimentel’s words, “That’s a ridiculous amount of growth.”

Different states have different regulations when it comes to growing hemp. Vermont hemp farmers face few barriers under their state’s relatively simple regulations.

“Pimentel informed us that Vermont’s hemp program is awesome.”

Still, Luce Farm has faced legal complications. About 6 months back, Pimentel teamed up with Long Trail Brewery in Vermont to create a CBD-infused beer. It was a winner in terms of sales, moving thousands of cans within a two day period. However, the federal government stepped in and told them they couldn’t mix cannabinoids with alcohol.

The Luce Farm team remains proud of the work they did and hope they can work with Long Trail again in the future when hemp is fully legalized.

BEYOND LUCE FARM: HEMP CAN HELP LOCAL FARMERS NATIONWIDE

Pimentel believes hemp can be a winner for local farmers across the country. Just as when big corporations moved into farming as a whole, he’s noticed big corporations trying to make their way into the hemp industry and take profits away from small family farmers. The more hemp becomes available to the public, the more people are trying to purchase it for cheap.

Moving forward, he hopes small farmers can continue to take advantage of the economic opportunities hemp provides:

I know how hard it is to grow that stuff … We’re farmers first. We want to keep that price high. We don’t want Wall Street coming in and driving the market.

When it comes to getting into the hemp industry, Pimentel advises people to have a plan. Farmers must have prior knowledge of what to do with their harvested hemp.

More personally, Pimentel believes farmers should keep control of their harvest and “fight to keep [hemp] an agriculture product rather than a commodity product.”

This Vermont hemp farm directly uses the crops they grow in their own CBD products, rather than selling the crop to other businesses. They control their output from seed to shelf, and earnings can go right back into preserving Luce Farm.

Like so many other people working in this industry, Pimentel is excited about hemp and its potential to revive American farming.

“I’m a firm believer that every 7-Eleven in America should be replaced by a farm,” he declared. “It’d change a lot of things.”

The post Luce Farm: How Hemp Saved A Piece Of Vermont Farming History appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

These impressive facts can be found in the 2022 U.S. Hemp Crop Report, released late last month by Vote Hemp, a leading hemp advocacy organization. When it comes to this recent report, Erica Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, told Nebraska’s KTIC Radio news:

“We’ve seen hemp cultivation significantly expand in the U.S. in 2022, with over triple the number of acres planted in hemp compared to last year and the addition of 4 more states with hemp programs. Now that we have lifted federal prohibition on hemp farming, it’s time to invest our energy in expanding hemp cultivation and the market for hemp products across the country so that all can reap the benefits of this versatile, historic American crop.”

Just months ago, experts were claiming sales of hemp products may reach $2 billion by 2022. However, with this current hemp report and the optimism federal legalization brings, there’s a good chance that number will grow rapidly. The truth of the matter is many more people are opening up to CBD and other hemp products as the stigma around the plant falls away. The more people to do so, the more demand will naturally appear.

Similarly to last year’s report, we’re going to take a look at the leading states and see the progress they’ve made since 2017.

COMPARING 2022 VS 2017 US HEMP ACRES

Comparing Vote Hemp’s 2022 report with last year’s hemp acreage reveals incredible growth in just one year.

Overall hemp acreage increased from 25,713 to 78,176, with the total number of hemp growing states up to 23 from 19 states. The total number of hemp licenses issued across all states more than doubled, from 1,456 in 2017 to 3,546 in 2022. More universities also got involved with hemp research. In 2017, 32 universities took part in hemp research, while 40 had hemp research programs in 2018.

In addition to the sheer increase in U.S. hemp acres between 2022 and 2017, the top hemp growing states also shifted from year to year. Colorado was the top hemp growing state in 2017, with 9,700 acres grown. At the time, we expected the state to maintain its lead into the future. Instead, an unexpected contender came forward to claim that prize in 2022.

TOP 5 HEMP GROWING STATES IN 2022

The 2022 hemp report revealed a historic year in hemp growing. Not only have certain states made incredible progress but the entire country tripled its hemp output, along with more than doubling the number of licenses issued.

In 2022, 5 states made huge leaps when it came to hemp acreage. By observing their individual success, we can get a sense of how other states can make the best of the recent Farm Bill and increase their hemp production in 2019 and beyond.

#5 – Tennessee – 3,338 Acres

Tennessee made a significant leap this year in terms of their involvement in the hemp industry. The state went from farming 200 acres of hemp in 2017 to a staggering 3,338 this past year.

The reason for this leap is due to Tennessee’s Department of Agriculture allowing for more industrial hemp projects and licenses to be issued. Part of the reason for their permissive attitude has to do with the state’s rich history with the crop.

#4 – Kentucky – 6,700 Acres

Though Kentucky no longer ranks as high on this list, they’ve more than doubled their hemp production within the last year. Kentucky has been a leading state for much of the industry’s recent endeavors due to the fact that it was one of the first to embrace pilot hemp programs. Despite the state’s conservative history, many former tobacco farmers now grow hemp. The state’s legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, were instrumental in passing nationwide hemp legalization through the Farm Bill.

#3 – Oregon – 7,808 Acres

It comes as no surprise to see Oregon ranking high on our list. For some time, it’s been one of the most forward-thinking cannabis states across the country. Even before the 2022 Farm Bill, Oregon’s lenient hemp growing program allowed any farmer or business to apply to grow or handle hemp.

Last year, Oregon ranked in at #2 for producing 3,469 acres of hemp. This year, their efforts have given them nearly 8,000 acres.

#2 – Colorado – 21,578 Acres

Last year, we claimed, “for years to come, it seems as though Colorado is going to lead the hemp industry.” Though we were wrong, there’s no doubt the Centennial State gave its best effort in trying to stay true to our claim. Colorado more than doubled its hemp acres from 2017’s 9,700 acres of hemp.

#1 – Montana – 22,000 Acres

In 2022, Montana took the grand prize not only in most acres of hemp grown but in how much expansion its made since 2017. In the year prior, the first year that Montana allowed hemp, the Treasure State grew a mere 542 acres of hemp. This past year, they’ve more multiplied their hemp production by more than 40 times!

This increase is truly an incredible feat not just for the state but the industry as a whole. The interesting part of it all is Montana didn’t change their rules or regulation to cause this growth. The same license was necessary each year and cost around $450.

Yet, due to a massive increase in the number of farmers desiring to grow hemp, Montana ranks number one on this year’s list.

HEMP CROP REPORT REVEALS TREMENDOUS GROWTH IN US HEMP ACRES

It’s truly mindblowing to think about how far the hemp industry come just since 2014. Throughout that time, we went from a complete prohibition to over 75,000 acres of the plant being grown across the nation.

It should be noted the other states which have made tremendous progress throughout 2022:

• Pennsylvania went from 36 acres in 2017 to 580 acres in 2022.
• Maine went from 30 acres in 2017 to 550 acres in 2022.
• Nevada went from 417 acres in 2017 to 1,881 acres in 2022.
• Vermont went from 575 acres in 2017 to 1,820 acres in 2022.
• Wisconsin went from no acres in 2017 to 1,850 acres in 2022.
• North Carolina went from 965 acres in 2017 to 3,184 acres in 2022.

These numbers reveal the ongoing and inevitable rise of this industry. Though experts long predicted a U.S. hemp boom, this Hemp Crop Report comprehensively shows how rapidly the hemp industry is rising.

With total hemp legalization underway across the United States, there’s no telling how much progress is coming. All we do know is it’s bound to be another milestone year in 2019.

The post 2022’s Hemp Report Reveals Huge Expansion To US Hemp Acres appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Have you ever dreamt of starting over? Packing your belongings and heading to a place where you can spend your days working the land, instead of working behind a desk? Thanks to the rapid expansion of state hemp programs in the U.S., more and more people can be a part of this profitable green future and help create a more sustainable way of life at the same time.

With so much happening in American hemp, we thought this was a perfect time to look at some new state hemp programs, and see what is and isn’t working in each state. In this article, we discuss hemp programs in Wisconsin, Vermont, Oregon, and Nevada. We also list the market price for hemp in each state, which we sourced from a Hemp Industry Daily report.

But first, we wanted to share a brief history of modern hemp growing.

HOW HEMP GROWING RETURNED TO THE USA

It all started in 1996, when California became the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana. They were the pioneers. California remained ahead of its time until 2012 when another rogue state stepped in. In this case, Colorado legalized cannabis for recreational use. These two states created a revolution in the cannabis world!

Without California and Colorado leading the way, the Agricultural Act of 2014 aka, the 2014 Farm Bill may have never been introduced. This bill re-legalized hemp growing in the U.S. under state “research” programs. Without this change, the public may have never learned about the life changing benefits of CBD. CBD has had a huge impact it’s had on the hemp market; basically, setting it on fire!

The 2014 Farm Bill left a great deal of leeway to each state to set the parameters for their hemp growing programs. Some state hemp programs only allow academic research while the most successful allow for widespread growing and hemp sales. As with any market that experiences the same growth hemp has, there is bound to be some bumps and bruises along the way. In this article, we’re going to take a look at some of those pains, along with what it takes to get into the hemp business.

HEMP SALES HIT $820M UNDER STATE HEMP PROGRAMS

A recent report revealed that US hemp sales reached a record breaking $820 million in 2017. Product sales are estimated to reach a staggering $1.8 billion by 2020. And another report, published by Rolling Stone, suggested CBD sales could hit $22 billion by 2022, surpassing even legal psychoactive cannabis sales in the process.

The sad thing is, hemp’s multi-purpose use has been around since before colonial times. George Washington grew hemp and the first drafts of the Declaration of Independence were penned on hemp paper. However, stigma from the war on drugs, and even government cover-ups, made us lose sight of hemp’s benefits for decades.

Now hemp’s back in such a big way. Hemp is pouring money into the US economy, providing jobs and opportunity for people who want to put their farming skills to the test. It’s also helping thousands of suffering people suffering experience the benefits of CBD.

There are currently 19 states that allow growing and cultivating hemp, producing a total of 25,713 acres in 2017 according to Vote Hemp’s crop report. That’s just the beginning, as hemp could soon expand in a big way. An amendment to the 2018 farm bill would legalize hemp nationwide by putting it under the control of the Department of Agriculture.

WISCONSIN HEMP PROGRAM IS NEW BUT GROWING FAST

Legalized in 2017, Wisconsin is being hailed as one of the fastest growing states for hemp cultivation.

In order to grow and cultivate hemp legally, it must be grown under Wisconsin’s industrial hemp pilot program.  As part of this state hemp program, crops can only contain 0.3 percent or less THC (tetra hydro cannabidiol) and growers and producers must submit a variety of requested reports to the Washington Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to show compliance. In addition, required records must be kept for three years. These records document a variety of information such as product sources and chain of custody forms. Growers must also allow state officials access to the property to record property transfers.

Since becoming legal, there have been 320 hemp licenses issued. Of those 320, 180 were licenses to grow and 75 were licensed to process the industrial hemp. Registration fees are $350 and annual application fees range from $150-$1,000 depending on the size of the field.

Challenges of growing hemp in Wisconsin

While Wisconsin’s hemp program continues to thrive, there is a unique growing pain that’s getting attention: privacy.

Under Wisconsin’s hemp law, hemp processors contact information is kept private, making it tough for farmers to sell their hemp crops. In an article published by The Cap Times, Rob Richard of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau explained the need for secrecy.

He said, “we were concerned growers would be harassed by people who didn’t understand hemp.”

To remedy this problem, Richard is working with Larry Konopacki, a former legislative counsel attorney, to create the Wisconsin Hemp Alliance program. The Alliance’s mission is to bring processors, retailers, and consumers together with farmers. The organization is just getting underway, so there’s not much else to report at this time.

Hemp market price in Wisconsin

Due to Wisconsin’s infancy growing and cultivating hemp, market prices were not available.

VERMONT HEMP LICENSES INCREASED 3000 PERCENT SINCE 2013

Legalized in 2013, Vermont has a uniquely progressive state hemp program (as we recently reported).

Of all the states approved to grow hemp, Vermont is definitely among the most lenient. As with all industrial hemp grown in the U.S. approved states, the THC level cannot be more than 0.3 percent. Other than this, farmers and processors are pretty much left alone by the government.

This may partly explain why industrial hemp is booming in Vermont. In the first year, only 8 applicants applied for a hemp license. In 2018, that number increased to 316, an increase of over 3000 percent! Almost 2,000 acres of hemp are expected to grow in the Green Mountain State in 2018. Those wishing to grow or cultivate hemp are only required to pay an annual application fee of $25. This covers farmers wishing to grow hemp for any use. That’s really about it!

One reason for this freedom is that Vermont legalized hemp cultivation a year before Congress passed the 2014 Farm Bill which allowed limited state hemp programs.

According to Hemp Industry Daily, farmers in Vermont “do not need to participate in a pilot project, research scheme with a university or state agriculture authority” to grow hemp. So while Vermont is potentially out of compliance with federal hemp rules, famers get to enjoy the state’s hands-off approach and they get access to viable hemp seeds other states do not. And because long-established hemp seed producers in Canada and Europe are close in latitude to Vermont, those seeds will have higher germination rates than if those same seeds were planted further south.

Challenges of growing hemp in Vermont

As of July 1, 2018 Vermont made it legal to buy and sell hemp for those registered with the Agency of Agriculture. The program is expected to ease concerns about federal agencies interference with growers, as long as the growers comply with the states program. This program will set up a lab certification standard under a quality control program. It also allows Vermont farmers to purchase hemp seeds from out-of-state seed suppliers.

It’s important to note however that it’s not all hemp rainbows and ponies in Vermont. Hemp farmers and the like are dealing with a number of growing pains. For one, the state is about to face increased competition from their larger neighbors, New York and Canada. And if Vermont’s legislature and the governor decide to legalize recreational marijuana, that could create a whole new set of guidelines to deal with. Finally, as with any state, Vermont hemp growers need a clear hemp growing and sales plan if they wish to be profitable.

Hemp market price in Vermont

• $100 per pound of dried flowers/buds for CBD extraction
• $0.80-$1.20 per pound for edible seeds used in food products or pressed for seed oil.
• $.10 per pound for stalks used for their fiber

‘HEMP IS THE NEW GOLD RUSH’ IN OREGON

Oregon authorized hemp cultivation in 2009, but the state’s Department of Agriculture didn’t license the first hemp growers until 2015.

Since that time, the Oregon hemp market (thanks to CBD) has exploded. In its purified distilled form, CBD oil can fetch thousands of dollars per kilo. Farmers here can make more than 100k an acre growing hemp! In the first year (2015) that Oregon offered hemp licenses only 12 were issued. Last year (2017) hemp licenses across the board increase dramatically. Oregon issued:

• 233 hemp growers licenses
• 170 licensed hemp processors, called “handlers”
• 119 licensed producers of viable hemp seeds

Over 3,500 land acres were licensed for cultivation!

To sum the up the feeling in Oregon, farmer Jerrad said it best in Insurance Journal: “Word on the street is everybody thinks hemp is the new gold rush!”

Hemp entrepreneurs face some heavy startup fees in Oregon. First off, they must pay a separate license for growing and processing. Each license is $1,300. Plus there is a $120 fee for seed production registration.

Oregon doesn’t require background checks for growers or producers. However, the state exhaustively tests all hemp. The law requires growers and producers to use only laboratories approved by the state government. This past October, some new testing requirements were implemented that will end up costing Oregon upward of $50,000, which will most likely be passed down to the farmers.

Challenges of growing hemp in Oregon

An oversupply of marijuana has driven Oregon’s marijuana prices to rock bottom, which has resulted in pot farmers to turn to industrial hemp.

As Oregon issues more hemp licenses, hemp prices will most likely decrease, driving down the market. In addition, earlier this year, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law SB1015. This law allows industrial hemp to enter the recreational cannabis supply line if the hemp farmers are certified by the OLCC to do so.  Recreational marijuana processors are also able to apply for a special “endorsement” that will allow them to accept hemp and hemp products.

The recreational processors then make the hemp, which must be 0.5 percent THC or less, into their concentrate and extract products. But with some marijuana farmers already searching for drastic means to rid themselves of inventory surplus, even destroying their own product, bringing industrial hemp in cannot be a good thing. Doing so will only drive more and more farmers to turn to cultivating industrial hemp, which will eventually lead to a surplus there. Now, should CBD become federally legal, this might not be a challenge, it may be an opportunity.

Hemp parket price in Oregon

• $100 or more per pound of dried flowers or buds for CBD extraction
• Less than $.50 for edible seed
• $0 for stalks used for fiber because the Oregon market is too limited

HEMP IS ‘TAKING OFF LIKE A WEED’ IN NEVADA

Like Wisconsin, hemp in Nevada is still in its infancy stages. Legalized in 2017, hemp farming in Nevada is spreading fast.

“It’s taking off like a weed” said Tick Segerblom in an article by the The Nevada Independent.

Mr. Segerblom, who as a state senator sponsored the bills that were a framework for Nevada’s hemp program went on to say, “there’s an incredible amount of interest in it.”

There were originally 11 growers planting 319 acres in 2016 to 32 growers planning to plant 718 acres in 2018.

Nevada requires a separate license for growers, producers, and handlers. The grower license requires a $500 application fee plus $5.00 per acre/.33 per sq. for indoor grows plus and all fees incurred by the Nevada Department of Agriculture. Handlers pay a $1000 application fee plus fees incurred by the NDA. Producers pay a $100 application fee, NDA fees and the same acreage and square foot fees as growers. By law, the NDA must approve all seed purchases. They do allow for non-NDA certified seeds on five planted acres or less.

Challenges of growing hemp in Nevada

The biggest challenge for the Nevada hemp industry has to do with the federal regulations against hemp. Most of the hemp in Nevada is slated for human consumption, including CBD. Other uses for hemp, such as textiles, ropes, and paper are virtually ignored because to process these items takes big equipment and big dollars. Investors aren’t willing to invest until hemp is federally legal.

Hemp market price in Nevada

• $200 or more per pound for flower, depending on CBD content and quality.
• $10 per pound for food-grade seeds
• $45 per gallon for seed oil
• $200 per ton of baled fiber

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF STATE HEMP PROGRAMS?

At first glance it might seem as if legalizing industrial hemp across the board would be the best and only real solution to everything.

Whether it’s lack of industry expansion Nevada faces, the privacy rules Wisconsin has in place, or the potential market implosion in Oregon, legalized hemp would definitely have a positive impact to many of the challenges outlined.

However, legalized hemp will most likely present a whole new set of challenges anyway. For example, how should states handle intrastate commerce? Will there be a mandate on hemp prices? As of this article, Nevada’s hemp prices are through the roof at $200 or more for dried flowers, where Vermont is selling at $100.00 for the same.

Additionally, while the 2018 Farm Bill could soon legalize hemp, the current amendment would also ban felony drug convicts from growing hemp. No other agricultural crop faces similar restrictions, and both farmers and hemp advocates have objected to the provision.

For now, we can delight in the fact that hemp is back and back in a huge way. Legal hemp created a new economy, revealed awe-inspiring medical potential, and makes use of otherwise unused land.

Let’s all hope the federal government does the right thing and legalizes industrial hemp for every possible use imaginable, and for everyone to grow!

The post New State Hemp Programs: Growing Hemp In Wisconsin, Vermont, Oregon & Nevada appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

According to Greenpeace, there’s been an alarming decline in bee populations since the 1990s. The main causes seem to be bee-killing pesticides often used for industrial agriculture. Though there’s lots of speculation on how to solve the issue, a recent study has found that hemp might offer a prominent source of pollen for bees.

Colton O’Brien, an entomology student at Colorado State University’s Graduate School, got involved with two experimental hemp plots. O’Brien was lucky enough to have access to the fields during the first year’s experiments as they were originally kept in secret.

He recalled the first time he stepped onto the university’s hemp fields, he became overwhelmed by “lots and lots of buzzing.”

STUDYING BEES AND HEMP

A lightbulb struck within O’Brien as he became aware that bees were using hemp, that they “find it attractive.” What O’Brien wanted to know was how hemp fields contributed to the ecosystems of these bees.

“I had asked if I could set up a couple of traps while [the hemp] was in full bloom,” O’Brien tells us, in regards to the second year of these experimental plots. “And I happened to know a couple of folks in the hemp lab and they said sure.”

Since O’Brien works out of a Pollination Biology lab at his university, his main interest for these traps was finding out what bees are attracted to the pollen given off by hemp.

With the traps, they were able to confirm that the bees were collecting pollen from hemp. This is vital as it’s been determined without pollinators like bees, much of the world’s food supply is at risk. In fact, without bees pollinating in general, about one-third of the food we know today would vanish.

THESE BEES LOVE HEMP: 23 OF 66 COLORADO BEE SPECIES ATTRACTED TO HEMP

Colorado is home to 66 unique bee species. O’Brien found that 23 of these 66 gravitated towards the hemp fields and fell into his trap. Though he can’t be certain, O’Brien believes these are the first experiments studying bees within a cannabis field.

“We found bees not only utilizing the pollen, but we also found parasites of certain bees,” O’Brien explains. “Like parasites of digger bees and sunflower bees. And even though they might not have been taken pollen directly from hemp, they were utilizing what the other bees were bringing in.”

O’Brien makes it clear he believes the hemp fields created “the dynamics of an ecosystem” which might not have existed without the cannabis plant.

There still isn’t enough research to be certain as to what hemp pollen does for bees. For example, we don’t yet know whether hemp pollen will be a good source of nutrients to bee larva. All O’Brien can confirm is there weren’t many other plants within the area of these hemp plots producing pollen.

BEES LOVE HEMP, BUT RESEARCH IS JUST BEGINNING

Upon reaching out to O’Brien, he informed us his manuscript was still undergoing a review process. Due to this, he wasn’t able to share all the results he believes he may have found. However, he also admits this was a very baseline experiment.

“I think there’s a lot of questions that have opened up from this. Like, what is potentially the nutritional value of hemp pollen to bees? I understand hemp only contains 0.3% THC, but how does that affect a tiny, tiny organism? Is it the same standard?”

The cannabis plant contains dozens of naturally occurring compounds, or cannabinoids, many of which seem to have distinct effects on humans (and potentially bees as well).

Starting with these questions, O’Brien hopes to conduct more studies on the matter during the 2019 cultivation season. He also hopes that crop scientists creating pest-control strategies for hemp will keep the safety of bees in mind.

With all this in mind, it’s clear there’s still a lot to learn about hemp and its potential environmental benefits.

The post Bees Love Hemp : 23 Species Of Bees Attracted To Colorado Hemp appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

First, we look at developing Texas hemp regulations and how it could change the future of the plant in the Lone Star State. Matt talks to James Higdon, owner of Cornbread Hemp in Kentucky, about his concerns as an out-of-state hemp producer. James also appeared in episode 32 of the show, our Kentucky Hemp podcast episode.

For a closer look at the Texas hemp regulations, we also got a brief statement from Coleman Hemphill, president of the Texas Hemp Industries Association. Hemp is legal in Texas, but the new regulations could dramatically alter the shape of this fast-growing industry.

To close out this episode, we get an entrepreneur’s perspective on being a hemp producer in Texas from Micheal Tullis, owner of a small hemp boutique. Early Fruit Hemp Co. is finding success in Lubbock Texas despite the small, sometimes hostile market.

Texas to rule on Lone Star hemp regulations

The Texas Department of State Health Services is preparing to make sweeping regulatory changes to how hemp is manufactured, labeled and sold in the state of Texas. Here’ the major proposed changes, summarized from a post by Texas NORML:

• A ban on the “manufacture, processing, distribution, or retail sale of consumable hemp products for smoking”
• Stringent licensing requirements for CBD retailers
• Stringent testing requirements for CBD products sold in state
• Strict requirements for the labeling of hemp products
• Regulations which could restrict sales of CBD products from states like Kentucky and Colorado

Matt and Jim primarily talk about the labeling requirements, and the changes which could ban sales of products from his state. However, hemp advocates locally and nationwide are concerned about the entire set of changes.

We contacted Coleman Hemphill, president of the Texas Hemp Industries Association, but reached him too late to include him in this episode. However, he suggested the state is poorly equipped to implement these changes, since just 2 staff members are assigned to this aspect of the hemp program and no budget dollars have been set aside to implement the complex licensing and testing program.

In addition, Coleman thinks the new regulations might not withstand legal challenges, even if they do go into effect. Not only does he think these regulations clearly conflict with the 2018 Farm Bill which federally legalized hemp, they also cause substantial damage to existing Texas businesses. Both these factors are likely to be compelling in court. Finally, he told us that sales of all out-of-state hemp products should be safe for at least the remainder of 2020.

How to tell Texas to keep all forms of hemp fully legal

We’ll have more a deeper look at this story soon. In the meantime, you can leave a comment on the hemp regulations using this Action Network form or via the formal comment process. You can also call and leave a message for the Texas Department of State Health Services at (512) 231-5653. Coleman recommends both leaving a comment and calling for maximum effectiveness, but the deadline for formal comments is July 8, 2020 (Monday).

You’ve got hemp questions? We’ve got hemp answers!

Send us your hemp questions and you might hear them answered on one of our Hemp Q&A episodes. Send your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to the show!

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Texas Hemp Stories: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete transcript of episode 42 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, “Texas Hemp Stories”:

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com. America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education. (silence) Today on the show, we’re talking about Texas. Texas represents one of the largest hemp markets in the United States. Recently, there’s been some new regulations introduced that are a little, well unclear to say the least. Back in episode 32, I talked to Jim Higdon, he’s the cofounder of Cornbread Hemp out of Kentucky. He wrote a fantastic book about the history of hemp in Kentucky. He contacted me to tell me about these new regulations.

Troubling new Texas hemp regulations

Jim Higdon:
I’m confident that I’m still confused, but at least I’ve got some firm understanding of what it is I’m confused about and also everyone asks you like lots of dogs hearing noises for the first time. [crosstalk 00:01:06]

Matt Baum:
Right, right, right. I would say any good legislation should be like that though. Right? It should be completely confusing and absolutely unclear, so we can argue about what it actually means just in case we want it to mean something else. Right?

Jim Higdon:
It disappears by my reading to mean something bad. Everyone who should know this is like, “Well, I think I’ll look at that. That’s interesting.” Not like, “Oh, we looked at that and that’s not the case because of XYZ you’re not. Just like uh, uh.”

Matt Baum:
Right. So, let’s talk about it. As we understand it, what is being proposed and then we’ll talk about what that could possibly mean and what the issue is.

Jim Higdon:
As I understand it, talked with you from Louisville, Kentucky, the great state of Texas has already passed CBD legislation to legalize the sale of CBD products in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
What we’re looking at now is the Department of Health and Human Services maybe. The State Department of Health in Texas is issuing regulations on how that would go about. So, it’s the executive branch of the Texas state government setting the rules up for how that CBD industry will operate legally at Texas.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

New labeling requirements for Texas CBD sales

Jim Higdon:
Okay? So, law is passed. It’s legal. This is just the framework for how that would go about. In the regulations, it says out of state CBD products can be sold in Texas. Well, before we get to that, before that, there’s some curious novel label requirements that are going to be required in Texas. They’re going to require all the labels to have the URL of the business, the email address of the business, and I believe a phone number of the business on the label, which is regulation that we’ve not seen before from any other state and [crosstalk 00:03:10]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I mean, I guess I get a URL, that makes sense. I can see, like for marketing purposes, why you might put your URL on a label or something, but a phone number, that’s kind of odd.

Jim Higdon:
The phone number is odd considering the font size. It’s going to have to be the fit, is going to be like five point font or something. The other thing is that all that is made redundant by the QR code, which is also required in the Texas proposed regulation. That’s a good thing because all CBD products should have QR codes that link to lab reports. So, you can determine the potency and safety of all those CBD products, absolutely should have QR codes and the Texas regulation requires, mandates QR code and that’s good, but with the QR code, it makes redundant needing a URL or a phone number because you just like QR code it and there you are. So, the label requirements are a little funny and could require supplemental labeling at one form or another, not just for my company, but for many company looking to do business in Texas.

Matt Baum:
The catch is not that like, it’s a big deal that the phone number there, but the catch would be, well, now all these companies may have to completely redo their labels just so they can be sold in Texas.

Jim Higdon:
Correct.

Matt Baum:
Got you.

Lack of clear FDA regulations hurts industry

Jim Higdon:
This is just one example of the lack of FDA regulations is causing a vacuum where individual states are making their own regulations, and Utah has strict regulations, but Utah is a small market. Texas is now implementing a unique kind of strict regulation, which is fine, but Texas is a huge market. There’s going to be a lot of CBD companies who want to comply with those Texas regulations, but they’re different in every state. So, as this patchwork of regulations, we’re going to … could have contradictory labels where you have to have different labels for different states and they can’t go to each other states. So, it’s just an example of how desperately we need federal regulations to make these uniform, so states like Texas aren’t stepping out and making these decisions on their own without consulting other states in the process. This is unfortunate-

Matt Baum:
Leaving small business people-

Jim Higdon:
… frustrating, but not really Texas’ fault, necessarily. It’s the federal government’s fault.

Matt Baum:
But, it puts a small business person in a situation where they may have to decide, “Okay. Is it worth it for us to make new labels just so we can get into Texas or do we make new labels I can get into Texas and say, “All right, screw Utah, I guess we’re not going to sell stuff there because their label has to be completely different.”? It’s just a mess.

Jim Higdon:
Well, and I don’t mean [inaudible 00:05:58] Utah as contradictory to Texas, but just as an example like Utah like-

Matt Baum:
Hypotetically. Yeah.

Jim Higdon:
… If you’re selling in Utah, you have to submit all your labels to the state of Utah for approval. If you’re selling in Denver, in Colorado, you have to get approved by the Denver Department of Public Health. Every state has some very curious regulatory compliance to go through and it’s this crazy bureaucratic patchwork that companies like mine have to navigate. Texas is about to come online with this particularly strange set of requirements, but so the phone number on the label like it’s inconvenient, but whatever. It’s fine, we’ll deal with it. The problem is in the same set of regulations for out of state CBD companies, Texas is like fine. You can sell out of state CBD products under these three circumstances.
Circumstance number one is coming from a state with a hit program that’s been approved by the USDA under the 2018 arm bill as I understand that language to be. Now, the problem with that, it sounds very normal and rational is if Texas wants out of state products, then you get products from states with the USDA approved program. The problem is, is the rules that the USDA implemented in late last year are so strict that 14 states have chosen not to comply with those standards and go by 2014 farm bill standards. Those states include Kentucky, Colorado, and Oregon, where the top three producing cannabinoid states in America with the top brands located in those three states. It seems like the Texas regulations bar CBD products from Kentucky, Colorado, and Oregon, unless the second provision in the out-of-state CBD regulations apply, but it’s written in this confusing manner that I don’t know what it means, and I couldn’t get anyone on the phone today in the Texas state government to tell me. So, it’s-

Matt Baum:
So, let me see if I’ve got this. So basically, Texas is saying we will only be able to buy CBD products that are adhering to the 2018 farm bill and the three biggest states who are arguably doing it the best and have the most support for CBD and hemp are going by the 2014 farm bill, because that one was looser than the new regulations, therefore you can’t sell stuff from Kentucky, Colorado, and what was the other one? I’m sorry.

Jim Higdon:
Oregon.

Matt Baum:
And Oregon in Texas.

Jim Higdon:
Again, this is my reading of Texas proposed regulations. I’ve not had any help from anyone and it’s confusing and I’m not a Texan. So, I could very well be getting this wrong, but as I understand it, here’s the language. A registered selling consumable hemp products processed or manufactured outside this state must submit to the department, evidence that the products were manufactured in another state or foreign jurisdiction with one, a state or tribal jurisdiction plan approved by the US Department of Agriculture under US code, which I believe is this 2018 farm bill thing, to a plan established under that same code. That if that plan applies to the state or jurisdiction, this is the part that I don’t understand, if that plan applies to the state of jurisdiction. So, maybe this is the caveat that the 2014 farm bill applies, but if that’s the case, then why have the number one, if the number two is to get out of jail free card?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Then the third option is foreign jurisdiction. So obviously, that’s not the case. So, [crosstalk 00:09:53]

Matt Baum:
I know nobody can see this because if you’re listening to the show, but I am making that twisty dog head we talked about as you read this. Yeah, this is a sticky wicket.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah. It seems like it’s saying that only USDA approved hemp states can sell in Texas. That excludes 14 states as I understand it, that includes Kentucky. So, if I want to sell to Texas, I can maybe do it online, but not in retail. I’m fulfilling online orders into Texas every day.

Matt Baum:
Right. It sounds like we need to get someone from Texas on the phone to clear this up, but I wouldn’t even … Where do you go?

Jim Higdon:
I mean, I don’t know who’s covering the hemp [inaudible 00:10:40] in Texas. Texas is a foreign land to me. So, I’m a little bit out of my depth. I just am focused on this as a business person, because we’re trying to get Cornbread hemp everywhere we can, and really interested in doing the work in Texas. We have … Cornbread is a brand that will resonate really well in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Jim Higdon:
We can’t do that if these proposed regulations read like that, like they seem to read.

Matt Baum:
If this continues, it might not just be Texas. It could be a lot of states.

Jim Higdon:
Right. Not just Kentucky. This isn’t just my self interest. This is … if they want to buy at Charlotte’s web retail out of Colorado, it would also apply it seems. It’s just strange and it’s also strange that … I mean, it makes me feel particularly vulnerable that I’m totally wrong because I’m the only person saying, “Hey, is this a problem?”

Matt Baum:
Well, if nothing else, we’ll find out if it is, I guess.

Jim Higdon:
If I’m wrong, then that’s going to be great. If I’m right, then that’s bad, but then maybe there’s still time to change it.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Because these regulations are still in the post stage. We still have time to raise public awareness enough so that they realize that they’re making a bad regulation. So [crosstalk 00:11:53]

Matt Baum:
Well, and even scarier part is maybe you’re not wrong and they don’t understand and didn’t even realize what you’re saying. That’s the really scary part. If they go, “Wait a minute, we didn’t even think about that.”

Jim Higdon:
That feels like the rightest answer. I think that’s the situation because they wrote these rules and didn’t realize they were excluding people. They just wrote the rules. Trying to be boy scouts about it. By boy scouting it, they cut themselves short.

A developing story in Texas

Matt Baum:
As of June 4th, Thursday night, when I’m editing this, we still haven’t heard from Texas. We still don’t know what these proposed regulations mean or who to even talk to about them. Therein lies the insanity of the hemp business right now. All people like Jim are asking is tell us the rules and make those rules apply to every state so we can adhere to them. I can’t think of another business in the world that is asking for this much regulation. Here is hemp saying tell us what to do and we’ll do it, but when it comes down to individual states making rules that only apply to those states, you end up in a quagmire, just like this where three of the most important states working in the hemp business right now could be excluded from retail in Texas, one of the largest markets in the United States, and that is insane.
Now, I’m not trying to demonize Texas. I’m not saying there’s anything fundamentally wrong with Texas. In fact, in our next story, we’re going to hear a really nice story about Texas, but this is a perfect example of where the federal government needs to step in and make these guidelines so they can apply to every state. Jim and I went on to talk about how Mitch McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky, who’s been an important Kentucky hemp advocate is noticeably silent and absent of late. Yes, there’s a lot of stuff going on right now between COVID and protests against racial injustice, both of which are important and need our attention, but at the same time, when you have a discussion of regulation like this, that ends on the 8th of June, four days from now, and we can’t get an answer, that is scary and that could set a precedent.
Jim isn’t alone here. He gave me the contact information for Jana Groda, who is the vice president of the Kentucky Hemp Industry Association, who has also reached out and can’t get any information out of Texas yet. My initial plan was to reach out and find out for myself, but I can’t get that information either. So, we’re going to continue to follow this one and I’ll let you know, and here’s hoping the Jim is wrong and this is just some strangely worded regulations.
No, it’s not all weird, confusing, bad news coming out of Texas. There’s some good stories too. My next guest, his name is Michael Tullis and he is the proprietor and owner of Early Fruit Hemp in Lubbock, Texas. You might know Lubbock as the birthplace of Buddy Holly. It’s a smallish Texas town in northeast Texas with a population about 250,000 people. I was surprised to hear how well a small hemp business could do in a town like this. Here’s my conversation with Michael Tullis of Early Hemp.
Tell me your story. How do you end up in the hemp world as a small retailer in Lubbock, Texas of all places.

Selling hemp in Lubbock, Texas

Michael Tullis:
Completely by accident. So, really I was interested in hemp and I started seeing on the shelves here in Lubbock and I was like, “Wow, that’s really cool. Let me buy one of these pre-rolls to test it out and see how it goes.” I liked the idea of it really, but I didn’t like that product at all.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It didn’t smoke good. It didn’t taste good. Nothing.

Matt Baum:
How long ago was this? When was this?

Michael Tullis:
So man, it started showing up around here around 2018. Maybe the end of it is probably when I first noticed it.

Matt Baum:
So just a couple of years ago?

Michael Tullis:
So, [crosstalk 00:16:04] here in Lubbock a couple of years. Yeah. I honestly never even heard of smoking hemp flower. I knew CBD oil was getting pretty popular. So, I was just taking it back and decided to give it a shot.

Matt Baum:
So, that was … you tried it and you were like, “I’m going to do this. I’m going for it.”

Michael Tullis:
I was like, “Well, I’m now going to do this if this is what it’s going to be like.” But, I do like cannabis a lot and I have for a long time. So, I figured I’d try some more out and did some research and I found some really cool farms that are doing some really good stuff. Mostly up in Oregon, but across the country. By the time, I tried a bunch of different products of theirs, I decided I might as well go at it myself, see if they’ll open up any deals with me. So, I’ve got a couple of farms that are working with me, I guess, wholesale. Producing everything there from seed to packaging, which is really cool. It’s really small naturally craft type product.

Matt Baum:
So, not that I expect you to be like a full on hemp scientist here, but you said when you first tried smokable flower hemp, you didn’t like it. Do you know … What went into the process of deciding “I know I don’t want it to be like that.” What is the process of improving it, I guess? What process you went through to-

Michael Tullis:
I mean, I smoked prerolls before not hemp marijuana prerolls. I mean, I kind of know what they’re supposed to smoke like, know what the insides of them look like. This one didn’t didn’t work at all after several attempts. So, I opened it up and it was like a powder. It wasn’t even … and there was little metal pieces in there. It was like really sketchy. I’m like, “It just looks like they just scraped together something out of a grinder at the end of a long day.” I guess I didn’t really think that I could do it better, but that there was definitely someone out there who was doing it better or it wouldn’t be a thing. [crosstalk 00:18:03]

Matt Baum:
Sure. Was that you guys your first product, the flower, or did you start with tinctures and whatnot?

Michael Tullis:
The flower was where we started. We realized pretty quickly that people wanted the tinctures more than anything or the salves. A lot of people want the gummies too, which is pretty crazy. I’ve never even tried the gummy myself.

Matt Baum:
I’ve tried a few and there’s a few I’ve liked, but it’s definitely not my favorite delivery system.

Michael Tullis:
Really?

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
I’ve heard they’re pretty good [crosstalk 00:18:34]

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Like anything, it depends who’s doing it right and what they’re putting in it. Right?

Michael Tullis:
Right. Right. So, these same farms that I was getting flower from, they were rolling out their own tinctures and their own salves around the same time. So, I just asked them for some of those. I hooked it up and some of them didn’t work as good as others. It took some time to weed through some farms, but we’ve found some really good tinctures as well.

Hemp at the farmers’ market

Matt Baum:
Nice. The majority of your business, is it online or is it local? Is it people from Lubbock coming to Early Hemp or Early Fruit? I keep saying Early Hemp. Sorry. Early Fruit.

Michael Tullis:
No, it’s okay. The majority of our business is local, which is really cool. So, we set up a booth at a farmer’s market once a week. That’s about all we do here, but the response has been amazing.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It blew me away. I didn’t think at all that Lubbock, Texas would respond well to a cannabis company.

Matt Baum:
Is Texas hemp friendly? I mean, I know they’ve got some fairly good laws there. In the beginning of this show, I’m actually discussing an issue with some verbiage in their latest rules that are coming out for CBD and hemp in Texas. From your experience as a small business person opening a small hemp business, has it been friendly? Have you felt pushback?

Michael Tullis:
Actually, I haven’t felt any pushback at all.

Matt Baum:
Wow. That’s great.

Michael Tullis:
I haven’t had anyone … I’ve had a couple of people who will come up and give me their opinion about it, but that’s not the law coming up and giving me their opinion bottom online.

Matt Baum:
Sure. As far as like administrative or governmental, it-

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Nothing’s been a problem at all. Banks around here were an issue for a minute.

Matt Baum:
I can see that being tough definitely.

Michael Tullis:
Finding a small bank, I think was the trick. A lot of the big banks were still scared, but [crosstalk 00:20:28] local banks, they’ll help you out.

Matt Baum:
You’re dealing with a local bank?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing. That’s totally amazing. What about like credit card processing? You don’t have to tell me who you’re using, but I assume that was difficult to get that going.

Michael Tullis:
It was pretty hard. The company ended up with, there was supposedly a six week wait, ended up actually being 12 weeks. So, we got pushed back pretty far, yeah, at the beginning.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s great. It just sucks right now because everyone is so terrified that at any minute it could be made illegal again. So, major credit card processors are still scared and waiting for the FDA to say, “Nope, it’s okay.” Or … It’s bizarre. What do you think your biggest challenge has been so far? So, for Early Fruit.

Challenges at every step

Michael Tullis:
Really, I think every step of the way has been the biggest challenge. But, once I got banking, it kind of went downhill from there. Everything started falling into place. So, I would say that was it and-

Matt Baum:
The whole discussion with the local banks, getting that set up, was it … this is literally just you face to face saying like, “Look, this is what I want to do. I believe there’s a market here.” You can tell by state law and the farm bill that it’s legal and they were receptive? They were just like, “Michael, we like the cut of your jib. Let’s do this.”

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. It took a few tries and it took a few banks, but I eventually got … I guess I have to get the right pitch down.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Michael Tullis:
They were pretty welcoming. They weren’t too surprised. I guess maybe a few people have been trying around that time and they were willing.

Matt Baum:
That’s great. That is a much better story than I’ve heard from a lot of other people in different states.

Michael Tullis:
I know. I was terrified the whole time. I was like, “Man, this is going to be the hardest thing in the world.” But-

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah. Convincing people that you’re not a marijuana salesman, right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Around here, it’s pretty hard. There’s not too much education on the difference between hemp and marijuana around here.

Matt Baum:
You guys are maintaining a blog on your site. That’s really good. I checked out, by the way, for education-

Michael Tullis:
Well, thank you. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
What about like locally? What are you doing for … Are you doing anything to try and educate the local populace?

Michael Tullis:
Just kind of while I’m there I’m providing as much education as I can answering questions, things like that, but no, I’m not really an outreach person. I even have trouble even typing up these little blogs that I post.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
It’s just some severe stage fright that eventually maybe I’ll get over. But, for now I think I’m doing pretty good getting some education out at the farmer’s market that I go to.

Matt Baum:
Cool. What do you see-

Michael Tullis:
Now, if they want more, they know where to find me.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, right on. What do you see the future for Early Hemp? What are you hoping for? Are you going to try and get into your own farming or you just want to be an out like a retail outlet?

Planting hemp in Texas

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. So, it started as a retail outlet, just trying to get something quality here in Lubbock. Since then, it’s worked and I’ve met a lot of great people. I’ve built some relationships in the hemp industry, which is really crazy. So, I’m actually looking to … not looking to. We just planted 16,000 plants.

Matt Baum:
Oh man!

Michael Tullis:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
That’s huge.

Michael Tullis:
Where we grow in our own this season.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Michael Tullis:
We’re a little bit late into it, but I think it’ll still work out fine. Texas stays hot.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
It doesn’t cool off for most of the [crosstalk 00:24:05]

Matt Baum:
Not too much. No. Barring catastrophic climate change, which is a reality.

Michael Tullis:
My gosh, these days, anything can happen.

Matt Baum:
Tell me about it. So, do you have processing set up? 16,000 plants, that’s not exactly a small experiment you’re jumping into, is it?

Michael Tullis:
No. I tried to keep it as small as possible, but I’ve got some friends that talked me into crazy things.

Matt Baum:
We all do, I suppose.

Michael Tullis:
Right.

Matt Baum:
How are you guys going to go about processing that?

Michael Tullis:
I’m not quite sure. I know we’ve got a place to dry it, which is the scariest part. If you think about that many plants, that’s a big facility.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. That’s like an airport hangar, right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Gosh, I hope we don’t need that much, but yeah, it’s really going to be a lot. So, we’ve got that figured out. As far as processing, we’ve got a few different options. Unfortunately, not many here in Texas.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Michael Tullis:
Yet. Hopefully, within the next couple of years, they’ll start filling in. Well, we’d like to just do something simple with it. If we need to take it and extract it with ethanol ourselves, hopefully not, we’d rather have a CO2 extraction, something a little more pure.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
But, if we have to, and then get into our own products. If even the grow itself works, we’ll be able to get our own tinctures and our own salves made and hopefully our own smokable flower. We’re growing outdoors though, so it’s not really aiming for that this year.

Matt Baum:
Are there rules against that right now in Texas?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Yeah. There’s rules against a lot of stuff. Manufacturing and producing and even retail smokable, hemp I think right now is all really questionable.

Matt Baum:
So, it has to come from like greenhouses more or less.

Michael Tullis:
Yeah or out of state.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. So, do you truly are in the experimental phase right now? You’re like, “Let’s see if this stuff will even grow, basically.”

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. Yeah. So, really this whole thing started off as an experiment. A year and a half ago, I didn’t think I was going to be even successful doing retail much less have an opportunity to really dive into the hemp industry, really dive into growing and learning everything that I’ve learned. So, I guess at this point, I’m happy if everything just shuts down and it doesn’t work. From here on out, I learned a lot and I had a great time.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. I like that attitude.

Michael Tullis:
I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of really good people.

Matt Baum:
It’s fantastic.

Michael Tullis:
Right. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
You’re like, “Oh, I learned a lot and I can take that away.” Good for you, man.

Michael Tullis:
Thank you. Thank you.

Matt Baum:
I’d be terrified person.

Michael Tullis:
I have a lot of really smart people around me too. I’ve got some brilliant people, so I’m not … maybe not as scared as I should be.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough. How many people you’re working with on this project?

Michael Tullis:
There’s four of us that are working on a project and then [inaudible 00:27:13] got a couple extra people helping out.

Matt Baum:
That is awesome. So, you said hopefully you would like to have it processed somewhere and then you want to turn it into your own tinctures, your own oils and topicals and whatnot.

Michael Tullis:
That’s the plan. That’s my plan for it anyways. We’ll see what everyone else wants to do.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Michael Tullis:
But, we’re all moving in that direction. It’d be nice to be able to brand it and get our own products out there. So, we’re doing this … My store this kind of small batch from farm to table type product and I’d like to be able to do that for myself, integrate my own … in that direction as well, you know?

Matt Baum:
Then it’s world domination after that. Right?

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. If I can take care of my house first, but you should let me take over the world, we’ll have a good time.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s important. Definitely. I’ve talked to people in LA and Minneapolis and Seattle, but not a lot of small town hemp retailers out there right now. So, it’s cool that something like this can even work in Lubbock.

Michael Tullis:
Yeah. I thought so too. Hopefully, it stays working.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, man. I hope the best for you. I appreciate the flower that you sent me. It was fantastic, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

Michael Tullis:
Really? Yeah, I’m glad you liked it.

Matt Baum:
Definitely.

Michael Tullis:
Glad you liked it.

Matt Baum:
I’ll have links to Michael’s Early Hemp site in the notes of this episode. I was really fortunate and glad that I could get two stories from Texas, one that’s kind of weird and hopefully turns out to be good and one that just is good. A small business run by a local proprietor who’s trying to spread the word through education and quality products. I think it really illustrates how somebody who cares about hemp and CBD and does their homework and works with the right people and seeks to educate their local populace can succeed no matter where they are. I hope if you’re listening, you’ll throw a click Michael’s way and at least check out his site.

Black Lives Matter: Final thoughts from Matt

That is it for another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. If you haven’t had a chance yet, please head over to Patreon\ministryofhemp and become a ministry of hemp insider. It will get you early access to our articles, extra content, podcast extras and more importantly, it helps us spread the good word of hemp.
If you dig the show and you believe in what we’re doing, please help out. If you can’t, that’s fine too. You can write a review of this show or leave it a star rating on your podcast app. It really does help to get this information to other people. If you need more Ministry of Hemp, you can follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, we’re everywhere on social media at ministryofhemp\ministryofhemp, and we’re always publishing amazing stories over at ministryofhemp.com. Like a story about hemp masks that are offering sustainable personal safety during the COVID-19 crisis.
Now, I know we’re trying to return to work and return to life and whatnot, but you still need to wear a mask. If you want to do so and make a statement and do it sustainably, why not wear a mask made of hemp fabric. There’s also a great post about how to maintain focus while working at home without guzzling gallons of coffee, which is something I am very guilty of.
At the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everyone. So, we will have a full written transcript of this show in the show notes for this episode. Before I end the show with my usual sign off, I want to say that the Ministry of Hemp and myself stand with Black Lives Matter and stand with the protestors and support everyone that is out there right now fighting the good fight, but please, please take care of yourself. COVID-19 is still very much a reality. So, please wear a mask, wash your hands, take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp podcast signing off.

The post Texas Hemp Stories: Will New Regulations Endanger Texas Hemp? appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host, Matt, talks about the USDA hitting the pause button on some regulations. Then, he talks with Jim Higdon, an author, historian, journalist, and owner of Cornbread Hemp. Jim talks about the surprising story of Kentucky’s place in American hemp history and its future. The conversation also touches on the “Hemp for Victory” program, when farmers were briefly encouraged to grow hemp during World War II.

Check out Jim’s book, “The Corn Bread Mafia.”

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Kentucky Hemp Is The Heart Of American Hemp: Complete episode transcript

Below is the complete transcript of episode 32 of the Ministry of Hemp podcast.

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast brought to you by ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
Welcome back to another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. My name is Matt Baum. I’m your host, and today we’re going to talk about Kentucky. But first there is some good news for embattled hemp farmers out there coming out of the USDA, for a change that is.

USDA delays provisions of hemp regulations

Matt Baum:
At the end of February, the US Department of Agriculture announced that they are temporarily going to be delaying the enforcement of two provisions of its hemp regulations. Hemp producers will not be required to use a laboratory registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration or the DEA to conduct potency tests on their crops, and this is at least for now and for the time being and possibly even more importantly, farmers that test over 0.03% for THC in their hemp crop will not be forced to destroy those crops. Now, it’s not because the DEA came to their senses or they listened to a lot of the farmers that weren’t crazy about these provisions at all. Actually it comes down to the fact that there just isn’t a sufficient capacity in the United States for the testing and disposal of noncompliant hemp plants. The DEA just doesn’t have the time or budget for this kind of enforcement when they’re already fighting a war on real illegal drugs.

Matt Baum:
The changes come in response to feedback from an industry stakeholders, many of which argued that the policies that were included in the USDA’s interim final rule on hemp would prove cost prohibitive for farmers and inhibit the growth of the market since the crop was legalized under the 2018 Farm Bill. Well, it turns out it could be breaking the DEA as well. So this is very good news for hemp producers. It probably means that we’re going to look at that 0.03% THC level, which again is completely arbitrary and loosen that up a little bit. And there’s no doubt that independent testing through laboratories that are already doing this is going to be both better, more consistent, and probably cheaper than anything the DEA would have been offering. So for now, the laboratory testing and disposal requirements are being delayed until October 31st, 2021 or until a final rule is released.

Matt Baum:
The USDA said the delay will serve as “a temporary measure to allow a smooth transition into regular enforcement and give the DEA enough time to increased registered analytical lab capacity.” With the amount of farmers that are now starting to grow him and the amount of hemp that is being grown in the United States. I would honestly be shocked if the DEA does take this on. Chances are they’re going to say, “We’re going to trust your third party lab results” and they’re probably going to take a hard look at the punishments for what they call hot hemp, which are hemp plants that are over that 0.03% THC level. Regardless, it’s good news for farmers and producers everywhere.

Hemp in Kentucky, with Jim Higdon

Matt Baum:
There is a reason then if you start looking into the history of hemp in the United States, Kentucky is going to come up again and again and again. And surprisingly enough, it’s directly related to the same plant growing in the Hindu Kush mountains. There is an insane history of hemp in the bluegrass basin of Kentucky. It’s got everything: heroic, patriotic farmers turned outlaw farmers and later legal farmers forced to hire outlaws just to figure out how to get this plant growing. My guest today, Jim Higdon, is the author of the book, “The Cornbread Mafia,” and you should check it out if you get a chance because it is insane. Here’s my conversation with Jim Higdon of Cornbread Hemp. So how did you come to hemp? How did this start? Did you have a farming background? Did you always want to grow hemp? How did you stumble into this?

Jim Higdon:
I’m a generation removed from the farm. My mother grew up on a farm. I grew up in the big city of Lebanon, Kentucky, population 10,000 or so.

Matt Baum:
Oh my.

Jim Higdon:
Right. So I come into this space. My hometown in central Kentucky was the headquarters of this thing called the Cornbread Mafia. And in the late 80s, 70 country guys from central Kentucky arrested on 30 farms in 10 states with 200 tons of marijuana. And of these 70 guys that were caught, none of them talked, and it frustrated federal law enforcement’s ability to prosecute them as a group because there were no witnesses. So the federal prosecutors held a press conference in the summer of 1989 to lay out their case against these guys. In the process of that press conference, one of the prosecutors referred to them as the Cornbread Mafia.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Jim Higdon:
And so that’s where this term comes from in the public’s mind is from this press conference. And I’m in eighth grade when that happens. My formidable years growing up in Central Kentucky Middle School, high school grew up in the shadow of this superlative outlaw cannabis operation called Cornbread Mafia.

Matt Baum:
They were heroes.

Jim Higdon:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Matt Baum:
They were effectively heroes.

Jim Higdon:
Well, yeah, antiheroes, mixed hero. Those are mixed bag. But guys doing the right thing, certainly not talking in exchange for a lesser sentence was something that was viewed as heroic and sacrificial. Lots of these men sacrificed years of their lives to protect other men.

Matt Baum:
Sure. It’s that whole thing in every gangster movie that “I ain’t no rat. You’re not going to get that out of me.”

Jim Higdon:
All the gangster movies where there are rats.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Well, there are those rats. Yeah.

Jim Higdon:
The only one we know about Goodfellas is because Henry Hill is a rat.

Matt Baum:
That’s true I suppose.

Jim Higdon:
For context. And so for a long time, this operation was basically forgotten and hidden because no one would talk about it. I went off to become a writer and wanted to write a book and there was a story to write a book about. So I went to Center College undergrad. I went to Brown university for the creative writing program. I lived in New York for a while. I went to the Columbia Journalism School and at Columbia realized how to dig into court records and make narrative out of them and came home and wrote a book about Cornbread Mafia using the writing techniques and reporting techniques I’d learned along the way.

Jim Higdon:
And so I was able to crack open this story that no one had been able to crack open before and tell the story in a fulsome way. And then parlayed the book success into a journalism career where I was covering cannabis politics at a national level for outlets like Politico and Thrillist and the Washington Post.

Matt Baum:
Not bad.

Jim Higdon:
So, not bad. So I was covering the 2018 Farm Bill for Politico out in a harvest in Western Kentucky, saw the 2018 hemp cannabinoid harvest come in and realize that there was this opportunity, and no one was at the time making products the right way, branding things the right way. Everyone was trying to pretend then that hemp just sort of fell out of the sky and they had no history.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Jim Higdon:
And having been a journalist and a book writer in this space wanted to give some history to the branding aspect and incorporate the story of Kentucky hemp into a good brand. And that just hadn’t been done. So I’ve got an opportunity, partnered with my first cousin who has an eCommerce background and an MBA, and we’ve bounced some seed capital right out of the gate. And this time last year we were formulating products. We’re a brand. We’re working with processors and commerce.

Matt Baum:
Gotcha. Okay.

Jim Higdon:
We’ve developed a relationship with the Kentucky Organic Hemp Cooperative. So we’re working inside that cooperative and we’re letting good farmers be good farmers. That’s not what we do. We’re about custom formulating products and then selling those products in a way that moves those farmers a biomass into the marketplace.

A history of hemp in Kentucky

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure. Why Kentucky? How come every time I dig into any hemp history, it all goes back to Kentucky? What is the story here?

Jim Higdon:
So you’re asking the right guy because I’m… Maybe the wrong guy if you want a short answer to this question.

Matt Baum:
No, it’s an interview show. We got to flesh it out. Come on, man.

Jim Higdon:
So a number of pieces to this. The first hemp crop in Kentucky that’s documented is from 1775. That’s before statehood. That’s before the Revolutionary War.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. But something happened in 1776 as I recall. It was fairly big.

Jim Higdon:
Correct. When Kentucky was still a county of the colony of Virginia, there was hemp being grown here. So it predates the origin story of the nation. And it grows really well here. And it wasn’t until these Cornbread Mafia guys in the 70s they figured it out before everyone else. What they figured out was the seeds they were bringing back from Southeast Asia grew really well in Kentucky. And why was it that seeds from Asia were growing well in Kentucky? And it’s because Kentucky sits on the 37th parallel. Just north of the southern border with Tennessee is the 37th. And if you stretch that across the other side of the world, it crosses the Hindu Kush mountain range.

Jim Higdon:
So all of the strains of indica that originate in the Hindu Kush like a certain set of light cycles. And those light cycles are replicated in Kentucky because they’re on the same latitude line.

Matt Baum:
And I would guess it’s mainly light cycles, not so much soil. The soil has got to be different there.

Jim Higdon:
Well the soil is part of it. It’s a component to it as is the water.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jim Higdon:
But the plant is on a clock and that clock is based on light per day. Okay. And she switches from vegetative stage to flowering stage based on the amount of light she’s getting in a day. And so the light cycles on the 37th parallel are what she wants. And you combine that with the bluegrass basin’s agricultural qualities. The reason why our bourbon is great and our resources are fast is because the soil and the water are naturally superior in a variety of ways. And this combination of things creates a microclimate that’s great for the hemp plant.

Matt Baum:
So the hemp literally wants to grow there.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah. She really wants to be there. That’s what it’s all about.

Kentucky’s last hemp crop

Matt Baum:
Wow. And so this starts at 1776 and it carries through for how long before the United States government says, “Shut this down”?

Jim Higdon:
So the last hemp crop is 1937, and the pre-modern hemp crop, when they’re growing it for fiber, they harvest it in the spring. So they leave it out in shocks all winter long. And that’s a retting process to help break down the herd so that it’s easier to deal with the fiber. So there’s a photo essay that we’ve come across from 1938 showing a photo essay of the last harvest of the last crop in Kentucky. And then everyone thinks it’s gone away for good. And then World War II brings it back for three or four years.

Matt Baum:
Right. So using a lot of that same knowledge from people that just were growing it, I’m sure.

Jim Higdon:
Correct. It was outlawed in ’37, and I’m sure listeners of your podcast are well-aware of a variety of reasons why it becomes illegal in 1937. But I think principle among them is that alcohol becomes legal again in ’33, and federal law enforcement suddenly does not have something to prohibit. And so marijuana is the next substance up on the list.

Matt Baum:
And hemp looks just like it get, so guess what? You’re going too.

Jim Higdon:
Right. They can’t rough folks up for alcohol anymore. So they’re going to find something else to do it with. Naturally very racist in its origins. The use of marijuana in the language because it’s a Spanish word because that’s what the Mexicans were using to describe it as opposed to cannabis. It’s very clear the origins are like it’s race management. The origins of the prohibition are race management.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Jim Higdon:
It’s for white people to control minority groups.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

‘Hemp for Victory’ in Kentucky

Jim Higdon:
And the market for American hemp is declining over this time period because of foreign competition for cheaper hemp and jute grown elsewhere, particularly the Philippines where the federal government, the American federal government was getting much of its hemp from the Philippines. And so the federal government, the Navy was fine with prohibiting hemp in America because they were getting all their hemp from the Philippines. But as soon as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they attacked the Philippines. And so when the United States loses possession of the Philippines, it’s then that we have to go back to our farmers and be like, “You know that thing that we told you not to do anymore? Will you please do it for two to three years?”

Matt Baum:
We should start doing that again.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah. So Hemp for Victory, hemp for the war effort and it all came back to Kentucky. I think nine states were involved in Hemp for Victory. My understanding is only Kentucky was the only state that the federal government took the seeds and they were using those hemp seeds to then grow hemp crops in places with better climates.

Matt Baum:
Only Kentucky-based seeds basically is what you’re saying.

Jim Higdon:
That’s my understanding. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Jim Higdon:
And again, it’s this Kentucky superiority even in this pre-modern era where the government and farmers sort of recognized and understood that the hemp crop coming out of Kentucky was somehow superior.

Matt Baum:
Is it just the 37th parallel? Is it just the lighting, the fact that the hemp is familiar with that, or is there some kind of terroir or some kind of magic to it?

Jim Higdon:
There’s definitely some terroir .I mean it’s definitely bluegrass basin has this agricultural climate that is superior for raising horses. Thoroughbred horses are unique to Kentucky. There were no horses here to begin with. When white people showed up in Kentucky, there were no horses.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Right. Horses are not native to here. They came here because of river traffic with New Orleans and bringing back very good horses from New Orleans and then pairing those horses with English stallions. But the fact that horses are raised well in Kentucky was something that people kind of discovered. It was like, “Oh, these horses are better.” And it was because of the limestone foundation underneath the bluegrass basin filters out all the heavy metals out of the water and makes the water better for the bones or something along those lines.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jim Higdon:
And the same reasons that make Kentucky thoroughbred horses superior is similar to the same reason why our bourbon is superior, again, because we’re making it with this water that’s limestone filtered, and that water and that soil and that agricultural climate lends itself perfectly to the hemp plant. And then you add to it the light cycles and it just clicks and works.

Becoming a Ministry of Hemp Insider

Matt Baum:
Take a quick break. So Kit, the editor in chief of ministryofhemp.com can tell you about our new Patreon. Take it away, Kit.

Kit O’Connell:
Hi, this is Kit O’Connell. I’m the editor-in-chief at Ministry of Hemp. I hope you’re enjoying the Ministry of Hemp podcast and the articles we’ve been publishing recently. But today I want to talk to you about the newest way that you can support what we do.

Kit O’Connell:
So we’re launching a Patreon at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. And this Patreon will help our readers and fans contribute to what we do. With your help, we’ll be able to make our podcast and produce even more great articles about science and information about hemp and CBD. We’ll publish more recipes and more guides. We’ll be able to work with more journalists, chefs, and authors of all kinds. Not only that, but by joining our Patreon, you’ll become a hemp insider. We’re launching a special newsletter just for our patrons. Each month we’ll work with experts and advocates and other industry professionals to give you an inside look at hemp and offer you ways to help the return of our favorite plant nationwide.

Kit O’Connell:
To get access to this new newsletter, you can donate any amount on our Patreon, even as low as $3 a month. For a few dollars more, we’ll send you some Ministry of Hemp stickers and even samples of our favorite CBD products. If you joined before February 15th at $25 or more, we’ll give you a Ministry of Hemp T-shirt as well.

Kit O’Connell:
So if you love hemp and the work that we’re doing at the Ministry of Hemp, I hope you’ll support us. You can join at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/ministryofhemp, which is all one word. Thanks.

Growing cannabis in the bluegrass basin

Jim Higdon:
If you trace the 37th parallel across the country, let’s give everyone their due, because it’s the 37th parallel. It’s also the bluegrass basin which intersects with the 37th parallel, but the border between New Mexico and Colorado is the 37th parallel. And then if you trace that into California, it’s Fresno to Santa Cruz is the 37th parallel. So those ideal life cycles exist elsewhere in the country. But that combined with the agricultural climate in Kentucky is what makes it special.

Matt Baum:
There is a lot of hemp growing through all of those areas that you just discussed too, a lot of huge hemp farms that are right there. And I guess it makes perfect sense. I never really thought of that. Let me ask you, with your historical background and looking into all this information about how they were growing and why they’re growing it there, did that help you working with farmers in the area? Was there a lot of forgotten knowledge that you guys uncovered or was this stuff sort of still ingrained in people, like people still remember some of this stuff?

Jim Higdon:
Both these things. A lot of these Cornbread guys who started growing outlaw cannabis in the 70s remembered it being grown during World War II or their fathers did and it was still growing wild behind the barn. It was just this plant that no one gave a second thought about, but then when those young guys went off to Vietnam and realized what the value of that plant was in other parts of the country, all you had to do is grow it and not get caught. They were often racist. One thing that I was stressing to early farmers as they adopted this crop and something that people learn the hard way is a lot of these straight lace farmers who are growing him for the first time, they needed a convict consultant. They needed a consultant with a criminal record.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Jim Higdon:
Well, I mean not necessarily a criminal record. Former cultivators are necessary to share their knowledge. There’s a lot of tricks to this plant that aren’t common knowledge. And for farmers getting into it thinking if they could grow it like any other crop suddenly found out that that was not the case. The plant was very particular and peculiar, and she needed somebody who knows how to grow that sort of plant. And so even though licenses are denied to felons with a drug crime within 10 years of their past, it became very clear to people holding licenses that they needed the expertise of those people to help them grow successful hemp.

Matt Baum:
You can still hire that outlaw and bring him in and go, “What am I doing wrong? What am I missing?”

Jim Higdon:
And then also we can change the rules in the future so that outlaw doesn’t have to be hired. That outlaw can get his own license and we can incorporate that former outlaw back into tax-paying society more quickly.

Matt Baum:
Right. Because at the end of the day, this was a farmer we’re talking about. This isn’t a terrorist.

Jim Higdon:
Right.

The future of Kentucky hemp

Matt Baum:
So what do you see? Right now, things are kind of uncertain as far as over-saturation and farmers having trouble getting product to market. What do you see as the future? Where does Kentucky go from here?

Jim Higdon:
Kentucky in the future will become a boutique flower market as the market expands and matures. CBD isolate will be produced in midwestern states that are growing thousands of acres of hemp for grain and fiber and then taking what’s left over and making isolate out of it. So Kentucky has a role as a boutique flower producer making superior flower in a very larger market. But in order for this market to mature, it’s going to take some time because as you mentioned, the glut in production from last year combined with the lack of FDA regulations, and it might not have been a glut of production last year had FDA come in with regulations, which would have allowed major retailers and big box retailers to offer CBD products and have a fuller expression of CBD in the marketplace. That production that happened last year might’ve been sufficient to bury out the first-

Matt Baum:
Sure. Not to mention banking rules would have been nice too. So companies could actually accept credit cards and accept payments. I mean…

Jim Higdon:
Right. For instance, lots of these arbitrary and artificial barriers to the marketplace have really done a number on the hemp farmers. The hemp farmer got stuck with all that. The supply chain got bottlenecked and the hemp farmer got stuck. Now will the hemp farmer get unstuck in the future? I really believe that is the case. The recent comments by the FDA commissioners seem very positive, like inevitable. He’s not real happy about CBD, but feels it’s a fool’s errand to try to put the genie back in the bottle. So those regulations will come in time presumably this calendar year, although we thought it was last calendar year too. So who knows.

Jim Higdon:
But when those regulations come in, then we start seeing a fuller expression of the marketplace through major retailers. Major pharmacies begin carrying these products and giving farmers more avenues to the marketplace. So it’s just through brands like mine or through their own brands, through house brands through all kinds of different ways of moving CBD products to the consumer. The consumer is leery because the FDA hasn’t come in.

Matt Baum:
Of course, of course.

Jim Higdon:
Retailers are leery and then bad actors inside the hemp space are making it worse and then skeptical and cynical journalists are making that worse. So it’s a trust deficit spiral that we’re kind of in a little bit, but that all works itself out when the FDA comes in, which will happen soon enough.

Mitch McConnell and hemp

Matt Baum:
Right. Let me ask you a political question then. I don’t want you to get too.. Yeah, I know. We both go, “Ooh.” I’m not asking you to take a side or anything, but why do you think it is that a traditionally red state like Kentucky, which is definitely an agriculture state, is so favorable? Mitch McConnell is not a guy I agree with on most, but has been very, very pro-hemp. Why is Kentucky so pro in helping farmers with this? Whereas you have other states like where I’m from, Nebraska, where we’re treating it like it’s crack cocaine and it’s killing children. What do you think the difference is there?

Jim Higdon:
The similarities on paper seem very similar, right? Agricultural states, low population density, mostly white, conservative Republican senators and statewide office holders.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. We can literally check all those boxes except for this hemp thing. I don’t get it.

Jim Higdon:
So this started in Kentucky before Mitch McConnell got on board with the agriculture commissioner whose name name is Jamie Comer, who’s now the Congressman for the first district of Kentucky. And Commissioner Comer worked for years to build a coalition to get hemp legal in Kentucky. That started in 2011 or 2012, and then he pushed to get it. We do elections in Kentucky in off years. I think he was elected in ’11 and began pushing for hemp in ’12 and then got it passed through the legislature in Kentucky in ’13. And then once it passes the legislature, then Mitch McConnell slowly becomes interested as folks like Jamie Comer worked with McConnell to get it over the finish line. And McConnell gets on board but only two half steps. McConnell gets a lot of credit. The credit where it’s due for getting this in the Farm Bill for discovering the Farm Bill as the vehicle to move this agenda and to getting it over the finish line, not just in ’14 but again in ’18.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Right. It didn’t take care of itself. McConnell had to exercise some political capital to get that done.

Matt Baum:
Oh yeah.

Jim Higdon:
But he did it thinking that he could just legalize hemp one step and do no service to what he calls hemp’s illicit cousin marijuana and that he could take a half step towards hemp legalization, call it a day and have business friendly businesses involved in the hemp space.

Matt Baum:
Keep the farmers happy.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah. Make the farmers happy and not make any of his law enforcement supporters unhappy. But that really hasn’t born out to be the case. He’s let a genie out of the bottle and now farmers have a taste of what the cannabis plant at the lower end of the marketplace will bear. And now farmers are saying, “Well, why can’t we do this other thing?” And so, once farmers have a taste of the cannabis economy, even in a limited fashion, like we’ve experienced in Kentucky with hemp, they want it all. And farmers are the sorts of constituents in a place like Kentucky that pull a lot of weight.

Matt Baum:
Of course, there’s a lot of them.

Jim Higdon:
Well there’s a lot of them. And also you don’t have to have a lot of them in these low density state Senate districts.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Jim Higdon:
Because one farmer pulls 30 votes or 50 votes because he’s got a family and a church, and he’s a guy who pulls all these votes in his people. If he says he’s for somebody or against somebody, then there’s a group of people who follow along.

Matt Baum:
Sure. And all the other farmers look at this as well and they’ve got people with them. I mean…

Jim Higdon:
They’ve got people with them. So they’re tastemakers and thought leaders in the rural communities, and legislators pay attention to that. And in Frankfort, in the state capital, when it’s law enforcement versus hippies, law enforcement are going to win that argument every time. If it’s law enforcement versus communities of color, law enforcement is going to win that argument every time. But if it’s law enforcement versus farmers, law enforcement might get screwed.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Higdon:
And so finally, there’s a constituency group in Frankfort where they have a lot of political clout and they’re getting on board with expanding cannabis rights.

Matt Baum:
Well, and-

Jim Higdon:
So that’s where I think a lot of movement has been is getting farmers bought into this notion that this can help the farm.

Medical cannabis in Kentucky?

Matt Baum:
And medical marijuana, from my understanding, was just basically introduced into Kentucky. Like last week there was a bill that passed, is that right?

Jim Higdon:
It’s in the legislature. It has passed the house. It is in the Senate. So it passed the house 63 to 30, a clear two thirds majority in a chamber that’s controlled by Republicans again by the same margin. So half of those 63 yes votes are Republican yes votes. And then in the Senate we’ll wait and see. It is not yet, to my knowledge, been posted to a committee and the committee assignment will determine its fate. Either it’d be go to a committee where we can get it through committee. Or it’d go to a committee where it will die.

Matt Baum:
But all this literally goes back to Kentucky’s history of success with this plant because of where it’s at. Because of, like you said, the 37th parallel because of not even after it was outlawed and prohibition came in, outlaws keeping this practice alive basically.

Jim Higdon:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
And now farmers today saying, “We want this. We’re going to do this and you can either back us or we’ll vote for somebody who will.”

Jim Higdon:
I mean that seems to be what’s happening. Republicans are getting their heads around what they said they would never do, which is let this happen. Now all of a sudden there’s a lot of the stages of grief going on with Republican lawmakers, lots of bargaining.

Matt Baum:
I’ve noticed that.

Jim Higdon:
There’s like, “Well…” The marijuana bill that’s moving in Kentucky is a no smoking marijuana bill as I understand it. Flower sales will occur, but that flower will be packaged in packaging that says “not for smoking.”

Matt Baum:
Right. And the next step is they want to grow in Kentucky too.

Jim Higdon:
Right. Well the next step is the cultivation side, and the fees for cultivating are not worked out yet in this bill. So we’ll see if it’s a farmer friendly cultivation license level or if it’s corporate tax. Is it a $5,000 licensing fee or is it a $55,000?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Jim Higdon:
Can someone get in here and grow or do they have to have a private equity behind them to even sniff at it. So let’s not work itself out. So we’ll see.

Creating a future for hemp farmers

Matt Baum:
So you’re involved in this as well as an owner of Cornbread Hemp. What’s that like for you? How has business been? How are you feeling about this? Do you feel good? Is Kentucky moving the right way? Is this going to help you as a business owner?

Jim Higdon:
I feel good. The business is good. Kentucky is moving the right way only because all the other options had been tried.

Matt Baum:
Sure. They’re moving the right away in spite of themselves.

Jim Higdon:
Right. Well, you haven’t tried this way. We should go forward. So this glut that we’re talking about, this problem with an oversupply, while it hurts farmers, in the scheme of business, it helps brands like me because it’s lowering my costs. So in that narrow sense, that’s good for business, although in the grand scheme of things, it’s bad and shouldn’t happen. We’re trying to get farmers paid here in this business. Whole point of this is to create a supply chain where everyone is happy. And so having a supply chain where the people responsible for making the product are unhappy because FDA hasn’t approved it, it’s no good. So it’s no good in a general sense, but in a strictly Machiavellian sense it’s good for brands when the prices go down.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Jim Higdon:
But we need to create a system that works for farmers. And the only way we do that is with FDA regulations and a full realization of the CBD hemp space. And then every farm bill that gets passed from now on, we will advocate for raising the THC levels. So better and better hemp is able to get into the marketplace.

Matt Baum:
Right. And it makes it easier and easier for farmers instead of having to come out and burn their entire fields because they were 0.01% over.

Jim Higdon:
And it’s happening. The farmers are having to destroy crops and it’s just heartbreaking.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Jim Higdon:
I don’t even understand from a lawmaking perspective how you can expect farmers to take this kind of risk, and then have them destroy their crop because it’s a fraction of a percentage point over an arbitrarily low ceiling.

Matt Baum:
That was maybe part of that dance that they were doing to keep the genie in the bottle a little bit though.

Jim Higdon:
Well, right, and I think they danced too hard on the bottom. So I think that the interim final rules from USDA, they really tried to pin it down, and they realize when the rule came out, they pinned down too many variables too tight, and it made it completely impossible.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Jim Higdon:
And now even Kentucky, the USDA cites Kentucky’s rules over and over again as the model that the USDA is enacting an interim final rule, but then Kentucky doesn’t adopt it. Kentucky is still operating under the 2014 Farm Bill, which is bonkers. And I haven’t gotten a good reason why that is other than they advocated for a system that they now realize isn’t working.

Matt Baum:
Right. So what do we do? Fix it or replace it? What do you think?

Jim Higdon:
Well, we fix it. We have to elect people who are knowledgeable and competent enough and brave enough to stand up for people who don’t want it fixed. There’s a number of ways to fix it. At the state level, you fix it with more advocacy. At a federal level, we fix it at every Farm Bill. I think the Farm Bill is an every five year endeavor. Every five years, we have an opportunity to raise the THC threshold to eliminate the felon ban to reaffirm cannabinoids as being protected under the Farm Bill to do all these things to ensure that this industry remains on the right track.

Matt Baum:
2023 basically is the next time we get to take a shot at this.

Jim Higdon:
Right, yeah.

Matt Baum:
Are you going to be there? You’re going to be fighting the good fight, right?

Jim Higdon:
I mean, it depends on my customers but absolutely. This business is built to last and this business is designed to advocate for good outcomes. So when we get there, we will be on the front lines clamoring for a THC threshold. Instead of 0.3%, it should be 3.0%.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jim Higdon:
Let’s move this needle on where the THC threshold is and lawmakers over time realize they can vote in favor of these things and their world doesn’t end and it makes them more willing and able to make the good votes going forward.

Matt Baum:
And who knows, maybe you have an agricultural constituency that can, I don’t know, make a living.

Jim Higdon:
For instance.

Matt Baum:
Just to begin.

Jim Higdon:
Instead now we have dairy farmers on suicide watch because the dairy industry is collapsing. We actually have a growth industry in the agriculture space that we need to find a way to embrace.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely. Hey, I want to thank you for your knowledge, your time for coming on the show and, like I said, for fighting the good fight, man. This is great.

Jim Higdon:
And I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
As always in the show notes, you’ll be able to find links to Jim Higdon’s book, The Cornbread Mafia, and the cornbreadhemp.com. Be sure to check out both when you get a chance.

Matt Baum:
And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. I want to thank everybody that has been downloading and supporting. And if you have questions that you need answered, you can call me at (402) 819-6417 with your hemp-related questions, and we will play them, my buddy, Kit, we mentioned earlier, the editor-in-chief at ministryofhemp.com. And I will answer them on the show. You can also send me your questions to matt@ministryofhemp.com or hit us up on any of our social media. You can always find us either @ministryofhemp or /ministryofhemp. We’re everywhere.

Matt Baum:
Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, head over there to check out a couple of great articles we got up, one about understanding the different types of hemp oil and another great one that has all about terpenes where you can learn the common terpenes in hemp and cannabis and what they do. We’ll be talking about terpenes real soon here on the show.

Matt Baum:
Here at Ministry of Hemp, we believe an accessible world is a better world for everybody. So there is a full written transcript of this show in the notes for this episode over at ministryofhemp.com. And like Kit said earlier, if you like what we do here and you want to support, check out our Patreon page /ministryofhemp over patreon.com where you can get all kinds of cool stuff like podcast extras, exclusive articles and content. And it’s just a great way to show that you support what we’re doing here and this great plant that we’re trying to educate everyone about.

Matt Baum:
For now, this is your host, Matt Baum, reminding you to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is the Ministry of Hemp podcast signing off.

The post Kentucky Hemp Is The Heart Of American Hemp: Talking With Jim Higdon appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode, our host Matt talks with Doug, an NPR correspondent and activist author, about his upcoming book, “American Hemp Farmer: Adventures & Misadventures in the Cannabis Trade.” Doug tells us about growing hemp in New Mexico and also explains why a good sense of humor is important when trying to save the world.

We got our hands on a digital pre-release copy of “American Hemp Farmer” and just fell in love with it. The book is due out April 23 but can be pre-ordered today. We hope you do!

If you’d like to learn more about regenerative agriculture, check out our interview with John Roulac from a previous podcast episode.

Send us your feedback

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com

Subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast

If you like what you hear be sure to subscribe to the Ministry of Hemp podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbay, Stitcher, Pocketcasts, Google Play or your favorite podcast app.

Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider

If you believe hemp can change the world then help us spread the word! Become a Ministry of Hemp Insider when you donate any amount on our Patreon. You’ll be the first to hear about everything going on with our special newsletter plus, exclusive Patron content including blogs, Podcast extras and more.

Visit the Ministry of Hemp on Patreon for more information.

Growing Hemp with Doug Fine: Complete episode transcript

Matt Baum:
I’m Matt Baum and this is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, brought to you by ministryofhemp.com. America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

Matt Baum:
It’s the Ministry of Hemp podcast. My name is Matt and I’m your host. Today on the show I’m going to be talking to Doug Fine. He’s an author of the book, American Hemp Farmer, and I can’t wait for you guys to read this. But before any of that, I want to send a huge thanks to everybody that has checked out our Patreon page. You can find it at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. Of course, there’ll be a link to that in our show notes. And huge thank you to everybody that has decided to help support us in spreading hemp education and taking a stand for legal hemp in the United States. Seriously, thank you so much. It is so cool to have this kind of support.

Matt Baum:
Be sure to get over there and check out all the extras we have. We’ve got a newsletter that’ll keep you in touch with everything we’re doing in the Ministry of Hemp. I do podcast extras over there. We just threw up an article on Ministry of Hemp’s Time at South by Southwest. All kinds of cool stuff with several different levels. Please check it out and if you already have, again, thank you so much.

Matt Baum:
Doug Fine is a self-described solar powered goat herder, comedic investigative journalist, bestselling author, and pioneer voice in regenerative farming including cannabis and hemp. He has cultivated hemp for food and seed building in four U.S. states and teaches a Sterling College hemp class in Vermont. In addition, he’s an award winning culture and climate correspondent from five continents: NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others. His books include American Hemp Farmer, Hemp Bound, Too High to Fail, Farewell, My Subaru, which was a Boston Globe bestseller, Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man and First Legal Harvest, a monograph that was printed on hemp paper.

Matt Baum:
Willie Nelson calls Doug’s work, “A blueprint for the America of the future.” The Washington Post says, “Fine is a storyteller in the mold of Douglas Adams.”

Matt Baum:
When I interviewed Doug for this show, I had read about half of his new book, American Hemp Farmer. And since I finished it. It is wonderful. Like I said, I can’t wait for you guys to read it.

Meet Doug Fine

Matt Baum:
Here’s my conversation with author, solar powered goat herder, and comedic investigative journalist, Doug Fine.

Matt Baum:
So Doug, you’ve got a new book coming out and this is your second book on hemp.

Doug Fine:
Yes. Well, it depends on how you count it. I’ll tell you this. It was, first, I wrote a book on psychoactive cannabis, regenerative psychoactive cannabis called Too High to Fail. And then wrote Hemp Bound. And then in between Hemp Bound and this new one, American Hemp Farmer, I put out a hemp printed monograph called First Legal Harvest, collaborated with the good folks at Colorado Hemp Company on that one. So you could argue this is my fourth.

Matt Baum:
Okay, fair enough. No, I’ll count it. That’s awesome by the way. So tell me how this got started, this journey. You’ve been a reporter for a long time and you’ve been an author sort of writing these long form reports on what you’re doing. How did you get started in this?

Doug Fine:
I’m an extreme left brain person. So I’m a real sort of verbal communicator. That’s where my skill set is. And it’s also, I do enjoy it, especially, when there’s humor involved in any kind of presentation. Whether it’s written or performance or anything, I love doing it. I feel very lucky that that’s who I am and what I’ve always been. The journey, though, to be covering cannabis hemp plant, I could talk to you about the origins and there are some cool origins to it. But what’s been sticking, Matt, with my mind lately is where we are now. And what I’ve learned about my own relationship with plants and all of our relationships with plants, there are people, of course, farmers, people who were born into farming, who understand their relationship with plants and how it’s as complicated and as interesting, at least, as relationships with animals and all that kind of thing.

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Doug Fine:
But totemically, I’ve always been more of an animal guy, really good with animals. It’s through journalism that I’ve learned about the cannabis plant and expanded my sort of, I guess, love and appreciation for plant’s intelligence.

Matt Baum:
Okay. So you were never a farmer. You never came from a farm background, right?

Doug Fine:
I came from the opposite. I came from… The way I kind of sum it up is the New York suburbs when Madonna was like a virgin.

Matt Baum:
Okay. That’s good. That’s really good. And you decided, “Oh, I’ve had all these outdoor adventures. I fell in love with goat herding. Why not grow hemp.” And just threw yourself into it.

Doug Fine:
Yeah. I lived in Alaska for a number of years and I subsistence fish there. I really learned about being a member of the animal kingdom in an ecosystem and loved it and wrote a book called Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man. And then wanting to see about being self-sufficient, energy wise, I moved to New Mexico where you can kind of point the solar panel down towards the ground, still get enough power for your day. And lived and continue to live that lifestyle. Wrote a book about that called Farewell My Subaru. And then was interested in the end of cannabis prohibition and the revival of hemp. But what was the catalyst to make it my next sort of mission was my next door neighbor in New Mexico. When I say that, I mean, very far away out at shouting distance when we were both in our home.

Doug Fine:
He’s a retired guy from Kodak. Minding his own business and self-medicating with cannabis for PTSD for military service. Not only gets raided but for a few plants and to which for amount that today is totally legal.

Matt Baum:
Right. Thank God they took him out though. We can’t have anything like that going on. How dangerous. I mean, a guy with a few plants taking care of himself. Good Lord.

Doug Fine:
Oh man. And putting all of us in danger actually. It was crazy. I don’t know if you’ve been around full-bore raids, but it was like living in apocalypse now. There was planes, helicopters, uniforms of every description. I had to wade through some machine guns to get past his ranch to my ranch and it was not okay.

Matt Baum:
If you’re going to put a raid on you may as well put on a show too, right? I mean, come on. Good Lord. So from there-

Doug Fine:
That’s what made me decide I was going to write about the end of the drug war. So I’ve been kind of off and on on that topic for the last 10 or so years. That’s what I’m doing. I’m putting my comedic investigated energy into cannabis. This time where I’m at, it’s about hemp industry has started. It’s for real.

Growing hemp in America

Doug Fine:
I’ve been part of it because I just don’t… I’m sick of pundits who talk about stuff and don’t actually do it themselves. So I’m going to try myself. I don’t consider myself an expert, but I’m five years into my own hemp planting, two or three years to my own product. And this new book is really about suggesting what mode…No, I’m sorry, just my own modes, but all the people I’ve met for being a successful entrepreneur as a farmer entrepreneur. In other words, regeneratively producing hemp in such a way that you’re doing good for your community, your family, your bottom line, but also for humanity’s climate change mitigation efforts.

Matt Baum:
Okay. One of the things that I loved from whatever… And I haven’t read the whole book, I read about half of it and I love the way you write. I love the humor you inject in it because otherwise this could be really dry and just come off as, “Oh great. Another hippie has decided he’s going to tell me a good way to do this stuff.” But I love that you made the choice not only am I going to discuss, basically, a 20 acre farm, I’m going to try to make a living on it too. What was that decision like? How did you… I mean, I would guess you’re a single, but you write about your wife and kids and stuff. How do you turn to the family and say, “Okay, not only am I going to write this book, I am going to write a book about how we try to live on this.” How did that decision play out in the family?

Doug Fine:
Definitely having a supportive family is vital and central and entire. If you’re going to be any kind of farmer or just any kind of entrepreneur, let alone both, everybody has to be on board. So for that, I’m extremely thankful. Very, very thankful.

Doug Fine:
In truth though, while I am on what I like to think of as a five year game plan for the product that I put out, I am lucky compared to many of the other people who are covered in the book in that my income is not dependent upon immediately selling large numbers of that product.

Matt Baum:
Right. It’s not that you didn’t start from zero and go, “Okay. Yeah, this is it. I’m not taking any money from book sales or anything.” No. I mean, I get that, which is good. I mean, you’ve got to live. I understand that.

Doug Fine:
But I am trying to be successful. I’ve got some great new partners for the product that I do… So I am trying to walk the walk. I appreciate the question, but in truth when we’re… So we’re dealing with some real code red issues in hemp. But I bet you’ve talked about here on Ministry of Hemp before in terms of the necessity of getting the THC level, at least, up to one to start. And changes that have to happen in the recent to the late last year’s draft regulations, USDA regulations.

Doug Fine:
So we have some code red stuff going on. For people who are depending on who have put all their nest egg and their livelihood and an investment into their hemp enterprise, these decisions getting fixed for farmer… This is not a joke for them. It’s not a joke for me either, but it’s just not as mission critical. I guess I can take a more relaxed approach to it than some people can.

Matt Baum:
But it is terrifying. It’s absolutely terrifying. If you’re a farmer, you decide you’re going to grow this stuff and you’re going to do the research like you did. You had partners in Oregon, right, that you were working with to get your hemp plants?

Doug Fine:
Oregon and Vermont, both.

Growing hemp and making mistakess

Matt Baum:
Okay. What was that like when you decided, “All right, I know I need to go find a plant that is below 0.03% THC.” So you don’t get rated like your old neighbor. Or just told to destroy your field. I mean, are you initially calling your shot, taking your best guess at who to work with and planting in and just hoping for the best? Was there terror there?

Doug Fine:
I don’t think there was terror, but that is a really good question. Because, I think, and the book points this out, really, I think, the hardest part for me, what I’ve found and now three, four, five years at this is choosing the right partners. Many of us, probably most of us, learn the hard way. There’s a section in the book what says, “Plan for plan B.” You are not going to make all your right decisions right at the beginning.

Doug Fine:
So the partners, the folks that I work with now, my colleagues in Oregon and my colleagues in Vermont, are both people that are in it for the long-term like I am that have similar dispositions. Because we all kind of… If you ask someone like, “Okay, if you were going to pair up entrepreneurially with someone, what would you want in a farmer type enterprise?” You say, “Well, similar values on organics, farming skills, honesty.” Those are all important skills but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be a good business match. So I would urge people to really, really look carefully before they leap in with someone on the entrepreneurial side.

Matt Baum:
Did they think you were insane when you came to them and you were like, “Look, I’m not a farmer. I’m a journalist. I have this idea for a book and I want to do this.” Did they think you were crazy or were they like, “Great, let’s do it.”

Doug Fine:
Well, the partners that I have now are more experienced than I. My partner in Oregon, has written about a lot in the book, Edgar Winters, he started cultivating up in 1957. He might be the longest cultivating American hemp farmer at this point. He’s got a really fantastic backstory and an organic mindset. He’s been an absolutely a great mentor. He didn’t think I was crazy at all.

Doug Fine:
One of the sentiments that we all share, all the people that I really work with, I mean, there’s so many people that I have mutually support. We support one another and want each other to succeed. But in terms of people that I’m really partnered with, we share something, which is all along, we’ve not been interested in just following the CBD gold rush that we love cannabinoids. Who wouldn’t love cannabinoids? They are great.

Doug Fine:
It’s really about food and next generation industrial components. Hemp is a superfood from the seed as we’ve known. This stuff is less of an immediate gold rush and more of a long-term play and that’s something that we all had in common going in.

From raising goats to growing hemp

Matt Baum:
Let me ask you. When we first started talking, I don’t think I haven’t recorded it, you mentioned about how you started with animals and the connection that you felt to animals. And from there you felt this connection to this plant. Tell me about that a little bit. How did that develop? How did it go from your goats to hemp?

Doug Fine:
I think we all have sort of totemic energy, synchronicities with that sound too woo.

Matt Baum:
No, I love it. I love it. I am smiling. When you started there I was like, “Here we go.”

Doug Fine:
And to admit it, we could say this, I could say, “I think I’m decent at goat ranching.” I think I’ve taken to it that the goats like me. They know I love them. They know I’m not rushing. I’m not resenting my whatever it is, 20 minutes, twice a day spent milking and the other care you have to give. I enjoy it. I enjoy it the way you talked about it earlier before we went on the air for about your hobbies.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Doug Fine:
But with plants, it wasn’t that I didn’t respect plants. It’s just that my connections tended to be more with animals and it’s through now many years of journalism about the hemp plant and then finally leaping in to planting it that I’ve come to recognize and feel comfortable speaking about plant intelligence. It continues. I was just talking to my Vermont partners the other day. The reality of the situation right now is that some of our seed in Vermont, which is organically certified, something I’m really proud of because when you have a plant that five years ago was some kind of ridiculous felony. And now you’ve got federally certified unifiers coming and it’s a good feeling saying USDA organic on your crop.

Doug Fine:
Well, my colleagues, great colleagues, in Vermont that I work with also written about in the book, some of our harvest from last year we think we want to now use for experimenting with food product as opposed to selling it for its genetics because it’s good genetics. And or using it immediately in our other products. But just use a portion of it to see about it as a straight up food product. Just do our own research on that. And that is 100% the plant telling us what it wants to do. Just the logistics of where our seeds are, where our seed cleaners are, what our winters were shaping up before next year, the plant was done just like your goats or your fish will tell you what they want. The plant was telling us what we want, and I’ve started to really accept plant intelligence.

Doug Fine:
Some people out there who can say, “Oh, that’s a heartwarming story.” Or “Oh, I’m going have my eyes open for plants to talk.” But most people who are listening to this who are already hemp farmers are going, “Duh.” Because they probably already had recognized that their totemic connection was to various plants. For me, it’s new and it’s beautiful to learn something when you’re several decades in the life, you know?

Matt Baum:
Sure, sure.

Support the Ministry of Hemp on Patreon

Matt Baum:
We’ll be right back to my interview with Doug. But first, a short word from Ministry of Hemp, Editor-in-Chief, Kit O’Connell about our Patreon page. I know. I can’t stop talking about it.

Kit O’Connell:
Hi, this is Kit O’Connell. I’m the editor-in-chief at Ministry of Hemp. I hope you’re enjoying the Ministry of Hemp podcast and the articles we’ve been publishing recently. But today I want to talk to you about the newest way that you can support what we do.

Kit O’Connell:
So we’re launching a Patreon at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. And this Patreon will help our readers and fans contribute to what we do. With your help, we’ll be able to make our podcast and produce even more great articles about science and information about hemp and CBD.

Kit O’Connell:
We’ll publish more recipes and more guides. We’ll be able to work with more journalists, chefs, and authors of all kinds. Not only that, but by joining our Patreon, you’ll become a hemp insider. We’re launching a special newsletter just for our patrons. Each month we’ll work with experts and advocates and other industry professionals to give you an inside look at hemp and offer you ways to help the return of our favorite plant nationwide.

Kit O’Connell:
To get access to this new newsletter, you can donate any amount on our Patreon, even as low as $3 a month. For a few dollars more, we’ll send you some Ministry of Hemp stickers and even samples of our favorite CBD products. If you joined before February 15th at $25 or more, we’ll give you a Ministry of Hemp t-shirt as well.

Kit O’Connell:
So if you love hemp and the work that we’re doing at the Ministry of Hemp, I hope you’ll support us. You can join at patreon.com/ministryofhemp. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/ministry ofhemp, which is all one word. Thanks.

Doug Fine on hemp seed oil and hemp foods

Matt Baum:
What kind of food products are you guys thinking about doing with yours?

Doug Fine:
So the product that I already doing… Please don’t folks, don’t take this as a commercial. Shop locally, 12 batch and… The product that I already do is called Hemp and Hemp. It already has hemp seed oil. It’s department stable product with hemp flower and hemp seed oil. That’s it. That’s the only ingredient. That’s why it’s called, Hemp and Hemp. It’s potentially be a superfood, but because I’m really walking very carefully to becoming officially a food product with all FDA now leaping in hemp. Thus far, I’ve always marketed it as a massage oil and a bath oil because it’s got an entourage effect of cannabinoids that I think almost has a chemical relationship with the lipids from its own plant. The seed from its own flower.

Doug Fine:
It relaxes me. I’ve been told that this is the one you have to be careful about claims. It’s about the entourage effect of the cannabinoids, right? I should say very low levels, all of them, not what today people we consider maximum milligram dose of any of the cannabinoids. And yet I like it. It works. I enjoy the product. So that product is already dialed into be officially a food product. That’s going to be a superfood that’s also a cannabinoid.

Doug Fine:
But what we’re talking about doing now is taste profilings on pressing the seed for just straight up seed oil. Just straight up as a nutritive seed. Things like hemp hearts. We were even talking about doing chocolate. Cacao covered whole seeds and then the one of the element that’s really exciting on the horizon is that hemp protein powder. That’s the byproduct when you press the seed oil. It’s a great human food, but it’s going to be a great animal feed. And there’s a lot of people, as I’m sure you know, you’ve probably had them on your Ministry of Hemp. There are a lot of people working to make sure that animal feed is… That hemp is approved as an animal feed. We’re getting that.

Matt Baum:
I know they’re definitely pushing for it right now and a lot of people want that. Had your goats eat hemp? Or you feed them hemp?

Doug Fine:
They love it. They love it. Yes, absolutely.

A sustainable future for hemp in all forms

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. That’s so cool. So tell me when you were getting started. I liked how, in the book, you wrote about how Michael Pollan, who’s an author that I adore, talked about how this plant has been around for millennia. We’ve been growing this and it has been giving us things. Whether it’s, like you said, cannabinoids or sandals or the rope or whatever. What was it that drew you to that idea of it? Because you went… A lot of people get to the CBD bubble, like you said, and go for the gold there and just stop. But you’re talking about growing hemp for food for industrial. That’s really the hard part. What’s the attraction there? Is it just because that’s what the plant is telling you that it wants?

Doug Fine:
Matt, I feel righteous when I feel like my career is part of an effort to save humanity and give a good life to my kids. So that’s a big part of it is feeling good about going to work each day. When we have an industrial pipeline where the stuff, our stuff, all of our stuff are rocket door panels. Our car door panels, is made from biomaterials, not just hemp fiber, but all kinds of renewable biomass or regenerative biomass. And we’re not burning as much dinosaur juice. That’s a good sign.

Doug Fine:
And then superfood. I mean, it really, it truly is a superfood and has long been recognized as… Because humans have bred it for it to be a superfood with great proteins, and amino acids, and anti-inflammatory properties.

Doug Fine:
I remember when I was researching my earlier book about Hemp Bound, that I was ostensibly on an interview about hempcrete. One of the graduate students at the Manitoba College where I was looking at a hempcrete project, said that where he grew up in Iran, that they didn’t have Doritos and pretzels for soccer practice snacks that everybody just went to this vendor on the street who roasted hemp seeds and the word [shadi naan 00:00:22:41] in Persian, hemp seed.

Matt Baum:
That is so cool. I didn’t even know that was going on. That’s like…

Doug Fine:
Yeah, I mean it’s prohibition that’s been the aberration. It’s amazing how much can be remembered and forgotten in 77 years.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely. One of the things that I think is amazing about hemp as a crop in the United States right now is the fact that prohibition was bad and it set us way back. But it also allowed us to have a very true version of this plant that hasn’t been modified a whole lot. We’re returning to it almost. Can I ask you, what was your first harvest like? I mean, was it just an instant success? I mean, did you plant this and it just, you follow the instructions and it worked?

Doug Fine:
The first harvest was really beautiful. But you hit on something there really important in that question about that there can be upsides to this three generation enforced break with this plant. From being one of humanity’s favorite plants to be in one of its most vilified plants and back is a really interesting thing. Because you could draw a lot of conclusions about exactly what hemp cannabis prohibition parallel. But things like all the horrors of the 20th century that we could list, we weren’t feeding the endocannabinoid system. But also that we live in a society where, although, there is now a Renaissance of healthy living, and regenerative living, and regenerative farming, and eating and everything, the majority of the people on the earth are not eating healthy diets. So that hemp can come back and provide this healthy, tasty solution is a great thing.

Doug Fine:
But also on the business end is what I find really interesting is that as someone who is developing genetics with hemp, right? Needless to say, I’d come across folks who are interested in working on the genetic model of what you might call the 20th century way of distributing seeds, which is, to put it bluntly, farmers have to buy it from you every year if you’re a seed provider. And you don’t own your food. You don’t own your genetics.

Matt Baum:
You’re growing somebody else’s seeds basically.

Doug Fine:
Yeah. And that’s not how I want to farm. So I and others are looking at a different model. It seems so weird to folks who are like… They think that what’s been going on for the last 75 years in the way farmers have been treated is normal. And they’re trying to recreate it now. I was thinking when Charles Ingalls and the Ingalls family was going out a little house on the Prairie and with their wheat seed and starting their wheat crop, they were not serves to company that they brought their wheat from. And for-

Matt Baum:
No, they were just farmers, basically.

Doug Fine:
Yeah. So the business model that we’re able to recreate and when someone says, “Hey, that’s never how agriculture has been done. It’s tough.” You banned our plant for so many years, we’re doing it our way now. And if you want to try and rip off farmers or… Let me be fair. Let me be fair. There was an argument to be made, a legitimate argument to be made that as long as supply is consistent, the people that are selling, let’s say, seeds that a farmer might want to grow for a food product on large acreage, they probably are offering it at much, much lower prices than someone like me and others who would be offering right of replication and the ability of own genetics.

Matt Baum:
I mean, Nebraska corn is a perfect example.

Doug Fine:
Yeah. You’re right.

Matt Baum:
It’s sad. But that’s why there’s so much of it too.

Doug Fine:
Exactly.

Matt Baum:
So what-

Doug Fine:
Fair enough, right? Different business model, but just to answer your question about the first harvest, I got to tell you. My son was with me on the first harvest that I was really fully part of. I’d been covering hemp for years and cannabis and hemp both for years. But the first crop that was really, I was part of. My son spent his sixth birthday harvesting and loved it. It’s a great memory for everyone and I have a great picture of a bundle of his hemp covering his whole body. It did go well. We were partnered with a great, terrific farmer that first year and I learned a lot from him. I’m very grateful to the first partners that I had when I first started out. So I would say that it was a combination of good fortune, good weather, good genetics, good partners.

Doug Fine:
But yeah, the first crop was… It was a high benchmark that I still judge every year’s crop bite. How does it look compared to 2016 in Vermont.

Making money from growing hemp

Matt Baum:
Sure. So let’s say you’re not an author, you don’t have any other money coming in. Can you live on this? Could this be the one thing that you do?

Doug Fine:
No, not yet. I’m excited about a new partnership that I have. So I have these great friends that I’ve known for seven years. These great women, Kim and Dana, who run this health center in Tucson, that it’s just trusted in the community of helping people, especially, with cannabis. And they’re not a dispensary, but they do have put sales of various things including hemp products. So there are people that I trust. There are people who trust me and there are people who have an existing body of customers in a major city who trust them. And they are talking numbers that if we decided to switch… We’re still deciding how much acreage to plan for this year, 2020. If we really go for it, let’s say, 2020 even just isn’t yet another kind of… I don’t want to say a practice year, but a growth year and it’s 2021 before there would be a significant amount of income for my family.

Doug Fine:
Again, you’re asking such good questions. I’m glad you asked that because it’s easy to advise people to have a five year plan and say, “Oh, you better be ready.” Best laid plans. You’re not going to make money for the first couple of years. Especially, if you’re doing it right. Especially if you have soil to clean up.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Doug Fine:
But if you’re a farmer that’s struggling and has a mortgage, you need to make it work. So it’s a tough decision. But you got to have that long-term game plan.

Matt Baum:
It’s a matter of what do you have to lose, basically, in that case.

Doug Fine:
Yeah. Right.

Matt Baum:
This wasn’t a gotcha question. Like, “Oh well, he’s an author. Of course, he can stop and do this. He’s got that fat NPR money. I’m sure.”

What’s next for Doug Fine?

Matt Baum:
So what’s the next book about?

Doug Fine:
Good question. Well, so American Hemp Farmers, what we’ve been talking about now, comes out year 2020. The world’s kind of open on the next one. I have a collection of comedic essays that are related to hemp that I’ve been working on. I’m also developing a TV show of the same name, American Hemp Farmer that is related to that.

Matt Baum:
Oh, awesome.

Doug Fine:
It’s not picked up yet, but I’m optimistic about it. [crosstalk 00:29:23]

Matt Baum:
That’s very cool.

Doug Fine:
Eyes and ears open.

Matt Baum:
Okay. If you’re going forward, do you continue? Is hemp a part of your life now? Are you a hemp farmer now? This is the life?

Doug Fine:
I’m about to apply for my New Mexico permit. So my commercial work is not at home in New Mexico. New Mexico permits are pretty expensive. They start hover around 700, 800 bucks. So it’s just for personal use. We’re using our fiber from last year’s harvest to do a hempcrete patch on our porch. There’s like a little door jamb home.

Matt Baum:
You make your own hempcrete?

Doug Fine:
Yeah. Isn’t that cool?

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Doug Fine:
But I mean, very micro amounts, man. Not a huge amount.

Matt Baum:
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Doug Fine:
But what I’m getting at is, yes, I’m going from my own family’s food and fiber needs. One of these years we’ll grow enough at home. Because my sweetheart makes a lot of them. Our family’s clothes in general and including hemp clothes, but not yet from hemp that we’ve grown. So that would be cool.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. I mean, the next step, that’s one of the things I’m really excited for is hemp material and hemp processing of fabrics and whatnot. It seems like we are so far behind right now. There’s no reason. There’s no reason whatsoever.

Matt Baum:
Doug, I love the book. I don’t want to keep you any longer. You’ve got kids and goats and whatnot. Is there anything that you want to touch on that I didn’t touch on that we need to mention? I’m going to edit this too, so this part will go out. We’re just going to sound super slick. Don’t worry about that. But is there anything-

Doug Fine:
You did a fantastic job of covering the basics. I guess, I would say to leave folks with, first off, thank you so much for your support of American Hemp Farmer. And thanks for reading it because-

Matt Baum:
Oh, love it.

Doug Fine:
Thank you. The goal is to help farmers as you know, Matt, for reading it. That’s really why I wrote the book. And folks who want to follow me at Organic Cowboy on Twitter and Instagram. And my website’s dougfine.com where folks can sign up for my periodic dispatches from the Funky Butte Ranch. Everything about regenerative living and hemp and beyond. Thanks for keeping an eye out for future projects.

Support from the hemp community

Matt Baum:
Hey, last question, and I just thought of it. Did you feel any pushback from other people that are farmers and whatnot that thought this guy’s faking it? This guy’s getting in it just because as a fashion statement or something. Was there anybody that pushed back against you?

Doug Fine:
I felt almost complete support since getting into hemp. I think one of the reasons was, I mean, the first year that I planted, myself was 2016. And there were not, I forgot, like 700 something permanent farmers that year.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, maybe.

Doug Fine:
Being back that early, again, I do not consider… I consider myself learning every single time I put a seed in the ground and I do not consider myself an expert. But at least I’ve been added enough to wear a badge of legitimate… Somewhat of a badge of legitimacy. And that’s something I’m going to always try to do is to walk the walk. Because nobody’s perfect and it’s not just about growing hemp organically, regeneratively and all that. My product, I spend 50 cents per label on compostable label with non-toxic stickum. It’s really expensive to be righteous.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, it’s hard. It’s very hard.

Doug Fine:
You have to be a role model here because you don’t want people calling you out and going, “Why is there plastic in your packaging.” And stuff like that. We’re trying to save humanity here.

Matt Baum:
You’ve got to be really careful every step of the way. And it’s not just gatekeeping and whatnot. I mean, if we’re going to do this, it’s important to do it the right way. But yeah, it’s not easy.

Matt Baum:
Doug, you’re doing it the right way. I love the book. I’m excited for other people to read it. I hope you get this TV show because you’re a riot and this would be fantastic. We need more of this. We need more people that not only can tell the story and spread the word, but they can do it with a little bit of humor and make it relatable and that’s what I really liked about your book. That is not to say that all the other scientists and farmers I’ve interviewed were super boring. You were just great. Okay? That’s all I’m saying.

Doug Fine:
Well, bless you for that and thank you to you and the Ministry of Hemp. It’s a great resource and I’m sure you got a ton of followers, but I hope everybody’s paying attention and I’m watching.

Matt Baum:
Hey, we’ll keep spreading the word if you do man. Thank you so much for what you’ve done.

Doug Fine:
You’re welcome. Thank you brother.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
You can follow the further adventures of Doug over at dougfine.com. You can find him anywhere on social media with his handle at Organic Cowboy. I’ll have information in the show notes about how to preorder American Hemp Farmer. It would be really cool to help Doug get on the bestseller list, so if you get a chance, get over there and preorder American Hemp Farmer. I know I’ve gushed about it the whole episode, but I loved this book.

Matt Baum:
And that about brings us to the end of another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. My name is Matt. I have been your host and I want to thank everybody that is supporting us with your downloads, our Patreon or just asking questions. You can call me at 402-819-6417 and ask your hemp related question. We will play it later on one of our Hemp Q and A shows where Kit, the editor-in-chief of ministryofhemp.com and myself, play your questions on the air and answer them. So please shoot us your questions. You’ll be able to find that phone number in the show notes along with information about how to preorder Doug Fine’s book and all kinds of other cool stuff including the full written transcript for this episode. Because at Ministry of Hemp, we believe a more accessible world is a better world for everybody.

Matt Baum:
Be sure to get over to ministryofhemp.com and check out all the latest stuff that we’re throwing up there, article wise, and let us know what you think about everything we’re doing at all of our social media. You can find us under the handle at Ministry of Hemp or /ministryofhemp.

Matt Baum:
Until next time, this is Matt reminding you to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will ya? This is the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Signing off.

The post Growing Hemp With Doug Fine, Solar-Powered Goat Herder & American Farmer appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt talks with Franny Tacy. Franny is the founder of Franny’s Farm where she grows hemp for products sold in her multiple Franny’s Farmacy locations and online. This is the second part of our ongoing Women in Hemp series of interviews.

First, Matt discusses the future of multi-use hemp varietals and what they could mean for farmers and the environment. Thanks to Let’s Talk Hemp for the scoop.

Sponsored by Hatshe

This episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast is brought to you by Hatshe.com. Be sure to check out their full line of topical CBD products to help active people with recovery and doing more of what they love.

For a limited time, Ministry of Hemp listeners can enter the code hemp15 at checkout to receive 15% off your Hatshe purchase.

Send us your feedback

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com

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Talking with Franny Tacy: Complete episode transcript

Matt Baum: The Ministry of Hemp Podcast is brought to you by Hatshe. With a full line of CBD topicals that are designed to help you keep doing the things that you love to do, this female athlete owned company not only promises very high quality CBD and all their products, but they also work with local nonprofits to constantly evaluate their manufacturing waste stream, their packaging, shipping methods, and their ingredient sources. Go to H-A-T-S-H-E.com, that’s hatshe.com, and use the code hemp15 for 15% off for all of our Ministry of Hemp listeners in their online shop. Again, that’s hatshe.com, H-A-T-S-H-E.com, and use the code hemp15.

I’m Matt Baum, and this is the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, brought to you by Ministryofhemp.com, America’s leading advocate for hemp and hemp education.

The promise of multi-use hemp

Matt Baum: I talk a lot about farms on the show and we’re going to talk to another farmer today, but one of the reasons is because that’s where hemp comes from, and it’s important that we have a good starting place. Of course, at Ministry of Hemp we encourage everyone to use the best of organic farming practices mixed with modern farming practices when they make sense and they make a better plant, and they’re better for the soil, of course. One of the things I’ve been asking a lot of farmers and people producing hemp products is the idea of a multifaceted hemp plant. One that’s not just used for CBD, but one plant that can be used several different ways. For the flower, for the hurd and fiber, and for the grains even.

I get a newsletter in my email from a site called LetsTalkHemp.com. It’s a great site. You should check them out. In their latest newsletter there was a link to an article by Steven Hoffman where he is talking about predictions for hemp and the hemp industry in 2020, and one of them touches on this very subject, and that is using the whole plant. According to this article, in the coming decade, we’ll see a focus move beyond CBD to the whole hemp plant.

This is a quote from Marysia Morawska, a horticulture educator at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and she says, “I think a lot of farmers are going to realize the cannabis plant is not a CBD plant. What we’re going to see is a movement toward a trifecta or even a quad usage plant, so something that’s utilized for the hurd, for the fiber, for the flower, and for the grain. And once we realize what those genetics are, we’ll end up realizing that each region specifically has growing styles that will be differentiated by the genetics of that region, and we’ll move into a place where processing will include not just CBD.”

Basically what she’s talking about is developing a hemp plant that does all of the above. It’s a plant that be used for CBD, can be used to make hempcrete, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show, it can be used for hemp seeds for eating and hemp oil for cooking. A multifaceted hemp plant that farmers can sell not just to one supplier, but to four suppliers. It’s an amazing idea.

Before we get all cringy about the whole idea of genetic modification, this is probably the future of hemp. Already legal farmers all over the United States are choosing hybrids that work best in their region to grow the type of hemp plant they want. Whether it’s one that is high in CBD and low in THC, or high in fiber for textiles or hempcrete. Currently the vast amount of hemp grown legally in this country is grown for CBD, and like we’ve also discussed, there is a CBD bubble that is going to burst. When it does, farmers are going to need to look for a hemp plant that they can do more than just produce CBD flower with. That’s where this idea comes in, and I think it’s one of the most exciting things about hemp and its future on American farms.

CBD is great, don’t get me wrong. I use it every day. But there is so much more that hemp can do, from textiles to plastics to woods and even concrete. Now just imagine if you could develop one hemp hybrid that can supply all of that in one plant. I don’t know that there’s another crop out there that would be that versatile. Not just for farmers at the marketplace, but also for our environment.

There’s agriculture scientists that are hard at work right now developing this multi-use hemp plant, and it is coming and soon. Maybe not this year, but hopefully. And when it does show up, it will be the farmers that have to grow it. So in the meantime, we’re going to keep talking to them on this show. In fact, we’re going to talk to one of the busiest farmers I have ever met in my life today.

Meet Franny Tacy

Matt Baum: We’ve been running a series in the show about women in the hemp industry, and I’m talking to a pretty amazing one today. Her name is Franny Tacy, and she represents not only Franny’s Farm, but Franny’s Farmacy. She has been a firefighter, a pharmacy rep, a teacher, a world traveler, a hemp farmer, and a friend to some of the cutest goats you will ever see.

I spoke with Franny from her farm in Leicester, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. And if you haven’t been to Asheville, it’s absolutely gorgeous, and the countryside is unreal. If you’re a child of the ’90s you might remember the TV show Dawson’s Creek, and it just happened to be filmed in and around Asheville if you’d like to see what I’m talking about.

So I was looking at your website a little bit ago and you call yourself the Hippie in High Heels. Lay that out for me real quick before we go into your origin story.

Franny Tacy: Okay. I worked in pharmaceuticals for 12 years, and that’s what the doctors called me. That was my nickname throughout the pharmaceutical industry. I was a specialty rep in respiratory sales.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I did training and marketing. That’s where a lot of my business experience and all the stuff, we have our own manufacturing for our product line, where a lot of my experience came from.

Matt Baum: Okay. Where did the farm come from? That sounds like from a very young age you were a farm kid.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, my dad was a farmer. My parents divorced when I was really young. So I’ve got my dad who was a cattle farmer, grew up riding horses, and my mom was super big time corporate business woman. She worked in the financial world.

Matt Baum: And you ended up taking a little bit of both of their magic and turning it into what you do now, Franny’s Farmacy, basically.

Franny Tacy: Yes. I’m the middle child. Three girls.

Matt Baum: All right, that explains it.

Franny Tacy: So I’m the typical middle child. Nobody knew who I was or where I was, but I was always doing something mischievous.

Matt Baum: Gotcha, gotcha.

Franny Tacy: Or adventurous. Because I was very curious.

From firefighting to North Carolina hemp farming

Matt Baum: So tell me your origin story. You grew up on the farm, you went into pharmaceuticals, you went back to the farm, and now you were involved in CBD. Tell me your origin story. How does this happen?

Franny Tacy: Well, by the time you get to 50, most people have done a lot. But I hear I’ve had a few lifetimes. So yeah, I mean, I grew up. I always wanted a farm from the time I was little because I grew up on a farm and loved that. So in college, I have a family full of engineers and Episcopal ministers, and I went to ag school, which was unheard of.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Then transferred into forestry, and I have a biology degree. I worked in forestry, I lived in the woods, I’ve been in every national park, camped for months. All this stuff. I am just a nature mama. That was my family’s nickname for me.

Matt Baum: Were you like a forest ranger when you say forestry?

Franny Tacy: Yeah!

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: I was the first female firefighter in Idaho.

Matt Baum: Oh wow.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, in 1990.

Matt Baum: Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. That was just not that long ago. I know. Yeah.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Isn’t that crazy. So that’s when I lived out West. Then when you have a $40,000 forestry degree, at some point you’re like, oh, I need to do something. So I went back and got a master’s in education.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Teaching is not the way to do that, but I loved teaching. I did six years in teaching and have a masters. Smithsonian Institute Scholarship for teaching with the brain in mind, was what I was working on in my PhD when I got into pharmaceuticals.

So now we’ve got all the things. Our lifetime is always what brings us to this. So in pharmaceuticals, I was called the Hippie in High Heels, the Anti-Drug Rep. The more and more I was involved in that industry, and being like a really big health freak that I am, it afforded me the opportunity to get out of college debt, buy my farm, and get out of that industry.

Matt Baum: That’s amazing.

Franny Tacy: So my story is pharma, P-H-A-R-M-A, to farm, and now to Farmacy. So we had the farm seven years ago, before hemp was even on the radar.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I was teaching. My hobby has always been farming. So I got city chickens in the ordinance in Asheville, because I wanted to raise my own chickens. That was before their farm. I worked with farmer’s markets, and all my best friends and hobbies was farming.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: That’s what I did.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: I cooked, I had a garden, a city garden, and fed 19 people. Finally, I mean my whole neighborhood, as much as I fed them, they were very thrilled that I finally got my farm. They’re like, out of here!

Got the farm, and I was teaching business of farming classes. And that is when, for the state of North Carolina, we farmers, all collectively, gathered together to figure out how we could grow hemp. North Carolina was the 11th state that came online with an industrial hemp pilot program. It’s the only state that was funded by farmers. Our state would not back us with money.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Franny Tacy: The farmers here in this state gathered together to raise $200,000, put together plans and everything so that we could grow.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Something very similar is happening in Nebraska, where I’m from.

Franny Tacy: You know, people dog politics a lot, but this was a really good situation. It was one of those at like 11:58 it passed at night, and we got the call the next day, and we’ve been working on this for like almost two years.

Matt Baum: Okay.

The first woman hemp farmer in North Carolina

Franny Tacy: So you get to the point where you’re like, whoa, we’ve got to grow now? We’ve got three weeks. It should be in the ground. Where are we going to get it? It’s illegal. So thus begins a whole other story of how I became the first female farmer in to plant hemp. Which I didn’t even know until after eight months after I planted it.

Matt Baum: So before we get into that, how did you get to hemp? You said you loved farming and you were very outdoorsy. How did you find hemp? What was your first experience with that?

Franny Tacy: Well, I’ve always been a supporter of cannabis in and what that plant can do, everything from fiber and food, for a long, long, long, long time, and very into plant medicine and herbs. It just makes sense to me. It just always made sense.

I knew the story. I mean, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” All this stuff came to me decades ago when I was out West. So it’s not like I had this epiphany like a lot of people now that have what I quote hemp fever.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: They’re like, I’m going to grow hemp. I’ve always been a supporter of it, and I’m a huge supporter of agro economy throughout the US. I love history and science, and it just fits. We need to return. I’m so passionate about what this plant can do for our economy and for farmers across the country.

Matt Baum: Okay. How much hemp are you growing on the farm right now?

Franny Tacy: So right now we’re in our third year and a lot is transitioned. I’m super proud, this was a huge goal. And a growing and agro economy is supporting now seven other farms that grow for us with our standards.

Matt Baum: That’s awesome. That is awesome.

Franny Tacy: Which is so amazing. I mean, it’s a lot of responsibility.

Matt Baum: How does that work, though? Did they find you, or did you go find the farms?

Franny Tacy: They found us.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I mean, I had about 800 applicants for people that want to meet the criteria in a work and grow, and there’s a lot of it. Region is one thing. We’ve put these farms under an NC state research program. So at our own farm right now, because we were already an established farm, we were an agrotourism farm. We had gardens and animals and goat yoga. We were on Vice TV and Lodging. I’ve kind of evolved the hemp for us to fit the model of our business plan here. So we grow about a quarter of an acre now.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: We do different varietal trials with Front Range Biosciences and Triangle Hemp. We have a hemp history tour. We do workshops. People can come and learn. I do a ton of consulting. And this is become the hub for us doing our clone research and a bunch of other things to support these other farms.

Matt Baum: This is nowhere near just a farm. You’re a full on like education system, it sounds like.

Franny Tacy: Oh, listen. If you can dream it, you can achieve it, they say. Right? Well, I’m such a dreamer.

Matt Baum: I can’t believe how much time. How do you make this work? You have a farm, you’re teaching classes, you do goat yoga. You know?

Franny Tacy: I mean, we have three people that live and work on the farm.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: I mean, it’s my passion. So I do this 24/7, even in my sleep in a lot of ways.

Matt Baum: I believe it. I believe it.

Franny Tacy: Started with really amazing women, a Women In Hemp nonprofit, which we use different fundraising and awareness and educational events to raise money to fund female researchers at NC State that are doing all the data collection and trials and so forth on our farms.

So there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s so much collaboration.

Matt Baum: Yeah. So not only are you trying to do it right and you’re going for it the right way, but you’re doing it with lady power too. That’s awesome. I like that.

Franny Tacy: Yeah.

Matt Baum: That’s very cool.

Franny Tacy: I mean, that’s the reason I was chosen as a featured farmer for Hemp History Week last year in 2018. Not because I grow the biggest bud or because any one thing I do great, I just am an advocate for this industry and have helped in collaborations with data and research, because I’m kind of a science nerd from pharmaceuticals and all that stuff.

Matt Baum: Right. Right.

Franny Tacy: Just connecting and collaborating. That’s how we do it, with a lot of muscle and brain power.

Growing better hemp & making quality CBD

Matt Baum: So tell me about your hemp that you’re growing. You said you have standards and whatnot. What are you trying to grow and what are you using it for? What are you doing with the hemp?

Franny Tacy: So we’re vertically integrated, because when you’re first, there’s nobody to call for help. You’ve got to figure it all out.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Hey guys, you’ve got to do it yourself.

Franny Tacy: So that’s what we did. We have manufacturing and we have distribution. In our manufacturing, we have 50 different products right now.

Matt Baum: Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, and [inaudible 00:16:02] we have a GMP, good manufacturing practices manufacturing plant, and we’re actually about to launch a public offering so that people can buy stock in that, and we’re going to expand it. We’re running 24/7 right now.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: But how this ties into the hemp growing? That’s a really great opportunity if people are looking into it. There’s a lot of opportunities for farmers and for industry and business folks, and people that love it, but just want to support it from the outside.

So with the different breeders we’re working with, and we believe in working with breeders, don’t get your clones from mojo next door.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: There’s a lot to that.

Matt Baum: You know exactly what you are getting, basically. You can say I want it bred like this and I want it to do this, and you know exactly what you’re getting.

Franny Tacy: Well, we want the consistency for data, and how are these going to do in this area? So with Triangle Hemp, we use BaOx. And just theirs, not anybody’s. Just want to know that their genetics as the baseline for our products.

Matt Baum: Real quick, what is BaOx? I don’t know what that means.

Franny Tacy: BaOx is a hemp variety that’s grown for cannabinoid production.

Matt Baum: Okay. Gotcha.

Franny Tacy: So that’s where the CBD oils come from. We send that through extraction.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Franny Tacy: Then depending on what product it goes into, there’s different ways. Most of our products contain full spectrum, they’re used with a distillate.

Then we also, in all our dispensary’s, we have two corporate stores. But we franchise, so we have other business owners and will have 10 stores, six now, 10 by the end of first quarter.

Matt Baum: Is that all in North Carolina, or is it up and down the coast?

Franny Tacy: It’s North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Connecticut. Soon to be Connecticut and Florida.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. So there’s franchise opportunities as well.

Matt Baum: So and someone comes to you and they say, I like what you’re doing, I want to franchise, and you oversee it?

Franny Tacy: Yeah.

Matt Baum: That’s amazing.

Franny Tacy: And we’ve got it all dialed out. Here’s the plan, here we are, and I’m at every grand opening. So I’m excited about getting to travel, see some new places, and enjoy the towns and the people.

Matt Baum: Definitely. So, okay, you’ve got a thing on your website that says from farm to farmacy, which I love that. That’s fantastic.

Franny Tacy: Yes.

Matt Baum: I have a feeling you have some marketing background too, because you’re really good at this from what I can tell.

Franny Tacy: Well, thank you.

Vertical integration in hemp

Matt Baum: But explain that to me, your process, how you guys go from the farm to Franny’s Farmacy?

Franny Tacy: So like I was saying, vertical integration. So we take all of our hemp that’s grown everywhere, biomass goes into super sacks that goes to our processor. Then Front Range Biosciences is who we’re working with for all our top cut varietal trials, which is smokable flower, the buds.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: Then the trim from that that’s used in pre-rolls and all that type of stuff. We have a lot of genetic trials going on. It all goes through processing, always under the Franny’s watch, and then it goes into our manufacturing.

So we have different forms of it that is used through manufacturing. We have our topical division of manufacturing, then we have our edible division of manufacturing. And that’s where the expansion is going. Then we have our distribution center. We ship to every state in the country. We’re drop shipping. We white label, private label, about to break into some international markets finally.

Matt Baum: Oh wow.

Franny Tacy: That’s been a super long process.

Matt Baum: That’s impressive.

Franny Tacy: Yes. So our distribution center is where everything comes out of when you’re doing online orders. I love going in distribution. There’s boxes of products and foam.

Matt Baum: Oh yeah.

Franny Tacy: All the excitement.

Matt Baum: Just pure insanity.

Franny Tacy: That’s where everything ships out to all our dispensary’s. It is the hub. That’s like a big heartbeat there. There’s a lot going on. Then we have all our stores. So that’s how she goes. Vertical integration.

So our product is going all the way through that. So me and the NC State researchers are taking it from the farm processing.

Matt Baum: Sure. Do your stores only carry Franny’s Farmacy stuff, or do you carry other brands as well?

Franny Tacy: We carry other brands that are not competitive with ours.

Matt Baum: Okay, so they’re doing something different.

Franny Tacy: So we have our Franny’s Farmacy tincture, we wouldn’t carry something else. You know?

Matt Baum: Sure.

Franny Tacy: One of our alchemists also has a vape line, so we use some of their products. We’ve got a lot of the edibles and foods. When you go in our dispensaries, it’s like a hug. It’s a market.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: So you can get food and you can get other things. So there are some products that are not ours.

Supporting international hemp farmers

Matt Baum: Okay. Any textile stuff?

Franny Tacy: But mostly they are our proprietary hemp, blends. Yes.

Matt Baum: Any textile stuff, like clothes or hats or anything?

Franny Tacy: We have hemp hats.

Matt Baum: Oh, cool.

Franny Tacy: And right now that’s really, really a passion of mine. I’ll be in China for a few weeks this summer.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Visiting Patagonia and Astral Farms. So I’m a spokesperson or representative for several hemp lines that are really into the fiber. I just got my Astral shoes that are hemp boots to wear in Cuba. I leave for Cuba in a few days.

Matt Baum: Oh my God, I am so jealous.

Franny Tacy: We’ll be visiting 17 farms, 10 to 17 farms there we have on the agenda with the videographer and really understanding more agro economy, that’s what feeds our world.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: Not industrial agriculture. So between Peru and Cuba and all these places, it’s still building that. We are all connected. We all are human.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: Food is one of the things that binds us.

Matt Baum: Tell me about Peru. You just got back from Peru. What were you doing there?

Franny Tacy: Oh, I spent three weeks in bliss of exploration, adventure, many amazing farmers. So I spent some time with farmers that were in the jungle and in the mountains.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Franny Tacy: Then seeing how community, the food brings everybody together, the market, and all that in the cities, casting a web of interconnecting agro economy, culture, food, and farming.

Matt Baum: Let me ask you. In a place like Peru, obviously this is pretty new in the States and we’re getting it figured out right now, what is hemp farming like in Peru? Is it friendlier? Is it looser? I mean, I assume it’s something that’s been going on for awhile.

Franny Tacy: No.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: Absolutely not.

Matt Baum: No kidding?

Franny Tacy: No. When I went there, there was actually an international hemp symposium that was not actually right in Peru, but outside of that. It is being grown in certain areas, but it is heavily guarded right now. It is not mainstream at all.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: There is a lot of confusion in there about how hemp is different from marijuana.

Matt Baum: No kidding? I don’t know why that is so shocking, but, I mean, yeah.

Franny Tacy: I know, because everybody thinks there’s like Rastas and there’s all this stuff.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: But it is still very, very, very much like we experience here.

Matt Baum: So it’s like hemp in North Dakota, basically.

Franny Tacy: As I’ve been along the educational highway, people just don’t know or understand and they assume it’s marijuana.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: So they’ve got some things to address before it really becomes mainstream.

Matt Baum: Really?

Franny Tacy: A huge interest there is on the food side of it, and it’s very, very interesting.

Matt Baum: So what about Cuba? What is Cuba like? Is it any looser there? Or what do you expect when you go to Cuba?

Franny Tacy: I am trying to be completely present and completely open to ask these questions, and they’re such good questions. Maybe we’ll get to have another discussion after.

Matt Baum: I would love to.

Franny Tacy: But I’m trying not to predict. I’ve got the videographer with me and we’re doing the docuseries while we’re there. So I’m there to learn.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: On our farm, we actually have Sundaze, D-A-Z-Y, on the farm, and the spring that launches. We do Peruvian meals and we have discussion topics about it, and I’ll share some of the information.

Matt Baum: I’ve got to get down there. This sounds incredible. I have got to get down there.

Franny Tacy: Come on. You are welcome here.

Matt Baum: I would love to. Oh my God.

Franny Tacy: Yeah, January 26 is when we’ll do our one on Peru, and then we’ll do one on Cuba.

Matt Baum: So when you go out and you meet these people, you just come back with more ideas, and better ways to do this, and people that you know in other countries now that you can hook up with and whatnot. Is it literally just a learning, or are you also teaching?

Franny Tacy: Oh, it’s both. It’s learning and teaching, because that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Matt Baum: Of course.

Franny Tacy: Win, win. Like in Peru, all the people that I was talking to, I mean, when it comes to farming too, I know how to butcher any animal on a farm, do [inaudible 00:25:34].

Matt Baum: I believe it.

Franny Tacy: From the kill all the way to the table. I even raise it. I’ve got a wealth of experience. So anything they need help. Laying on a concrete floor for a new pavilion going up. And just talking, just learning. I mean there is so much to figure out. And our Women in Hemp nonprofit is also going global, and there’s a lot of people, and a lot of what I do is talk about women have been written out of agriculture.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: So a lot of my personal passion is finding out the stories, what their parents did, and what their grandparents did, and what was the role? Bringing women back to the face in the light of what they’ve done throughout history, and what they’re doing right now, and trying to find ways to support them and their communities.

Matt Baum: Right on sister. I like it. That’s awesome.

Franny Tacy: But I did not come out and go, oh great, I’ve got it all figured out. It is just like it has been here.

Matt Baum: Well, none of us do. Right. None of us do. We’re all learning, and the more that we learn, the better we get at this. Right?

Franny Tacy: Yeah, and the more you know, the more you don’t know sometimes.

Matt Baum: Absolutely.

Franny Tacy: Sometimes I’m like, I’ve got million more questions.

The future of Franny’s Farmacy

Matt Baum: Let’s go back to Franny’s Farmacy for a minute. What are you most excited about that you guys are doing right now? What’s selling the biggest?

Franny Tacy: Our number one product is the tincture, which people also refer to as the oil, or the drops you put under your tongue. Everybody tries to call it a bunch of things. That’s still our number one selling product. Our number two is our salve, which is insane all the success stories, all the testimonials on that. We sell insane amounts of that, and it’s all hand filled. It’s a very hard one to do systematically through manufacturing.

Matt Baum: I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: That’s part of the reason it’s so popular. But people love, the bath bombs are really popular. Chocolates and gummies and all the smokables.

Matt Baum: Yeah. That seems like something that’s really taken off this year really, smokable CBD and smokable hemp.

Franny Tacy: Yep.

Matt Baum: That seems to be very new.

Franny Tacy: And in North Carolina, we have been in a battle with that.

Matt Baum: I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: And we have dispensaries in South Carolina. I’ve had to stand up in the dispensary when they were shutting them down and pulling flower out of dispensaries without any legal right and say, guess what? I’m right here. I’m right here. We have flower. And I invite the police. You all come in. I’ve invited people to arrest me a ton of times. They don’t do it. I can’t figure out why. It’s probably because it would be way too great of a marketing plan. [crosstalk 00:28:29].

Matt Baum: Yeah. Exactly.

Franny Tacy: You know, a letter has nothing to do with it being legal.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: That’s what was happening in North Carolina and South Carolina. The government sending out letters and making raids that were really illegal. So I challenged it and we’ve never had a pull, but it’s been a real battle here.

Matt Baum: Are you still seeing that, or is it starting to mellow out a little bit?

Franny Tacy: It’s mellowing out a little bit as people are redirecting their focus. Right now, with the holidays and everything, everybody was out of session. They were taking a break. But I assume it’s going to heat back up here at some point.

Matt Baum: I’m sure. I’m sure.

Franny Tacy: Until there’s some type of conclusion.

Matt Baum: Well, we’re in an election year, too, so we’ve got to get out and huff and puff and save the children , right?

Franny Tacy: Exactly. Exactly. It’s an election year. Oh, gracious. [inaudible 00:29:25] for the ride.

Don’t forget the goats

Matt Baum: So completely off topic. Tell me about the goats. I’d see these pictures of the cutest damn goats I have ever seen, and you’re holding them. Tell me about the goats. I love goats.

Franny Tacy: Okay. They are so adorable and so funny. So agrotourism farm, we have farm camp here in the summer. Goats are so personable and funny. So we’ve had goats.

Somebody sent me a link a couple of years ago, three years ago, from it happening in Oregon. So we’re like, all right, well let’s do it. It’ll be fun.

Matt Baum: Yeah.

Franny Tacy: So we had baby goats, we did goat a yoga. Then when it was Halloween we did disgoat yoga, and everybody dressed up in disco outfits.

Matt Baum: Good Lord.

Franny Tacy: We had strobe lights. And they’re little and they’re bouncy, and they’re just like-

Matt Baum: And they love it.

Franny Tacy: They go through all stages. As babies, they fall asleep really quick, and people just pass them around. Then they go through the pinball bouncing phase.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: And then they get older and they just want to run through your legs for a cheese ball when you’re in a warrior position. I call it joyful yoga. It’s fun. It brings people out. Asheville is a huge hit for weddings as a wedding destination. So we have all these groups that come in and they’ll have tee shirts made and all this stuff.

Vice TV was coming to town, actually, on a very interesting subject of gerrymandering.

Matt Baum: Yeah. That’s been in the news a little bit in North Carolina, actually.

Franny Tacy: Yes, there is.

Matt Baum: Little bit.

Franny Tacy: So they were looking for radical smart people, the business people that were also doing crazy things, I guess.

Matt Baum: Right. And they happened to find you.

Franny Tacy: And they happened to find me. I was like, hi, [inaudible 00:31:14]. I was like, I’ll talk to you about politics, and put a goat on your back, and continue to smile. It all changes all the time.

Matt Baum: That is so cool. Are they working goats? Are they in the fields? Are they eating?

Franny Tacy: They actually are working goats, because between goats, sheep, two cows, and a donkey, that’s how we manage all our pasture land is by rotating them. So we have seven rotational pastures.

Matt Baum: That’s the old school way, man. That’s how you do it.

Franny Tacy: Yeah. Goats are browsers. They’re going to eat the brush.

Matt Baum: Right.

Franny Tacy: Sheep and cows are grazers, they’re going to eat the grass. So it helps us manage the land and keep it healthy, and they’re fertilizing it as they go. We’re a completely regenerative farm.

Matt Baum: That is so cool. That is so cool. I’ve got to get down there and see this. This sounds amazing.

Franny Tacy: You do! There’s so much hidden that people couldn’t even know or understand how everything was planted with intention. We have Blueberry Hill. We’ve got bees, a pollinator garden, an agroforestry project. Mulberries around all our pastures because they create a protein rich dense leaf that falls in the leaves, it’s a deciduous, to give our animals a little protein snack before they go into the winner of no grass. We’ve got hay.

Matt Baum: This is amazing. This is absolutely amazing.

Franny Tacy: That really, really goes back to what I did in college, is what I was developing, ecosystem and forest management plans. So I did a logging projects on nine acres of our farm, and created a different habitat for animals, and tulip poplar groves, and walnut groves. Yeah. Oh yeah. It never stops.

Matt Baum: Franny, I can’t decide if you’re a saint or a unicorn, to tell you the truth. You’re amazing. This is incredible.

Franny Tacy: Oh, you’re amazing. We all are amazing.

Matt Baum: Oh, stop. Stop.

Franny Tacy: Everybody is amazing in their own right. It’s just what is their hobby? Mine is thinking about a lot of things at one time.

Matt Baum: I can tell. Thank you so much for your time. This was fantastic. You a very busy woman.

Franny Tacy: Busy doing good things.

Matt Baum: That’s right.

Franny Tacy: Having the time of my life.

Matt Baum: That’s right. Keep it up, sister.

Franny Tacy: Thank you so much.

Matt Baum: We appreciate it.

Franny Tacy: If you need anything, you let me know.

Matt Baum: I absolutely will. Thank you so much, Franny.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum: As you heard, Franny is an amazing woman doing amazing work in the hemp business. You can find more information about Franny’s Farm, Franny’s Farmacy and their products, and, of course, goat yoga in the show notes for this episode.

That about does it for this episode of Ministry of Hemp Podcast. One final thought on female farmers. They are a group that has grown by 27% in the last five years. That is a pretty impressive number. Do not forget to support your local female farmers.

I hope you dug today’s episode, and if you want to let me know what you thought or you have a hemp related question, you can call me at (402) 819-6417. That is the Ministry of Hemp voice line. Leave your message there and you could have your question answered on a future show. You can also shoot me an email directly to matt@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com with your questions, your comments, or anything you’d like to hear on this show. You can follow the Ministry of Hemp on Twitter, @MinistryofHemp, on Facebook, backslash Ministry of Hemp, and we love to hear from you.

Speaking of ministryofhemp.com, be sure to stop by and sign up for our newsletter so you can get notified about all the cool stories that Kit, our editor in chief, posts over there. He’s got a great one about the FDA and some statements they made on CBD. There’s some really good clarification in there and I highly recommend checking it out.

As always, you can find a complete written transcript of this show in the show notes for this post, because at Ministry of Hemp, we believe a more accessible world is a better world for everybody.

Until next time, remember to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp Podcast, signing off.

The post Franny Tacy, The First Woman To Farm Hemp in North Carolina appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

In this week’s episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast it’s time for another Q&A session with Matt and Ministry of Hemp’s Editor in Chief Kit O’Connell. This round of questions touches on everything from where to buy quality CBD, vaping CBD safely, and industrial uses for hemp like plastic and fabric.

Sponsored by LifePatent

Thanks to our friends at LifePatent, one of our Top CBD Brands, for sponsoring this episode of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. Check out their site now to try free samples of their great sleep capsules.

We’re also big fans of their CBD-A tincture, which we reviewed last year. Our editor Kit still frequently reaches for this product for help with his chronic pain.

Send us your feedback!

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows like this one! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417. Keep in mind, this phone number is for hemp questions only and any other inquiries for the Ministry of Hemp should be sent to info@ministryofhemp.com.

Thanks again for listening! Contact sales@ministryofhemp.com if you’re interested in sponsoring our podcast or other content on our website.

Answering common hemp & CBD questions

Below you’ll find answers to some common CBD and hemp questions like we address in this episode of our podcast.

• Full spectrum vs. broad spectrum vs. CBD isolate — which should you buy?
• For hemp fabric, we recommend Nature’s Fabrics and Hemp Fabric Lab.
• Using hemp as a sustainable packaging alternative
• Why isn’t hemp plastic everywhere if it’s more sustainable?

Oh, and one of our callers had a doctor concerned about the calcium content in hemp milk. It turns out hemp milk has the highest calcium content of any alternative milk.

Hemp questions answered with Matt & Kit: Complete episode transcript

Below you’ll find the complete written transcript for this episode:

Speaker 1: 00:00 The Ministry of Hemp podcast was brought to you by LifePatent, purveyors of high-quality CBD products that just happen to be one of our favorite brands too. They care very deeply about their customers because when it comes down to it, LifePatent understands their customers are people seeking relief. You can learn more about the entire line of CBD-related products at lifepatent.com.

Matt Baum: 00:31 Welcome to another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Today on the show, I am joined once again by ministryofhemp.com’s editor-in-chief and all around brilliant guy, Kit O’Connell. We are going to be answering your hemp-related questions on our second Ministry of Hemp Q&A show. I am super excited, so let’s get to it, shall we? Kit, welcome back for another Ministry of Hemp Q&A. It is always good to have you, sir.

Kit O’Connell: 01:11 It’s good to be here. I enjoy dropping in for these.

Matt Baum: 01:14 This is where I bring you on to do my job for me and I appreciate that. Thank you. We got a few voicemails today and, again, the questions are kind of all over the place, which is great. If you guys want to call, like I said at the beginning of the show, you can always do so. Just call us at 402-819-6417 and leave your message with your hemp-related question. Kit, should we get into the first one? You ready?

Kit O’Connell: 01:37 Let’s jump in.

Matt Baum: 01:38 All right. Here we go.

We don’t sell CBD, just review it

Speaker 4: 01:40 Hi, I’m trying to get ahold of the company that makes first-class, full-spectrum CBD, [inaudible 00:01:50] hemp oil. Please give me a call.

Matt Baum: 01:54 We do get a lot of calls like this. I wanted to play one, rather than responding to everybody and saying, “Hey, we don’t actually sell it.” Kit, maybe you can explain for people that are listening to the show where can they go to find quality hemp oil that they can trust?

Kit O’Connell: 02:09 Sure. Yeah. We don’t sell products. That is a common misconception that we get a lot of emails to about that. We’re trying to provide useful information and really clear, honest, transparent basics about what’s happening in the CBD and hemp industries. The good thing is we do have a lot of information. We’ve tried out a lot of different products and we list a lot of our favorites on our website. You can go right up to the top and search right where it says, “CBD Reviews.” We have a best CBD oil review, which is our favorite, overall brands in the industry. Under that, you’ll see breakdowns. If you’re looking for tinctures or a topical to apply to your sore muscles or gummies and so on, we’ve got all of that in there. We’ve recommended some of our favorite brands beyond that. We’ll put a link to this in the show notes.

Kit O’Connell: 03:04 We’ve written a couple articles about how you can pick a really good brand of CBD. Check the show notes for this or if you want to just go directly on our site, you can even just go search for the word. A good word to punch in is actually the word quality and that’ll bring up a couple articles about why quality matters in CBD and some guides and tips for picking the best products. In general, you want a brand, of course, that’s transparent, that’s offering third-party lab results. For a lot of people who are going to prefer that full-spectrum hemp extract, which has CBD plus traces, at least, of all the other compounds that are naturally occurring in the hemp plant. That’s a good choice for a lot of people.

Matt Baum: 03:51 It looks like some of our latest reviews, she was looking for hemp oil. Right now, we’ve got some of our top brands up there that include like Populum, Lazarus, Ananda, Everyday Optimal D-Stress, CBDfx and Joy Organics. Again, right under the CBD reviews, it’s the first link you’ll see, best CBD oil reviews. If you want to start there, can’t go wrong. Let’s go for our next question here.

Kit O’Connell: 04:17 Yup. Yup.

Questions about buying hemp fabric

Speaker 5: 04:18 Good morning. It is 2:39, eastern standard time in Columbus, Ohio. I’m calling. I’m an artist. I do turn tree limbs into Moses or as we say in Arabic, Musa’s staff, for my artwork, bags, wall hangings, what I call urban survival clothing, my own design and I wanted to know where I can buy hemp fabric. I’m retired. From Michigan, Detroit, but I live in Columbus, Ohio, right now, and I wanted to buy some hemp fabric. Probably will have to save up for it, but I would like to know how I can do that. Just happen to be up in the middle of the night like most artist’s are. A farmer who had done some clothing for some fashion show to the awareness of hemp farming, so African-American farmers, so I thought I would just research it on Facebook and I found you all. I was trying to find out … I’m 70 tomorrow on the 18th, September, so I’m trying to figure out how to use all this technology to find your podcast and listen to you. I hope you have it archived. Blessed to have found you. Much success.

Speaker 5: 05:29 Once in a blue moon at Trader Joe’s, we can find hemp milk, which is really neat. I have to look up the calcium content though. My doctor frowned when I mentioned it, but I’m like, “Whatever.” I like to try different milks. I used to farm and I get tired of that. I will look that up also. Any place I can find or buy hemp fabric in America. I saw one place in UK, but I don’t know if that’s legit or dependable or not. I would appreciate it. I will email you to send you my telephone number.

Speaker 5: 06:04 All right. Thank you. You guys have a blessed week, month and keep it going. I miss farming. I used to raise cows, sheep, goats, chickens and selling animals, slaughter them, sell them and then process the hide for artwork. I brought a few back with me to the city once I left the country down south. All right. Again, take care. Have a blessed, successful podcast. You’re growing. Take care. Bye-bye.

Matt Baum: 06:30 She sounds like the coolest. I really like her.

Kit O’Connell: 06:33 I want to hang out with her.

Matt Baum: 06:35 Totally.

Kit O’Connell: 06:35 Pop open a beer and talk about crafting. I’m a writer, so I’m up at 2:00 a.m., scribbling away-

Matt Baum: 06:43 Oh, yeah.

Kit O’Connell: 06:43 … sometimes getting my best ideas, so I totally get that. I think our caller is a great example too of how the stigma around hemp is disappearing because we are hearing from people from the older generations that are really interested in hemp. Some of them might not have been in the past. I don’t know about this caller, but a lot of them might have turned away from it because of the associations of it with the war on drugs and all that.

Matt Baum: 07:08 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 07:10 I love to see this kind of thing. This is great. In terms of the specific topic with hemp fabric, that is an area … Unfortunately, it’s hard to buy domestic, US-produced fully hemp fabric. That is one place that our video producer, Jessica, recommended to me because we had this question come in at least once before via email. What she recommended was this site called Nature’s Fabrics. Again, we’ll put this in the show notes, but it’s just Nature’s, with an S, Fabrics, again with an S, dot com. They do have a small collection of hemp fabric. That’s one of the only US sources that we’ve personally worked with.

Kit O’Connell: 07:54 We’ve also engaged with a company in India called Hemp Fabric Lab. Now you are obviously going to be paying a little more because of the international shipping, but one of the nice things about Hemp Fabric Lab is that they don’t have any minimum orders. They have several different hemp fabrics that they’ve made, as well as some blends of hemp with other fabrics. You can pick up just one yard of it to play with if you want or obviously make a big bulk order too. They’re really cool people. They’re working with some really interesting fashion designers. But, overall, some of their stuff is affordable, especially with that no minimum, so Hemp Fabric Lab. We’ll drop a link to them.

Kit O’Connell: 08:34 This is an area that we really hope is going to expand a lot-

Matt Baum: 08:38 Definitely.

Kit O’Connell: 08:38 … in the coming years.

Matt Baum: 08:39 Definitely. This is one of those areas where it is a little more expensive right now I’m sure, but the only reason that is, is because we don’t have as many producers yet.

Kit O’Connell: 08:47 Exactly.

Matt Baum: 08:47 As you see more producers getting in the game, we will see the price of hemp fabric come down.

Kit O’Connell: 08:54 We don’t have exact figures on this year, but we probably in the US grew, give or take, about 150,000 acres of hemp, let’s say as a generous figure. It’s probably a little less than that. Out of that 150 or so, from the experts I’ve spoken with, we only had about 10,000 acres of hemp that was grown for anything other than CBD. That means for fiber, to making the fabric, to making the building material, to making the food. Almost all of those uses of hemp are still bringing it in from Canada, from China, from India, eastern Europe, places like that. This is going to come down. Prices are going to come down. The availability is going to go up. It’s all going to happen over the next couple years is our prediction.

Matt Baum: 09:37 One of the things we’ve been talking about on the show with guests is that there is a very big CBD bubble right now. Like you said, everyone is growing hemp for CBD, literally everyone, because that is where the money is at the moment. But, again, that is going to change too. Unfortunately, you might have to dig around to find hemp fabrics right now, but they are out there. Like we said, we’ll put this in the show notes. You can check it out. As far as hemp milk goes, you had mentioned you had talked to your doctor and he kind of aargh because he wasn’t sure about the calcium. I took a couple years of nutrition when I was going through culinary school and it is an absolute fact that you get more calcium from plant-based milks like soy milk or almond milk or oat milk than you are from cow milk and that’s just because there’s lactose in it. If you’re not a baby, you are lactose intolerant to some degree. You’re going to get more calcium, as long as it’s in there. I haven’t seen the Trader Joe’s hemp milk, but I would think it’s pretty weird if there’s no calcium in there. Be one worth looking into though.

Kit O’Connell: 10:42 Of course, also with hemp milk, the hemp seed has a ton of great benefits apart from the calcium you gain all kinds of amino acids, Omega-3’s and 6’s and all these other beneficial nutritional substances that are in the hemp seed. It’s a real nutritional powerhouse. Even if it’s not your main source of calcium, it’s definitely … can be really good to make hemp milk. We’ve even got a video and some instructions on our site to make your own hemp milk with seeds, so check that out.

Matt Baum: 11:11 Again, all things are you’re not going to get from lactose-based animal milk.

Kit O’Connell: 11:17 Hey, if you do get this, drop us a note and tell us more about the artwork you are doing. That sounds really cool.

Matt Baum: 11:21 Yeah.

Kit O’Connell: 11:21 We’d love to learn more about what you’re doing.

Matt Baum: 11:22 Yeah, email that to us, we’d love to us. You can send that to-

Kit O’Connell: 11:25 Please.

Matt Baum: 11:25 Matt@ministryofhemp.com or info@ministryofhemp.com. All right. Let’s move to our next question here.

Understanding the dosage of CBD oil

Speaker 6: 11:32 Hey, so I was looking at some stuff online and I have some questions. I’m confused about CBD dosage on products. Some of the bottles say that they’re 1,000 milligrams or 500 milligrams or 250 milligrams. Is that the total amount in the bottle? Then it kind of goes hand-in-hand like why are some of them 25 milligrams? Is that just like a really low dose amount or is that the amount in the dropper? Appreciate some answers on this. Thank you very much for taking my call.

Matt Baum: 12:12 This is an excellent question. I’ll be honest, I get a little confused sometimes looking at these labels. Can you shed any light on this one, Kit?

Kit O’Connell: 12:20 It is confusing and it even throws us off a little bit. There’s one thing I want to say at the beginning here as sort of a preamble is that it’s just a good reminder and something that has come up recently to say that CBD is not currently regulated by the FDA. The FDA and the FTC will come down on the worst of the worst actors in the field. Those are the people that are claiming that CBD is going to cure cancer.

Matt Baum: 12:44 Right.

Kit O’Connell: 12:45 But as far as the other side of things, they’re not setting any standards. There’s no one looking at CBD and saying, “Every CBD bottle should be labeled like this.”

Matt Baum: 12:54 Right. Like you-

Kit O’Connell: 12:54 In the same way that there’s standards around buying vitamin C, we just don’t have that.

Matt Baum: 12:58 Yeah. It’ll say, “250 milligrams per pill” or whatever and you know exactly what you’re taking. Unfortunately-

Kit O’Connell: 13:03 And that’s just not the case for CBD, right now. Exactly. Yeah. When we look at products, because we review products here, the gold standard to us is that your label should say how much total is in the bottle. Some brands that are still very reputable brands have made the choice to instead list, like you said, the total amount in a dropper. If a full dropper is 25 milligrams, they’re going to put 25 milligrams on the bottle or if it’s a capsule, they’re listing how much is per capsule, which obviously makes a lot of sense to do it with capsules. The short answer is it varies from product to product and you need to read the label a little more carefully with CBD than you would with other products. For a tincture it should be the total amount on the bottle. Obviously, for things like a gummy or a capsule, it makes more sense to put a per dose list on there too. That’s what we think it should look like, but you are seeing stuff that’s all over the map. You see people that are just putting the per dropper. Occasionally, you’re seeing people that are listing a number that’s based on say the full amount of hemp oil in the bottle. It’s kind of an inflated number that doesn’t accurately reflect on what’s actually in the bottle.

Matt Baum: 14:25 Is that where we start seeing labels that say 5,000 milligrams and stuff like that?

Kit O’Connell: 14:31 We do see some of that. Yeah. We’re going to see some of those. Unfortunately, there are some people that, as far as we can tell, are just straight up scammers. If you search for CBD on Amazon, we’ve talked about this before, you’re going to see those ridiculous ones where they claim that there’s 25,000 milligrams in the bottle. On a more reasonable level, we did encounter a product recently. I won’t name names, but they had … theirs listed 3,000 on the bottle. When we took a closer look, we found that the actual amount of CBD was closer to about 2,250 say, 2,250 milligrams. The rest of it, they had made up by saying that there was hemp seed oil in there, so you’re still getting the hemp nutrition. We decided because they did provide a real honest breakdown on their website that they were a brand that we wanted to work with. Even with some of these good brands, it does require a little more research on your part. You need to go look at the brand information on the website, see what kind of breakdowns they’re offering. Even if a brand says that they have 500 in the bottle, unfortunately you still have to go look at their lab tests to find if they’re telling the truth about that. It’s really important to check those third-party lab tests.

Matt Baum: 15:46 Definitely.

Kit O’Connell: 15:47 A good product is going to be within 10% of what they say they are on their bottle or more exact, obviously, but you don’t want to go with anybody that’s any further off than that.

Matt Baum: 15:56 The TLDR version here and correct me if I’m wrong, but if we see a bottle with something that says 25 milligrams, typically that means it’s 25 milligrams per dropper. Anything above 100 is technically saying there is that much CBD in the bottle. If you get something that says 250 milligrams, that’s 250 milligrams per bottle.

Kit O’Connell: 16:21 That’s a good rule to follow in general at least as a starting point as you’re looking into a product [crosstalk 00:16:28].

Matt Baum: 16:27 Okay. All right. Yeah, because honestly I had a friend of mine who has been having some knee and hip trouble. I gave him CBD that someone had sent me and he really liked it. Then, I gave him another one that somebody else had sent me and he’s like, “Well, this one only says 25.” I said, “Well, I think means it’s per, you know, dropper, but I don’t really know.” I knew they were very reputable and he ended up really liking it, so good to know I wasn’t lying to him.

Kit O’Connell: 16:58 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thanks to LifePatent

Matt Baum: 16:59 Before we move along, I am super excited to introduce you to our first sponsor for the Ministry of Hemp podcast, LifePatent. With a full line of high-quality and responsibly-sourced CBD products, LifePatent offers relief from pain, anxiety and even some help getting to sleep. It even offers CBD tincture for dogs and personally I have a pug with a nerve issue that was causing pain and she was shaking like crazy. I found giving her a CBD tincture with her meals has helped her stop shaking and reduced her pain quite a bit. The LifePatent site is currently offering free samples of their new LPX Technology, which harnesses a natural delivery system. The most effective delivery method available for the ingestion of cannabinoids on the market. You get to try two, 15 milligram sleep capsules on LifePatent and enjoy the power and efficacy of nature’s delivery system at lifepatent.com.

Matt Baum: 18:00 Also, check out a glowing review of LifePatent’s CBD/A oil over at ministryofhealth.com and you’ll learn more about the antiinflammatory and nausea-reducing properties of CBD/A. LifePatent cares deeply about their customers, because when it comes down to it, they understand their customers are people seeking relief. Like I said, you can learn more about their entire line of CBD products at lifepatent.com and, of course, we will have links to their site in the show notes. Huge thanks to lifepatent.com for sponsoring the Ministry of Hemp podcast.

Vitamin E & CBD vaping safety

Matt Baum: 18:41 Okay. Next question, here we go.

Speaker 7: 18:43 Hey, yeah, I had a question for you. It’s kind of been bouncing around my head a little bit. I’ve been hearing a lot about flavored vape pens that can cause serious injuries and sometimes death with people that have been using them. With all this CBD stuff going around out there now, I was wondering has there been any similar reports with CBD and stuff like that? Yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you.

Matt Baum: 19:06 This is a really good one and I think this has been on a lot of people’s minds. We talked about it briefly on the show a little while back when they were still investigating what the ingredient was that was causing problems. As I understand it, all of the deaths were related to cannabis, like full-on, marijuana-related products, is that correct?

Kit O’Connell: 19:30 Yeah. Specifically, it seems like it was an issue with an additive that … It was vitamin E acetate.

Matt Baum: 19:39 Right.

Kit O’Connell: 19:39 Vitamin E is something that gets added as a preservative and I don’t want people like … Because you will see the edible products like the tinctures with vitamin E in them and you shouldn’t panic. That’s a very safe ingredient in something that goes on your skin or that you eat. But as far as inhaling, it seems like vitamin E is really bad news. That seems to be, again, as we often say, “We’re not doctors and we’re definitely not medical researchers.” It seems like the current consensus is that all of the issues seem to have been this additive called vitamin E acetate. I remember reading some research that also maybe pointed at this terpene-based additive that some of the black market brands were also adding to make their stuff go further. That’s also kind of with the vitamin E acetate is these black market cannabis or marijuana vape brand makers found out that they could keep having a thick looking extract inside of that capsule, inside of that cartridge, but have to put less of the actual THC extract in it by spacing it out with these terpenes or with the vitamin E.

Kit O’Connell: 20:59 Bottom line, don’t buy illegal vape cartridges. That’s unfortunate because I know that there’s a lot of people out there that are still stuck in black market states and it looks real tempting, but just don’t do it. It’s just not worth it unfortunately. Stick to the legal stuff, especially when it comes to vapes. It does seem like you’re relatively safe if you’re going to a legal dispensary and buying a vape there or buying these CBD vapes. As far as it looks like, there were not any issues with CBD. We’re still waiting to see if there’s any more research to come out before we’re personally picking up on the vape reviews again at Ministry of Hemp. I think we’re heading in that direction. It does look like it really … almost all or all was this vitamin E.

Matt Baum: 21:48 I did a, not a deep dive on this one, but I couldn’t find any reports about CBD vaping being involved even in the sicknesses, let alone the deaths. Again, not doctors here, but you’re probably okay as long as you’re buying your vape product from a reputable company.

Kit O’Connell: 22:10 Just like with CBD, I think, especially with if you’re going to be vaping it, you should make sure you know every ingredient that’s in that cartridge that you’re buying from a reputable company-

Matt Baum: 22:20 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 22:20 … and that they’re a company that has really comprehensive third-party lab tests. There have been issues in the cannabis field where even outside of vaping where people got sick from inhaling moldy marijuana flower. As far as I know, that hasn’t happened in hemp yet, but it is potentially a risk because mold is mold and it’s bad for you no matter where it pops up, so it doesn’t-

Matt Baum: 22:43 Right. Whether you’re eating it or inhaling it.

Kit O’Connell: 22:46 Exactly. Especially with vapes, look for the brands that are offering these comprehensive third-party tests where they show not just the CBD content, but also that they’ve been checked for mold and pesticide residues.

Getting involved in hemp plastics

Matt Baum: 23:00 Okay. Last question here. It’s a longer one.

Speaker 8: 23:06 Hi, this is Rico, from Southern California. I recently discovered the possible impacts that hemp may have on our society and culture as a whole. Obviously, it’s come a long way in the size as far as external use products, topical products and obviously oral products. I am interested in getting into the field as soon as possible. I’m apparently making plans to get myself involved. I wasn’t thinking so much on the food or dietary supplement side of things, what I was thinking was more like in the industrial product or production of industrial use products made from hemp. What was I thinking, to be more specific, was plastics. My question is where do you see the process or how soon do you see something on the horizon in terms of processing plastics for the industry because as far as I’ve read up on this topic, decortication is heavily outdated. Because of all the years of being outlawed, so to speak, there’s been real no new manufacturing techniques or methods developed over the last 70 years or so, ever since the Marihuana Tax Act.

Speaker 8: 24:47 My question is, like I said, how soon do we see some major processing revolutions taking place for industrial goods, like plastics in particular. Thank you. My name is Rico. I’m from Southern California. I’ll be listening. Bye-bye.

Matt Baum: 25:04 Thanks for your call, Rico. That is a fantastic question. The short answer is the sooner guys like you get involved, the sooner we will see more, but I think there’s a longer answer here too.

Kit O’Connell: 25:18 Yeah. It’s really good, Rico, that you pointed out the effect of the prohibition, because we lost decades of development in every aspect of the cannabis plant.

Matt Baum: 25:28 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 25:29 There’s so much more we could be doing with it right now if we hadn’t had this huge gap. That affects everything from the farmer planting the seeds in this field, all the way up to the guy trying to make the hemp plastic and everybody in between. The people processing and decorticating and drying and all the other processes, all those steps would be much advanced and more convenient and more efficient if we had the years of research. As far as the state of plastic right now, there is some hemp plastic out there in use. Now, of course, car manufacturers are pretty cagey about exactly what they do and how they make their cars, but we do understand that if there is some composite use of hemp in things like doorframes and some other very durable parts of vehicles are actually, in certain cases, using hemp. It’s usually mixed with other materials, but it is basically a hemp plastic. Beyond that, what we’re seeing is there’s these … They’re kind of crude, these hemp composite plastics and you can look at that them and tell that it was something made from a plant. It’s got little bits of plant in it. It’s not a clear plastic bottle. We just can’t do that yet.

Matt Baum: 26:35 Right. I remember seeing like a-

Kit O’Connell: 26:36 Not just the hemp-

Matt Baum: 26:36 … surfboard and stuff that we saw at NOCO that was completely-

Kit O’Connell: 26:39 Yeah, exactly.

Matt Baum: 26:41 … made of hemp. It was kind of fibrous if you looked really close.

Kit O’Connell: 26:46 You saw too, of course, there’s those people, PF Design Labs and they’re printing these very advanced composites. They had a bicycle frame that was made from hemp and it just looked like any other bike frame.

Matt Baum: 26:58 Yeah, it was amazing.

Kit O’Connell: 26:58 It was real light. It was real light.

Matt Baum: 27:00 Like virtually weightless, it was incredible.

Kit O’Connell: 27:02 Yeah, it was amazing. But that’s obviously super experimental. We’re seeing these great advanced, really cool experimental stuff. As far as practical use, there is this great company that we love called Sana Packaging, S-A-N-A, and they’re taking hemp plastic and they’re making products for the marijuana, for the cannabis industry where they’re taking … If you’re buying a doob tube or whatever, you can have it made out of a recycled hemp plastic. Even in some experimentation with taking the hemp waste from CBD production and turning that into plastic or paper, which is really cool.

Matt Baum: 27:37 See, that’s very cool. That is amazing.

Kit O’Connell: 27:39 I love that idea.

Matt Baum: 27:40 Yeah.

Kit O’Connell: 27:41 Yeah. That’s like where the future is to us is closing the circle so that the waste products of the hemp industry get made back into the packaging for the hemp industry-

Matt Baum: 27:51 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 27:51 That’s super cool to us. Beyond that, someone’s just going to have to see the potential, get people involved who can throw money at it and do the research because that’s what we need to get to having really good, modern plastics made from hemp.

Matt Baum: 28:06 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 28:07 Now, of course, we do have to say too that just as us being lovers of the planet here that there’s a lot of potential in hemp plastic. It is more biodegradable than conventional plastic depending on how you make it. Not all hemp plastic is automatically biodegradable, that’s a myth. It really depends on the type. Beyond that, we still, as a whole, have to be more responsible as a species about plastic-

Matt Baum: 28:31 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 28:32 … no matter what we make it out of.

Matt Baum: 28:32 Absolutely.

Kit O’Connell: 28:33 We’ve got to be better about it. But, with what said, Rico, I hope you get involved with this because there’s so much potential for hemp plastic. It’s kind of a catch-22 in that we need the money to put in it and we don’t have anything to show for that yet, so how do we get the money? We just got to have some people that are willing to see that potential there and invest in it and put their time and their blood, sweat and tears into really making a progress in this. We have people out there doing it, but there’s a lot of room for growth, so I hope you’ll get involved in some way.

Matt Baum: 29:03 This is one of those things where I don’t shop at Walmart and I don’t agree with all their politics, but they were one of the first companies to start massively buying plastics that had been recycled for their vegetables and whatnot like that. It’s going to take someone like that, a giant, that is willing to put their foot in the market and say, “Okay, we want to look at hemp plastic because it’s not going to use petroleum like regular plastics. It will degrade faster. But just like with CBD where we keep saying, “This needs to be done organically, it needs to be done the right way” plastic has to be done the same way. It has to be able to biodegrade. We can’t just come up with another product that we’re throwing in landfills. Otherwise, what is the point?

Kit O’Connell: 29:48 Exactly.

Matt Baum: 29:48 It is going to take some titan of industry out there to say, “Let’s go for it and give it a try” and throw a bunch of money at it, unfortunately.

Kit O’Connell: 29:56 There’s an article that unfortunately it goes viral every few months. It’s this headline saying that LEGO is switching to hemp plastic and they’re not unfortunately. The article has this headline that’s very definitive that LEGO is doing this, but if you actually open the article, it just says that LEGO is considering switching to a vegetable plastic. The article makes the argument that hemp would be a good choice, which it would be. They’re not doing it yet, but that is another great example. If someone like LEGO said, “We’re going ahead and doing … and putting the money into learning what it would take to make the switch to hemp plastic.” If someone like them did that or-

Matt Baum: 30:34 Oh, yeah.

Kit O’Connell: 30:34 … a Hasbro or somebody huge like that, that would make a huge-

Matt Baum: 30:37 Or a DuPont [crosstalk 00:30:39] or somebody. I mean, like-

Kit O’Connell: 30:40 Oh, yeah. Somebody like that. Yeah.

Matt Baum: 30:41 That would be massive, but for right now-

Kit O’Connell: 30:44 And it is this weird place because I’m not a big fan of Walmart either. These big corporations are problematic, but at the same time some of them are starting to see the way the wind is blowing. Even fossil fuel companies are investing in renewable energy. Hopefully, we’ll see one of these big plastic manufacturers realize, hey, not only are we destroying earth, but we’re going to go out of business if we don’t change.

Matt Baum: 31:05 Right.

Kit O’Connell: 31:05 We need to start looking into this now. Hopefully, we’ll start to see them realize that and to make the choice to investigate hemp.

Matt Baum: 31:11 The thing we can do on our end is start demanding stuff like this. That’s one thing you can do as a consumer. Start demanding it and when you do see it, buy it, throw your money at it and let them know I’m interested in this, I like what you’re doing and the more we do that, the more these larger companies will see there’s money here. I’m not fooling myself that they’re going to wake up and go, “What we have done to this planet?” That’s not going to happen anytime soon. But, if we can show them we as a consumer are genuinely interested in this, then we can make a change and we can interest them in making a responsible change, even if it is just to make a bunch more cash.

Kit O’Connell: 31:49 I think one other thing to add too is that it’s important with these sorts of topics to look at transitional steps. We see this with hemp fabric too where it’s really expensive right now to make a 100% hemp shirt.

Matt Baum: 31:59 Right.

Kit O’Connell: 32:00 But you can still make a shirt that’s 50% hemp and 50% cotton and you still have a healthier shirt that’s more sustainable for the earth. You’re taking that step. I think we probably are going to see some intermediate steps where we see, for example, plastic bottles that are 40% hemp and 60% fossil fuel. Let’s not turn up our nose at those intermediate steps because they will hopefully get us where we need to be.

Matt Baum: 32:22 Yeah. That’s a really good point. We have to be cheerleaders right now and if we start screaming everything down because they are not doing it the sacred way, then we’re not going to make any headway unfortunately. We got to keep our eyes on the prize. You know what I mean?

Kit O’Connell: 32:36 Definitely.

Hemp questions: Final thoughts with Matt and Kit

Matt Baum: 32:36 Kit, thank you so much for joining me and answering these questions. This was a great group of questions we got this time.

Kit O’Connell: 32:43 Great variety. Yeah. Thanks for calling everybody.

Matt Baum: 32:46 Yeah, definitely. I can’t wait to do this again. We will definitely, maybe in the next month or so, we’ll get together, answer some more of your questions. Sound good?

Kit O’Connell: 32:54 Sounds great. Anytime.

Matt Baum: 32:55 Awesome. Kit, thanks again for joining us. Huge thank you to everybody that called in today and if you have hemp-related questions, just like I said at the beginning of the show, you can always call us at 402-819-6417 and you can leave a message with your hemp-related question. Now, do me a favor, don’t leave your personal information because we don’t want to broadcast that to the whole world, but feel free to followup with an email to me, Matt@ministryofhemp.com, if you’d like me to follow up on your question or let you know when it’s going to be played.

Matt Baum: 33:46 Once again, I want to thank Kit for coming on the show and helping me out. He does an amazing job over at ministryofhemp.com where you can find all the latest hemp and CBD news stories and reviews and a fantastic list of quality companies that you should be buying CBD from, including LifePatent, our first sponsor. Thank you much guys. It’s great to have you on board.

Matt Baum: 34:11 Recently we’ve been talking a lot about hemp in the industrial world on the show and next episode we’re going to do just that, so tune in to hear more about the future as hemp as an industrial commodity. As always, you can find a full written transcript of this show in the show notes to make it a little more accessible for everybody. If you like what you hear in this show, then please do us a huge favor, go to iTunes and leave us a star rating. It really, really helps to put this information in front of people better looking for it. Hey, if you hate the show, let me know that too. Shoot me an email to Matt@ministryofhemp.com and tell me what you would like to hear, what you think we’re doing wrong and what you think we could do better. I would love to hear your thoughts. That is it for today’s show and for now this is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp telling you to take care of yourself and take care of others and make good decisions, will you? This is the Ministry of Hemp podcast, signing off.

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