Chris Fontes Archives - Ministry of Hemp America's leading advocate for hemp Sun, 09 Jun 2019 21:51:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://ministryofhemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Icon.png Chris Fontes Archives - Ministry of Hemp 32 32 The Low Down Dirty Hemp Supply Chain https://ministryofhemp.com/hemp-supply-chain/ https://ministryofhemp.com/hemp-supply-chain/#comments Tue, 14 May 2019 19:29:47 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=56560 This week on the Ministry of Hemp podcast, Matt talks with industry experts about the problems with today's hemp supply chain and what's being done in the private sector to compensate for the lack of government oversight.

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This week on the show Matt is talking to Jenn Price from Golden State Govt. Relations and Chris Fontes from Hempexchange.com about the problems with today’s hemp supply chain and what’s being done in the private sector to compensate for the lack of government oversight.

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! 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.

Under the current lack of legal regulations, the industry’s supply chain remains inconsistent at best.

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More About the Hemp Supply Chain

https://youtu.be/Fl0LWXtZJH4

Here are some articles which explain more about the hemp industry:

Episode Transcript

Matt Baum: 00:01 How often do you think we go to the grocery store a week? If you had to guess?

Casey: 00:05 Three times.

Matt Baum: 00:05 Three times. Because we don’t have kids, and we don’t plan that well. Right?

Casey: 00:09 We’ve been better. We usually go on Sunday.

Matt Baum: 00:11 That’s true.

Casey: 00:11 And then maybe once… I would say, okay. Yeah, once during the week and the farmers market. So yeah three times.

Matt Baum: 00:16 Okay. So what do you think at the grocery store produce wise, what do you think is the hardest thing to get to the grocery store from the farmer? If you had to guess. Don’t say Brussel sprouts.

Casey: 00:32 I was going to go with beets this time.

Matt Baum: 00:33 Beets? I would have said something like avocados.

Casey: 00:37 Oh yeah. Okay.

Matt Baum: 00:38 Because avocados come from-

Casey: 00:40 Mexico.

Matt Baum: 00:40 Mainly from Mexico and drug lords were controlling it. What if I were to tell you that even with drug lords controlling avocados coming in the United States there was a product that’s even harder to get to market and it’s grown right here in the United States, and it’s not illegal.

Casey: 01:00 I’d believe that.

Matt Baum: 01:01 You’re terrible. I’m talking here with my wife, Casey, and she works for a local university medical school. She works in science outreach and public relations. I’m not mentioning the name of the school because hemp is still a touchy subject in Nebraska. It’s legal, but we don’t really have a state plan for it yet. So let me ask you this.

Casey: 01:30 Yes.

Matt Baum: 01:30 Would you believe me if I told you that it was easier to get marijuana, which is still completely illegal than it is to legally get hemp in Nebraska?

Casey: 01:41 Oh yeah. I believe you 100%.

Matt Baum: 01:43 It’s ridiculous, right?

Casey: 01:44 Yeah. That seems really silly.

Matt Baum: 01:50 This is Matt Baum and you’re listening to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast. And today we’re talking about supply chain, not just any supply chain, but of course the hemp supply chain. How hemp gets from the farm to the company that’s going to do with whatever it is they’re going to do with it, whether it’s making rope, making CBD, or putting it in food, and then how it gets to you.

Matt Baum: 02:21 You may remember a few episodes ago, I talked to Jenn Price from Golden State Government Relations who works with hemp regulation in California. At that time I dubbed her our queen of hemp regulation and I warned her it doesn’t pay well and well we haven’t paid her yet. So, if nothing else I was being truthful. But when I did talk to Jenn, we also went into some things that could make getting hemp from the farm to the consumer pretty difficult. And it starts with a magic number.

Jenn Price: 02:52 0.3% THC has-

Matt Baum: 02:56 0.3%-

Jenn Price: 02:57 Has to be 0.3% or less THC to be hemp, and this actually creates kind of what’s going to be a very tricky problem for all the states is they’re trying to regulate this as we start to produce. And it’s a problem for the farmers as well. Different parts of the hemp plant are going to have different concentrations of THC. And this whole concept of 0.3% is actually based on the whole plant itself. So including leaves, including stems, including the plant. So any tests… So if you were to test an atypical bud, it’s probably going to have more than 0.3%. But if you were to combine it with other parts of the plant that have essentially zero THC in them, the overall percentage is 0.3 but it creates a real kind of nerve racking area for the farmer. Because depending on how they come out and test your crop, which is going to be one of the requirements to make sure that people are truly growing hemp and not marijuana.

Jenn Price: 04:03 You’re walking this fine line. If they put a part of the plant from higher up on the plant where it’s a little more potent, this could cause real problems for farmers and people could get in trouble.

Matt Baum: 04:12 Oh my God.

Jenn Price: 04:13 It’s why people are looking for, they’re working on the seed cultivars right now and people are trying to produce seeds and it strains that have essentially no THC.

Matt Baum: 04:25 Right? So they’re just strictly food grade.

Jenn Price: 04:26 There might be a slight range that they give, but it’s going to be very small. So let’s say tested 1% THC, you’re still in trouble. You just illegally grew marijuana.

Matt Baum: 04:38 Oh my God. So we have a plant that looks like an illegal drug, but it’s not. And the only reason that it’s not is the level of a chemical that’s present in it. And the only way to tell if the chemical is present is to test it. But you got to test it a certain way. And if it’s not tested that way, you could be going to jail.

Jenn Price: 05:00 It’s basically going to be on a hot mess. Like this is part of what USDA has to figure out? The standards that they have to put into place more for testing in general. And I don’t even know any of this because California had already done their own statewide approval of a hemp program just recently. So we’ve been in the process of starting to get that going. There’s been open comment periods from the public. Currently in California we allow a research program. So if it’s part of known institutional research program, they can grow hemp. So we only have a handful of hemp farms in the state, but what they’ll come out and tell you is that you really need to take it from the whole plant or you’re going to have a problem on your testing and then you hear from the labs and they’re like, what are we supposed to do? Go get giant trucks and go haul whole plants away?

Jenn Price: 05:59 Hemp plants can grow quite tall. So, this is a huge problem that we’re to going to be facing, trying to figure out, and it’s probably going to take some time and possibly some legislative changes on how we either get real strict on how we’re going to test and truly test whole plants. Even though the labs will tell you that’s not really feasible for us to come out and take random samplings of whole plants and then take them back to their laboratory and they’re going to have to start having curing areas. They’re going to have to figure that out. They’re going to have to grind it all. I mean, how they’re actually going to do what-

Matt Baum: 06:33 It sounds like a nightmare [crosstalk 00:06:33].

Jenn Price: 06:34 It really is going to be a nightmare for sure. So as much as, and I do want to get-

Matt Baum: 06:39 Now picture for a moment, you’re a farmer, and you’ve heard the stories of people making tons of cash per acre on growing hemp for the CBD market, for the industrial market, for the food market. Who do you turn to get your crop to the market?

Chris: 06:57 Certainly. My name is Chris [Fons 00:06:59] and I am co-founder and CEO of hemp exchange.

Matt Baum: 07:05 As you’re going to hear, Chris is a very smart guy and he’s really cool too. He came out of the healthcare business and he’s comes from a background of software engineering and business development. He’s not a farmer, but he did marry into a family of farmers and maybe that’s got him where he is now. But he’s chosen one of the most difficult jobs I can possibly think of in the American agriculture supply chain business today. Chris, first I want to thank you for coming on the show. You had contacted me talking about hemp exchange and some of the problems you were having with supply chain. Let’s just start with what does hemp exchange do?

Chris: 07:42 So hemp exchange is a business to business marketplace focusing on the supply side of the hemp industry in which verified businesses can log onto the marketplace and both buy and sell hemp and hemp derivatives. So this is hemp biomass flour, and then extracted materials such as crude just to isolate et cetera. Yes, yes, exactly.

Matt Baum: 08:09 Okay. In a perfect world, what would the supply chain look like?

Chris: 08:13 So in a perfect world in any agricultural industry, a perfect supply chain would be one in which farmers were able to just farm and then supply their product to either a clearing house or deliver to a silo. And they would pretty much be able to count on their yields. They’d pretty much be able to count on what they’re going to get per acre dollar wise. How much is going to cost to run other farm per acre. And so they can accurately forecast what they should be planting, how much they’re going to get out of it, how much it’s going to cost them. And they have no problems with selling their product once it’s been grown. Further down the supply chain individuals that would like to purchase a said commodity from an agricultural industry, whether it be corn, or soy or ashwagandha or anything, they should be able to have a uniformity and standards in place.

Matt Baum: 09:18 Uniformity and standards is huge. And that’s going to come up again. And Jen and I were just talking about it, but you’ll hear Jeff mention it several times.

Jeff: 09:26 So they don’t need to know the farmer. They don’t need to buy out to Kentucky and shake hands with the guy that grew the soy. They just through some of these clearing houses or wholesale distributors, they can buy a hundred bushels of corn or a thousand bushels of wheat or whatever it is-

Matt Baum: 09:45 Right. The people of Wonder Bread aren’t necessarily shaking hands with the guy that’s growing the wheat basically.

Jeff: 09:50 Exactly. And then standards along the way. Safety and transparency along the way. No question about the quality of the product you’re getting. Proper testing in place for safety, like heavy metals, pesticides, microbial test, things like that. And then safe transport of these products. When you buy corn, it’s going to show up on a truck and you have no questions on if it’s going to make it, so-

Matt Baum: 10:16 That can be an issue when you’re selling hemp and it just happens to look exactly like marijuana.

Jeff: 10:24 Yeah. Sadly, it’s still an issue today. There’s a lot of lack of education both at the state level and even local law enforcement level. And some states are taking a very, a proactive negative approach towards hemp.

Matt Baum: 10:38 Yeah, Nebraska is definitely one of them where I live, certainly. You might remember in episode three, I talked to Josh Hendricks who was a farmer and had some farm land in Kentucky. Just this past January, a truck coming from Kentucky where hemp is completely legal, carrying 18,000 pounds of hemp bound for Colorado again,

Matt Baum: 11:00 … again, where hemp is completely legal, was seized in Oklahoma. Even though the 2018 Farm Bill states that hemp is legal now, the police that inspected the truck thought they smelled marijuana, looked at a plant that resembled marijuana, and the truck drivers were arrested, the hemp was seized, and a huge mess ensued while they tried to figure out how to test it. I can’t think of any other kind of crop where you could be arrested just for transporting it because it looks like something that’s illegal. This hemp was being transported to Colorado on behalf of Panacea Life Sciences, and was estimated to be worth almost a million dollars, which is effectively enough to put this company out of business.

Matt Baum: 11:41 Keep in mind, the new 2018 Farm Bill made hemp legal nationwide last December, and that new law specifically protects interstate commerce, therefore, these truck drivers weren’t doing anything wrong. But at the same time, it’s hard to blame the police, too. In their defense, they have what looks like a controlled substance in a truck, and a lot of it, so of course when that truck is pulled over and they see what’s in it, they’re going to seize it until such time that they can figure out it’s not in fact marijuana. It’s hemp. But an uneducated police department in a state like Oklahoma where hemp still is in this gray area while the state is waiting for the FDA and the USDA to let them know how it can be grown and handled, it’s hard to blame anybody in this situation.

Matt Baum: 12:31 It leads to an even larger and scarier discussion.

Matt Baum: 12:33 So because hemp isn’t regulated and it isn’t traded, we don’t have like an exchange where we can look and say, oh, just like pork belly is trading at so and so a pound, how do you set up any kind of supply chain whatsoever? What does the current supply chain look like?

Chris: 12:52 So, the current supply chain really is is kind of like very similar to … it has definitely some overlap into drug culture supply chain. It’s back alley handshakes. It’s I know a guy who knows a guy. It’s I’ve never met you before. You say you have this. I’m going to in good faith deposit money and hope it shows up. There’s exceptions to this, and we can talk about that, too, but wholesale, the open free market trade of industrial hemp on the supply side is pretty sketchy.

Matt Baum: 13:29 Really?

Chris: 13:31 It’s scary for … I’ve never met a person in the industry that has not been burned at least once.

Matt Baum: 13:36 Really?

Chris: 13:37 Every conference or trade expo I’ve been to or every group I’ve spoken with in the past year, every keynote speaker, regardless of topic, has brought up the fact that they have been burned, either during a sale or during a purchase from either product that isn’t real, product that doesn’t exist, product that isn’t what they said it was, money that’s not [inaudible 00:14:00]-

Matt Baum: 14:00 And we’re not even selling drugs here. This is what blows my mind.

Chris: 14:04 Exactly. Yeah, when I was introduced to the industry two years ago, it blew my mind, as well. I couldn’t believe that there was this level of unprofessionalism still happening. I really think it’s just born of it’s a brand new industry in the country. Well, let me re-phrase that. It’s a new to us industry.

Matt Baum: 14:24 Right. Right.

Chris: 14:25 Previous generations, as I’m sure you guys, your audience is well aware of, produced hemp, but it’s new to current citizens of America, I guess, and there’s just no infrastructure, and because it was this federal gray area on whether or not it was still controlled substance up until December, a lot of big players that have the answers and the keys to the kingdom on how a supply chain works wouldn’t enter the system.

Matt Baum: 14:52 Sure.

Chris: 14:53 So you have new folks entering the system trying to make the system work with no real previous experience in supply chain, agricultural sciences if you will, and just trying to piecemeal it together. In that, you have the good actors who are just trying to do the best they can with what they have. I think that we saw the rise in a lot of bad actors who just saw dollar signs.

Matt Baum: 15:16 Right. Of course.

Chris: 15:17 [inaudible 00:15:17] I can network, I can talk, I can make connections, and-

Matt Baum: 15:20 It’s just like any other business, right? I mean, how hard can it be?

Chris: 15:24 Yeah. Exactly. So this was their thought process, right? So before you know it, I think we had, and this is a number I’m totally making up, but it feels like there’s a hundred brokers to every actual producer or buyer.

Matt Baum: 15:40 Oh, sure. They’re all trying to get in on it right now while it’s young.

Chris: 15:43 They’re all trying to get in on it. And there are good quality brokers out there who really know the industry, and really look out for their clients, and I don’t want to say anything negative about a good broker. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of really bad brokers out there that have completely tarnished any perception of brokerism in this industry, if you will, and people are terrified. People are terrified to talk to brokers. People are terrified to sell product, but they have to sell it. People are terrified to buy product, but they have to buy it, so we’re stuck in this supply chain right now where it’s just a total mess. I wouldn’t say it’s stifling growth, but it’s certainly is not helping growth.

Matt Baum: 16:23 It sounds like it’s stifling growth to me.

Chris: 16:27 I would argue it is. I hesitate to just say that without some data backing it up, but it certainly feels like it’s stifling growth.

Matt Baum: 16:34 Well, I mean, I don’t know how it can’t, when you’ve got, like you said, a bunch of backdoor deals basically, and we’re still trying to figure out which state can grow what, in which state can we drive it through, in which state can we not drive it through. Can I ask you, what is Hemp Exchange doing right now to improve the situation?

Chris: 16:54 I’ll start by saying we can’t fix every problem.

Matt Baum: 16:57 Of course.

Chris: 16:58 But we’re sure trying. What we’re doing is we are hand … we’re creating a white glove service to fully facilitate the listing, transaction, and delivery of product that includes verification of the individuals doing the transacting.

Matt Baum: 17:18 Right.

Chris: 17:20 All of the payments go through an FDIC insured bank. We have a couple partners actually backing us, so they’re very well aware of what we’re doing.

Matt Baum: 17:29 Hey, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but how difficult is that, working with banks right now, when you have credit cards companies won’t even touch this stuff?

Chris: 17:37 Yeah. Super difficult. We were very fortunate that … Well, I wouldn’t say fortunate. After a lot of hard work and kicking pavement, we were happy to discover two different partners that both were onboard, pretty much as soon as it became federally legal. They were like, “Yeah, it’s a little bit of gray area, but we’re going to dive in.”

Matt Baum: 17:56 Yeah. You mean somebody has to, right? Otherwise just no one’s ever going to. We’ve got to get somebody in the pool first.

Chris: 18:03 Yeah, exactly. Currently there’s a lot of personal bank to personal bank transfers, there’s a lot of cashier’s checks, there’s a lot of cash being thrown around.

Matt Baum: 18:12 See and that’s just dangerous.

Chris: 18:12 That’s not sustainable.

Matt Baum: 18:14 Yeah, absolutely not.

Chris: 18:16 So, we have a wire transfer solution when you purchase on the platform that does sit in an account until product’s delivered. We don’t personally run the trucks, but we have partnered with a third- party logistics company that has been in the cannabis industry for a very long time. I’m not certain if they want me revealing their name on the podcast, so I’ll refrain from that until I can talk to-

Matt Baum: 18:40 No, I totally understand. Totally understand.

Chris: 18:42 I’ll let you know after the fact. But they have a $2 million hemp cargo policy for each conveyance, and as far as we know, they’re the only company that has this. We are in talks with a separate company that claims they do as well, and we’d love to explore that a little more, and hopefully more transportation companies will come online, because we have to be able to facilitate the movement of this product [crosstalk 00:19:05].

Matt Baum: 19:05 Of course. Hey, let me ask you, when you say a $2 million conveyance, what does that mean? They will only move $2 million worth of product at a time?

Chris: 19:12 Per truck.

Matt Baum: 19:13 Per truck.

Chris: 19:14 So each truck and each truck’s route is a conveyance, so if you have four trucks going from point A to point B, that’s actually four conveyances.

Matt Baum: 19:23 So, $8 million worth of product, basically?

Chris: 19:26 Correct.

Matt Baum: 19:26 Okay. I can’t believe I did that math that fast. Wow.

Chris: 19:30 I’m impressed.

Matt Baum: 19:31 What would be the single best thing that could happen tomorrow to make Hemp Exchange’s life easier?

Chris: 19:40 The single best thing that could happen tomorrow I think to make our life easier would be standardization amongst testing.

Matt Baum: 19:49 Yeah. That’s going to be so difficult.

Chris: 19:52 Yeah. It’s definitely above my scientific mind to try to solve this problem, but I’m confident in our nation’s ability to rally and come up with creative solutions. I’m certain it’s only a matter of time before we crack that nut.

Matt Baum: 20:10 Yeah. It will happen. It’s just right now it’s really scary it seems.

Chris: 20:15 Yeah, it is. The plant itself and what the plant is used for is a little more complicated than corn.

Matt Baum: 20:21 Sure.

Chris: 20:22 Right, or wheat, so those additional variables do definitely make it a harder problem to solve than testing for other agricultural commodities, but I’m certain we’ll get there eventually, sooner than later. There’s a couple of players in the industry right now that have backgrounds in standardization, and are in the testing space for cannabis, and are pushing really hard to create the standards, and have the federal guidelines adopt them. At minimum, have the industry adopt them. I mean, I think the more we can self-regulate the better, but there is definitely room for some federal guidelines and regulation here, and it’s only a matter of time before that happens.

Matt Baum: 21:07 Let me ask you how scary is it to put Hemp Exchange’s reputation on the line? You built a white glove service, which means you’re handling every aspect of this, and trusting other people to have the right product, to transport the product. How scary is that for your reputation?

Chris: 21:27 Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely some trepidation. I pride myself on being a upstanding and moral character, and so putting my reputation and our reputation as a company on the line, there’s always going to be some anxiety, but I sleep at night because we put everything through its paces. We are very particular about how we operate. We are scrupulous with verifying business registrations, and photo IDs, and every

Jeff: 22:00 The COA that gets sent to us, we send it to the lab that created it and say, “Is this real?” We are doing everything we can within our power that’s reasonable to ensure the transaction is safe, protected, and authentic. There is room for manipulation of the system, just like there’s room for manipulation of any system, and I’m not going to preach that it’s infallible or-

Matt Baum: 22:21 Of course.

Jeff: 22:21 … that it’s perfection.

Matt Baum: 22:25 If you did, I would call you a liar, so.

Jeff: 22:28 And you would be just in doing so.

Matt Baum: 22:29 Yeah, I appreciate … and anyone who tells you that it’s going to smooth as silk. I was recently at the NoCo Convention in Colorado and I think I spoke to some of you guys out there actually and everybody said the same thing. They said, “Anyone that tells you that any part of this industry is going to be easy right now, is lying to you.”

Jeff: 22:48 Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Baum: 22:48 It’s very difficult, and it’s up to us, and it’s up to people like Hemp Exchange to vet good people and vet good transportation and farmers. I think it’s amazing what you guys are doing. I cannot believe the headache that you’ve decided to on, but I applaud you for it.

Jeff: 23:08 I enjoy coming up with simple solutions to difficult problems. Unfortunately, we haven’t stumbled upon too many simple solutions, but we’ve crafted the solutions in such a manner that it’s fairly simple to the end user.

Matt Baum: 23:20 Chris, it was nice talking with you. You’ve got quite the puzzle to put together here and it sounds like Hemp Exchange is doing about as good as they possibly can right now. I sure appreciate you coming on the show.

Jeff: 23:30 Hey, I appreciate you having us on the show. I know you could pick from a lot of people to talk to and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today.

Matt Baum: 23:44 Cashier’s checks, wire transfers, backhand deals, all of this sounds like the stuff of drug dealing, but it’s not and that’s what’s so upsetting. The 2018 Farm Bill has effectively decriminalized hemp, but growers, suppliers, and those that transport the product are still being punished. Let’s go back to Jen, who watched the same thing happen with regulated marijuana in California.

Jen: 24:10 It’s going to be just like cannabis in California, which we rushed it. We tried to make it happen. We said we want this, we’re going to do it, and then we rushed everything and then we realized we put a whole bunch of things into place that have a whole bunch of other consequences and problems associated with them and now we’re on the verge of collapse of an industry that’s only a year old. Sorry, a regulated industry that’s only a year old. Obviously, the industry’s much older than that, but it was working just fine, and we broke it in a year.

Matt Baum: 24:44 That’s government for you, baby.

Jen: 24:47 That was the other thing that happened this week. I know we kind of just went with the growing it, but it is topical because it’s timely. On the same day, on the 27th of February, Scott Gottlieb, who’s the commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, was sitting before some congress members and kind of getting grilled as to when the FDA will start addressing CBD in consumable products because that’s something they said, “You guys aren’t supposed to be doing it, but we’re going to look into it because we know there’s a big public demand.” So, they were kind of getting grilled and what he said is that they’re actually going to start taking public comment in April, but their hands are tied from the regulatory perspective a little bit tighter because what I was going into with the Epidiolex. The fact that CBD has already been approved in a pharmaceutical, puts it in a category where it’s no longer eligible to be used as a dietary supplement.

Matt Baum: 25:46 Right, we’re not talking homeopathy anymore. Now we’re taking pharmaceutical science.

Jen: 25:50 Right, so because it already got approved as a pharmaceutical it takes it off the ability to be able to be a dietary supplement and it kind of creates an area where even though they … well, the other thing too is that it’s proven that it’s looking very … it seems pretty obvious it has therapeutic benefit and so they’re being put into-

Matt Baum: 26:13 We just have to prove it now in the laboratory.

Jen: 26:13 … a weird position where they’re like, “Okay, what are we going to do?” It’s technically already been categorized as a drug therefore it can’t be a dietary supplement. So, they have to come up with some kind of way to regulate it if they’re going to allow it in food, but the current laws that are in place don’t really allow for it. He basically announced to the congress folk that were pressing him that, “I don’t have a lot of leg to stand on with regulation. This isn’t probably something I can fix with regulation. I will look into it, but as a department we’re going to look into it, but I’m probably going to be coming back here and telling you that we need a legislative fix to make this work.”

Jen: 26:58 The way the Food, Drugs, and Cosmetic Act reads currently, the language there, is basically preventing the ability for the FDA to go forward with trying to allow for CBD to put into food. Even hemp derived is that way, so it’s really complex. One thing he mentioned is they might look at it if it’s pure CBD in high dosage, they’re probably going to think of that as pharmaceutical grade, where if it’s full spectrum derivatives from hemp, that that might be something that they’ll allow in food. That’s kind of something they’re brainstorming. They’ve been trying to work out-

Matt Baum: 27:41 A distinction going to have to be made basically.

Jen: 27:41 … a distinction between the fact that yes, we want to use it for pharmaceuticals because it does have therapeutic benefit, versus we get that it’s also just this natural compound that basically has virtually no bad side effects whatsoever.

Matt Baum: 27:57 Right.

Jen: 27:57 So, how can you say we can’t use it as a dietary supplement?

Matt Baum: 28:00 Oh, that won’t stop them. Don’t worry.

Jen: 28:04 Yeah, not if certain interests get really interested in it at the lab.

Matt Baum: 28:08 Oh, yeah. So, there’s a legislative swamp you have to slog through.

Jen: 28:11 Big pharma’s obviously already interested. They’ve already been working with it, so it’s going to be really interesting times these next few years. Fortunately for hemp as a whole though, as much as there’s interest in it for CBD, the actual many, many, many uses for hemp for other purposes, industrial purposes, is phenomenal and all of that isn’t going to be affected by these problems with the FDA. Once the USDA gets their butt in gear, and we get programs on board and people can start growing hemp, all those other uses of hemp, the food production, using the fibers for clothing, for other industrial materials that can be made with hemp, all of that is totally onboard. It’s going to happen. The USDA just needs to catch up. The whole FDA, CBD in food, that is what’s going to be a little bit longer and trickier.

Matt Baum: 29:07 Now I know this is supposed to be a hemp education show, and we want to maintain a very positive outlook on hemp in the United States, this sounds really scary. Just listening to these people talk about it and how difficult it is, but there is a bright side and that’s the money to be made. There is huge money in industrial hemp, and it will not be stopped. We are still capitalist in this country, and we found a way to use a plant that is inherently renewable, not just for CBD and body cream and whatnot, but to make composite woods, and concrete, and building materials to straighten plastics. There’s a serious and renewable future for hemp in this country and it is coming whether its opponents like it or not. We just need to figure it out on a government level. Thanks again to Jen and Jeff for coming on the show this week to talk about supply chain and how hard it is to get hemp to the marketplace. I’ll have a link in the show notes about that story about the Oklahoma hemp truck seizure and links to Jeff and both Jen’s websites. Thanks to everybody that’s been calling in and leaving comments about the show. If you really want to help the show, please go to iTunes and leave a written review. It helps us in search results so much, more than you know. Really, it’s the best thing you can do if you want to share this information. I love to hear from you guys, and you can always call and leave a message at 402-819-6417. I look forward to having a whole show over just answering your questions. You can also shoot us questions on Twitter @MinistryofHemp or Facebook/ministryofhemp. Please get in contact, talk to us, tell me what you want me to talk about. I would love to hear from you.

Matt Baum: 31:05 Next time on the Ministry of Hemp Podcast we’re going to be talking about cannabinoids and extraction, what are we trying to extract and how is it extracted? It’s going to be really cool and there’s going to be a lot of science involved, and I’ve got some very knowledgeable people lined up to talk to me. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you? This is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.

As always, you can find download the complete show transcript here:

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