In this episode of Ministry of Hemp Podcast, our host Matt talks about the new Cannabis Institute at UC Davis. Then, he interviews PlusCBD Oil‘s National Educator, Maggie Frank, about combating myths, proper dosage, and taking CBD education to the streets.

PlusCBD Oil is one of our Top CBD Brands. Our guest Maggie Frank contributed some education to our roundup of the best CBD skincare products, which also features a review of PlusCBD Oil Hemp Body Lotion.

This episode is part of our ongoing Women in Hemp series.

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CBD education: Complete episode transcript

Below you will find the full written transcript of this episode:

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:
As you’ve probably heard, there are a lot of false claims and bad information about CBD out there. And today on the show, we’re going to talk to somebody that is taking hemp education to the streets. Her name is Maggie Frank and she is the national educator for PlusCBD Oil. PlusCBD are good buddies of ours over at ministryofhemp.com. You can find them in our top brand section.

Matt Baum:
Not only are they a great company putting out great CBD, PlusCBD was also one of the first companies to hire and send a national educator out in the wild to teach people about the benefits of CBD, how to take it, how and why it works, and to dispel some of the myths that are out there. But before we get into that, there are some pretty exciting news coming out of California on the subject of hemp education as well.

Cannabis research at the University of California

Matt Baum:
Last year, The University of California, Davis set up one of the nation’s first cannabis institutes. And just recently, they’ve named two researchers, a schizophrenia researcher and a plant expert to lead its new center for the research in study of hemp and marijuana. UC, Davis has named professors, Cameron Carter and Lee Tian as co-directors of its cannabis and hemp research center, which is charged with increasing academic collaboration around hemp and marijuana, and establishing external partnerships related to cannabis.

Matt Baum:
What this means is we now have an American research center on a well-respected agricultural college that is going to actually start doing the first real American research into hemp and marijuana, and that is very important. Carter, the first professor, researches the effects of marijuana in the brain and Tian studies plant metabolism and diseases. Her work includes identifying candidate genes in the cannabis plant affecting the delta nine THC biosynthesis.

Matt Baum:
If you’ve listened to this show before, you’ve heard several people lament the lack of American research, and that’s exactly where the FDA goes when they start looking at Canadian studies or European studies, they instantly want to throw them out because they want to see controlled American research studies. Well, that is what UC, Davis is going to be doing. UC, Davis is just one of several private and public universities setting up cannabis studies and trying to lock down funding for cannabis research, which couldn’t be better news for the future of cannabis in the United States and will certainly help a lot the next time the FDA tries to point out some murky warning about the possible dangers of CBD.

Meet Maggie Frank

Matt Baum:
Next up is my interview with Maggie Frank. I caught up with Maggie from her hotel room in San Diego. She was just about to go do some hot yoga, so I really appreciated her time and I hope you do too. Maggie was super personal and a lot of fun to talk to, so much so that I forgot to press record when we started talking. So, this interview picks up with her talking about her background and where she came from.

Maggie Frank:
My background was nutrition, personal training. And then I, the way I ended up connecting to education within the natural product space, was, I actually worked retail. I was a buyer for what is now Sprouts Farmers Market, which is on the West Coast. And I used to sit with companies and work with who we brought into the store. And it was really through that job that I got to understand the manufacturing side of supplementation and for me, it really clicked with the background in nutrition and personal training. It brought it all full circle.

Matt Baum:
And how did you find your way into hemp then, just through that or was there an experience you had?

Maggie Frank:
Yeah, I found my way through to nutrition through living on a sailboat down in Mexico for two years.

Matt Baum:
Not bad.

Maggie Frank:
Literally like left the standard American world diet behind. I was catching most of my own food or trading with fishermen for fruits and vegetables and stuff.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Maggie Frank:
It was pretty awesome and I literally saw my health transform. I had always suffered from really bad eczema and bad asthma. There literally is not a winter in my childhood memory that my sister or I were not in the hospital for pneumonia.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Maggie Frank:
Breathing treatments, the whole deal.

Matt Baum:
I did that when I was a kid too.

Maggie Frank:
All that stuff, right? And I got away from the way I was eating, and I got away from the medication, and I literally saw my health transform. My hormone issues disappeared, the inflammation issues disappeared. I had control over the way I felt. And now I know that my parasympathetic system was becoming aligned. It wasn’t as stressed.

Maggie Frank:
And it really just, it inspired me to bring that knowledge back with me and really connect that to people. Because I realized, “Oh my gosh, we don’t have to feel that way.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
And I learned that bit early on, right? So I was only 21 when I took this trip down to Mexico. So, it really changed the path. I came back, I studied nutrition, personal training. That got me into the natural product space. And then I worked as a national educator for a company called Vibrant Health. They make efficacious super food, clinically formulated probiotic combinations. And they really talk about the benefit of cellular health and how our modern life is setting us up for failure.

Maggie Frank:
So unfortunately, they were having some issues with finances and sending somebody like me out on the road is extremely expensive.

Matt Baum:
Yeah I can see that.

CBD education and PlusCBD Oil

Maggie Frank:
So I left that company and five days later Stuart Tom, who is the VP of human nutrition at CV sciences, who makes PlusCBD Oil called me up and said, “Hey, we’d really like to talk to you about becoming our educator.” And Matt, I didn’t know, I mean, I had used cannabis. I went to school in Santa Barbara, I grew up in Huntington Beach. I definitely had experience.

Matt Baum:
Hard to get away from it, I’m sure.

Maggie Frank:
Right. I’d used it out in Mexico and it was a different-

Matt Baum:
Again.

Maggie Frank:
… caliber, like totally right. We would expect that. But I thought that he had perhaps gotten misinformation about me. I was like, “Listen Stuart, other than knowing I enjoy it. I’m not a hemp expert in any way, and I’m definitely not an endocannabinoid expert in any way.” He was like, “There’s really nobody who is.”

Matt Baum:
Yeah, that’s just it.

Maggie Frank:
Educating his face. He’s like, “We can teach you.” So, I’d be at a kind of now in today’s timing, that opportunity would have never been given to me because there’s people who know this stuff, right?

Matt Baum:
We’ve got people doing the tests now.

Maggie Frank:
Who are now doing what I do, but I just happened to have this weird combination of expertise at a time where nobody was willing to do the job because it wasn’t legitimate yet. And it’s then so, so fun.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Maggie Frank:
And so inspiring. And just such a wonderful experience.

Matt Baum:
So like you said, there are a lot of people now that are doing the testing and have real medical and research backgrounds looking into this, which is great, but those people aren’t doing what you do. They’re not leaving the laboratory to go out and educate the public. What does that look like? Like what is your job? How does it work?

Maggie Frank:
I consider myself a bridge. I was never the smartest kid in the classroom. I had to work pretty hard at it.

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Maggie Frank:
I think that as a result I have a unique way to take very, very complex information and break it down for a normal person. So-

Matt Baum:
That’s teaching.

Maggie Frank:
… how do I have this conversation about the benefits of not only hemp from an agricultural standpoint, environmental standpoint, socioeconomic standpoint, but how do I also take this extremely complex plant of the endocannabinoid system, something they’ve never heard about and really take that to a point where they get excited about the potential that this amazing plant has to really facilitate better physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing while also changing the landscape socioeconomically the way we manufacture. We create bottles for water, we build homes. I mean, it’s a rare opportunity in this world where we get to do good for ourselves and do good for the planet. And it’s also controversial, and sexy, and political and it’s just so cool.

Matt Baum:
It’s tied into everything right now.

Maggie Frank:
Yes. So, I get to have this conversation with people and watch, and it’s a wide range of people. I talk to moms, I talk to great grandmas who are 85 and just want something to help them feel better on a daily basis and feel more mobile. I talk to people who are dealing with sick children. I deal with people who just want to recover from their CrossFit. I mean, the range of people this touches is so huge.

Matt Baum:
It’s all of us.

Maggie Frank:
It really [inaudible 00:10:00] to humanity.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
And then I get to see the doctors, people who literally are opening their minds to this come in and talk to somebody like me who, I mean there’s nowhere near…

Matt Baum:
Not a doctor.

Maggie Frank:
As educated or capable as they are in their fields of expertise. But you get to see these lights go off in their eyes. Like, Oh my gosh, this is such a missing piece.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Maggie Frank:
Things that confounded them over the years. It all connects.

CBD education and the medical establishment

Matt Baum:
Can I ask you, are you seeing more doctors accepting… Doctors actually going, “Okay, there might be something here.” Or are you still seeing a lot of pushback?

Maggie Frank:
You see both.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
There’s no consistency. I tell people all the time, there are doctors I talk to who literally tell every single patient they see that they should be using this like a super food to support this very profound system that is really in a modern world set up to fail us. The endocannabinoid system wants us to have a balance intake of Omega three and Omega six fatty acids. 93% of America doesn’t do that.

Matt Baum:
Go figure.

Maggie Frank:
And the endocannabinoid system wants us to have a really healthy gut. Most of us don’t do that. Our endocannabinoid system needs us to eat a colorful diet, and herbs, and spices, and most of America’s eating brown and beige. So, there’s a lot of doctors that I’m seeing see this as a way to support the body in an imperfect world. But I’m also still meeting… I don’t meet the doctors because of course they’re not coming to my lectures. But I meet their patients who say, “Listen, my doctor’s just very resistant to any of this.”

Maggie Frank:
And I mean, this is probably a bit of a controversial field, but I feel this is empowering and we all have to be honest about the fact that sometimes we have to kiss a lot of frogs to find our prince. Right? If our doctors aren’t working in a way that aligns with our goals and our chosen pathway for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing, find a new frog.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, it’s okay to question that. I work with a guy, his wife has Crohn’s disease and she has extreme pain from it. And her pain doctor has said absolutely not. Absolutely no hemp-based medicine, no CBD. I won’t have it. And went as far as to say, “We will test your urine. We will test your urine and if you test positive, then we will not give you any more painkillers.”

Matt Baum:
She found another doctor who was like, “I don’t care at all. If that helps, absolutely do it, by all means.” So like you’re getting one message from a doctor saying, “No, not only does it not work, it’s dangerous.” And then you’re getting another message from a doctor’s like, “Not only is it not dangerous, if it helps you and I’m prescribing less opioids, then by all means, please.”

Maggie Frank:
And not only that, but that doctor is also looking for ways to learn more as to why. I get doctors, nurses, specialists, immunologists who come to my lectures all the time. And the reason they tell me they’re there is because they had so many patients who hadn’t gotten relief from other modalities, yet amazing response from this.

Maggie Frank:
And they wanted to be, “I’m able to understand the why.” And it’s so beautiful when they have that perspective. So I mean, honestly though, what we’re seeing in CBD, I’ve seen with probiotics and the medical community. When I started 15 years ago in this world, I mean I was told I was a quack. [inaudible 00:13:49] suggesting that maybe somebody dealing with anxiety or depression, look at that help?

Matt Baum:
Right.

Maggie Frank:
It really wasn’t until the 2012 human microbiome project that we see doctors really opening their minds to the fact that that microbiome is so integral to our health. I’ve seen pushback from the medical community when it comes to things like fish oil.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, absolutely.

Maggie Frank:
Right? So, we always have this very wide range of reactions with our practitioners. And I think that that’s why we as a society need to be empowered enough like your friend did to say, “You do work for me and I understand and respect your opinion, but it doesn’t align with what I want for the body I live in forever. So I’m going to find somebody-“

Matt Baum:
And counterpoint, pushback works on both sides. Pushback is important because when you push back and say, “I don’t know that I think this might help with me.” It’s also good if a researcher or a doctor pushes back and says, “I want to learn more about that before.”

Maggie Frank:
100%.

Matt Baum:
And then we find out, “Yes. Oh look, it’s science. It’s not quackery. This isn’t magic,” you know?

Maggie Frank:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
So, what do your lectures look like? Where do you do like a… If I want to come see you lecture, where would I go?

Maggie Frank:
So, I do a lot of health food stores, stores like Freshtime, independent health food stores, health fairs. So, a lot of times those are sponsored through either health expos or fitness expos, supplement expos. Myself or one of our other educators will speak at those type of events. I do integrative practitioners, some pharmacies. There’s quite a few compounding pharmacies-

Matt Baum:
That’s cool. That’s very cool.

Maggie Frank:
… that sell our products and we’ll host events. Yeah, so it’s a very, very wide range the way I’m going.

Matt Baum:
And who comes? Who are you talking to at these?

Maggie Frank:
It can range as well. It can be retailers who work within the natural products food space. It can be integrative practitioners. I speak to pharmacists, not as often because I’m not as clinically trained as our other educators are.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Maggie Frank:
But I even go and speak to medical groups in hospitals at times.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Maggie Frank:
So there’s definitely a wide range. That’s my least common avenue to go to just because we have the people with the master’s degrees and the PhDs.

Matt Baum:
That’s awesome.

Maggie Frank:
We don’t have any other people who go more direct public.

Support the Ministry of Hemp

Matt Baum:
Let’s take a quick break to hear from Kit O’Connell, Ministry of Hemp, editor in chief about our new patreon page.

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.

Kit O’Connell:
Not only that, but by joining our patreon, you’ll become a hemp insider. We’re launching a special newsletter just for our patreons. 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 join before February 15th at $25 or more, we’ll give you a Ministry of Hemp T-shirt as well. 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.

Educating the public about CBD

Matt Baum:
So, one of the most common things that I hear when I tell people that I host a podcast about hemp education is they say something to the effect of, “Oh, I tried CBD and it doesn’t work.” That seems to be the first thing they say. And it could be a matter of, “Well, maybe you tried garbage CBD or maybe you didn’t do it right.” What do you say to people in that situation that have been burned, because there’s so much garbage out there?

Maggie Frank:
Well, I mean, that’s a big part of what my lectures are when I go direct to consumer and I’m in a health food store is, number one, de-stigmatizing it for the people who are still scared.

Matt Baum:
Right. Is it marijuana? Is it drugs? Am I taking drugs?

Maggie Frank:
I mean, just all hemp, all cannabis in general. They still are holding on to the propaganda that created the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. So, it’s breaking that down like, “Hey listen, there’s a really good chance that your grandma had Eli Lilly cannabis oil in her cabinet if she was born or lived, went to a doctor during this period of time.” This is silly like let’s… We deconstruct that.

Maggie Frank:
But then a big part of mine is talking about how to make this work for you. And what I find is that there are some very specific mistakes that people make. You touched on one is they don’t pick the right product. We don’t pick our CBD based on cost per milligram. We don’t base our CBD on what we can get the most out of for the most value. We don’t pick our CBD because it has a whole bunch of buzzwords and all these things. But I mean, if somebody is promising you that this will cure your… That’s an indication you should run.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. They are liars.

Maggie Frank:
They have different molecular structures in all of those different bottles and they all say hemp extract. So it’s realizing that they’re not all created equal, first. And number two, really giving yourself the opportunity. So at CV Sciences, our big catch phrase on dosing is start low, build slow, it’s all the way to go.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot. That’s a great… Yeah, start low, and build slow.

Maggie Frank:
Always the way to go. We also talk a lot about how no two people are the same. So, when I’m talking to somebody, they find out I know about CBD, they’re like, “Well, if I took CBD, how would I feel?”

Matt Baum:
Right? What would it do? Would I feel dizzy?

Maggie Frank:
I’ve absolutely no idea. You could, right? If you take way too much, you could.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Maggie Frank:
I have no idea how you’re going to feel. I personally take CBD before the gym every morning.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Maggie Frank:
Because the way that it affects me personally is to make me extremely focused, I feel motivated. I’m like, “Okay, yeah let’s go.” Whereas I know people who take this at the end of the day because for them, the way that their initial reaction to it is, is that they feel a little bit calmer.

Maggie Frank:
I have friends who can take it in the middle of the night if they wake up, have it by their bed and they can go back to sleep.

Matt Baum:
That’s what I just did last night. I woke up and I took some of the American Hemp Oil sleep tincture that they have and right back asleep and you wake up, no hangover. I feel good. I’m don’t feel fuzzy at all. You know? Love it.

Maggie Frank:
Yeah. And if that was me and I took CBD in the middle of the night, I would be up organizing my closet which is like…

Matt Baum:
Fair enough.

Trying CBD: Everyone’s different

Maggie Frank:
Right. Because that’s not when it’s ideal for me to take it. So, I tell people, “You have no idea. I have no idea until you give it a try and play with it.” People will then say, “But what dose?” Again.

Matt Baum:
Again. Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
I have no idea. I’m sorry. It could be one. I’ve seen people do well on one milligram, literally take one milligram of our product and have complete benefit at one milligram, whether they were 80 pounds or 300 pounds. It’s not weight dependent. It’s not pain dependent. It’s none of those things. Right? And then I tell people, we have no idea how quickly you’ll respond. We all hear the story, right? I had a guy, 42 years old, come to one of my lectures. He’d had Tourette’s. He had been diagnosed with Tourette’s early on in his childhood and it was a bad case.

Matt Baum:
Wow. Like really staggering kind of.

Maggie Frank:
Oh, the adverbial expletives. The body movements.

Matt Baum:
Oh wow.

Maggie Frank:
To a point where his mother had done all of his shopping, all… Like he couldn’t, if he went out in society, he was picked on. Right. He couldn’t live a normal life.

Matt Baum:
He probably couldn’t drive.

Maggie Frank:
What? Couldn’t drive.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, I would assume.

Maggie Frank:
Had never gone to a normal school. Had never really had friends. I mean, his mom was really… she couldn’t have her own life because she had this child. So he had guilt about that. There was all these components that fall into when a family is dealing with that kind of an illness.

Maggie Frank:
And he tried everything, medical, holistic. Literally he had tried anything there had been at that point. He found our gold tincture, our drops. He takes one full squirter of our largest size bottle, which equals 10 milligrams of our gold concentrate. Literally 42 years of Tourette’s where he could never live his life. He sits down and 10 minutes later, no more expletives.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Maggie Frank:
No more physical manifestation.

Matt Baum:
That is amazing.

Maggie Frank:
It literally was the miracle answer for this man, right?

Matt Baum:
And it’s the kind of thing where they’re using CBD in a medication, like a pharmaceutical medication for children that are having seizures.

Maggie Frank:
100%.

Matt Baum:
And that Tourette’s is not far from small seizures inside the brain. As I understand it, I’m again not a science or a doctor.

Maggie Frank:
Not a doctor. Yeah, I know. It’s definitely a neurological component there [crosstalk 00:24:04] trigger.

Matt Baum:
But I can see that, yeah.

Maggie Frank:
Right. But unfortunately, so those are miracles and I love those miracles. Unfortunately, everybody believes that they’re going to have that miracle response.

Matt Baum:
Exactly. That is lightening striking what you just talked about.

Maggie Frank:
Yeah, and it’s inspiring. And usually when I tell that story, I cry and I mean, he got to have a girlfriend. And he was so sweet. His biggest win on that. His mother was getting older and he said, I always knew that she worried about what would happen to me when she was gone.

Matt Baum:
Of course.

Maggie Frank:
I get to tell her now that she can go in peace.

Matt Baum:
That’s wow.

Maggie Frank:
Like it’s just one of those, it’s so amazing. But really the reality for most of us with these products is that it’s going to be part of our health protocol and our answer to whatever it is that we’re trying to deal with, whether it’s maintenance and just lifestyle wellness or it’s stress anxiety or it’s serious, right?

Maggie Frank:
Most people, it’s going to take a couple of days to a couple of weeks playing with dose, time of day with or without food. How many times do I do this? Building slowly and paying attention to their body. On the far end, I recently met a woman who it took three straight months of taking these products regularly before there was any actual physiological noticeable difference to her.

Matt Baum:
Three months.

Maggie Frank:
Three months.

Matt Baum:
Wow.

Maggie Frank:
And she was very candid. She said that if she had not been working with the naturopath who was telling her, “I don’t care what you think, you have to stay on this protocol [crosstalk 00:25:43] me.”

Matt Baum:
Right. Just try it.

Maggie Frank:
Right? She wouldn’t have stayed on it, but it wasn’t until three months. Now, this specific woman had been on two rounds of chemotherapy in the last three years.

Matt Baum:
Oh wow.

Maggie Frank:
And had been taking quite a bit of pharmaceutical medication for seven.

Matt Baum:
That’s another side of it. If you’re full of other medication that can slow things down. Right?

Maggie Frank:
Right? It affects the endocannabinoid system’s ability to utilize cannabinoids over time.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Maggie Frank:
So we know that in this woman’s case, we don’t know for sure, but what her doctor believes is that there was quite a bit of work going on underneath the surface before she acknowledged it happened.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. You can’t tell because you’re on so many… And that is not to say don’t go to chemotherapy. No, not at all.

Maggie Frank:
No, and I [crosstalk 00:26:23]. I mean, and I love that about this plant. So, if you’re 100% holistic and that’s what aligns with you and makes you comfortable, awesome. This works.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Making CBD part of your routine

Maggie Frank:
If you’re happy with that east meets west approach and you take a little bit from each, awesome. This works. And if you are 100% conventional, but you’re looking for ways to mitigate symptomology, looking for ways to just increase overall wellness or resilience to your treatments, I mean there’s been very early, of course, research showing that CBD A, the acid bound form in its raw form CBD can actually help people with chemotherapy induced nausea. Awesome.

Matt Baum:
That’s amazing.

Maggie Frank:
If that’s how your proper healing works-

Matt Baum:
That is amazing, yeah.

Maggie Frank:
… I’m all for it.

Matt Baum:
And also that is-

Maggie Frank:
It just [crosstalk 00:27:14] really, it grabs on to all of us.

Matt Baum:
That is one of the things that it sounds like a small thing. Oh, it’s going to help with your nausea, but almost nothing else does help with that nausea, it’s really bad and-

Maggie Frank:
For a lot of people it’s life-changing.

Matt Baum:
I think in a lot of these situations where people that are resistant or they think it didn’t work or whatever, I think a lot of them, from my experience and probably more so from your experience, are thinking of CBD as medicine and they want to come up and say, “How many CBD pills do I take a day?” And you go, “You take two, and you take them with water and make sure you eat something so it doesn’t upset your tummy.”

Matt Baum:
And that’s not how this works. This education that you’re out there doing, how much are you just trying to break down the understanding of this is not medication?

Maggie Frank:
Almost all of it.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, right?

Maggie Frank:
Almost all of it is breaking down how to make this work for you. Breaking that American mentality that if some is good, more must be better.

Matt Baum:
Right.

Maggie Frank:
Right. So, I see a lack of patience, but I also see people far too often super dosing. We see people benefit from three milligrams. But if it’s very hard for me to convince most of America to start that low. They want the most CBD on that shelf for the lowest cost. That’s how they’re painting products.

Matt Baum:
Because you just told me it’s not a medicine and it’s not going to hurt me. I can take whatever I want. Right? I’m taking a million milligrams.

Maggie Frank:
I can take whatever I want.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
Often then ended up at a lecture like mine going, this isn’t working for me. I invested $100 into this, it didn’t work. And what I explain to people is that these products work in a tri-phasic way and they have a bell curve response. And what that means is that we get immediate benefits, we get mid-level benefits and we get high level benefits or long-term benefits from modulating the endocannabinoid system with CBD products.

Maggie Frank:
But all of these products also have a bell curve response. And that means that you find a response, maybe let’s say like in my case it’s eight milligrams. That’s where I start to really notice the PlusCBD Oil makes me feel more optimistic, more resilient to stress, I’m less likely to react when somebody cuts me off in traffic, my luggage loss for the 10th time in the last three months.

Maggie Frank:
Now I can take that level up a little bit, play with it, you know? But we have a bell curve, all of us do. And that range is unique to each of us. And it’s the point at which adding more gives no additional benefit, could give less benefit than the low-dose, or could actually make somebody feel slightly worse. People are going over their bell curve all the time.

Matt Baum:
I know I did. When I first started messing around with it and trying to figure it out, I did the same thing. I was like, “Well, I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything. Well, I’m just going to do A bunch of it.” And then I was like, “I feel really weird now.”

Maggie Frank:
Yeah.

Matt Baum:
And it wasn’t like and-

Maggie Frank: (crosstalk)

Matt Baum:
… my heart’s going to stop, but just like…

Maggie Frank:
Really good.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, it was like a different, like this is a little more than what I’m looking for. And when I dialed it back, I’m like, “Okay, this is that level that I need to be in. Not too high, not too low in that bell curve,” like you’re saying. And then, yeah, I can focus a little better. My ADD is definitely not kicking in like it normally does. I can have another cup of coffee and not turn into a monster, you know?

Maggie Frank:
Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

Matt Baum:
Something like that.

Maggie Frank:
But for some people that too much can be anxiety.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Maggie Frank:
It can make them feel panicked.

Matt Baum:
That’s exactly what I got.

Maggie Frank:
For some people, yeah that tachycardia, that heartbeat racing thing.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Like I feel good, but this doesn’t feel right.

Maggie Frank:
No, [inaudible 00:30:58]. That’s how I feel if I go anywhere above 25 milligrams. I just start to feel like I can’t quite catch my breath.

Matt Baum:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like butterflies in your chest almost.

Maggie Frank:
It’s not ideal.

Matt Baum:
Yeah.

Maggie Frank: (crosstalk) you’re good.

Matt Baum:
I mean, you don’t need to go to the hospital necessarily, but it does. I don’t want to go to work like that either.

Maggie Frank:
No, it’s not what we’re looking for when we’re taking something that’s supposed to be balancing us.

Matt Baum:
Exactly. Exactly.

Maggie Frank:
And some people can feel like they have to have a bowel movement.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Maggie Frank:
It can loosen your stool and they can feel that way. Some people if they go too high, too quick or too high one day because they’re like, “Ah, I just feel like I want to do it.” They can feel slightly nauseous. I’ve actually met a few people who threw up.

Matt Baum:
Really?

Maggie Frank:
I mean, it can make people feel slightly dizzy.

Matt Baum:
So that’s what it’s all, it’s starting low.

Maggie Frank:
They’re all trying to take in too much.

Matt Baum:
Start low and build slow and find-

Maggie Frank:
Always the way to go.

Matt Baum:
… that middle lane where you’re going to be and you will feel better. It’s going to make everything feel different, but you will feel better.

Maggie Frank:
You will. You should. And if you’re eating a standard American diet and you’re not somebody who’s really focusing on intake of healthy fatty acids, statistics show us that 93% of America is deficient in Omega three.

Matt Baum:
Sure.

Maggie Frank:
Co-administration of Omega three with our hemp extracts is highly recommended. Not only by maintaining that ratio do we lessen our need for phytocannabinoids because our endocannabinoids are more capable of being produced to utilize, but we also really enhance the potential of sensitivity to cannabinoids like CDB if we make sure those ratios are good. So that’s a big area too. I mean, a lot of America who if they would just take more Omega three, they could take 10 milligrams instead of 30.

The future of CBD education

Matt Baum:
Let me ask you, if there was one thing that could happen tomorrow, whether it’s the FDA coming in and saying, “This is how we’re going to treat CBD,” or maybe the government loosens up on it. What would be the thing that you think would help at CBD education the most?

Maggie Frank:
I mean, I guess that that’s the problem, right? That’s the difficulty that there’s so many things that people think they know that they have no idea about when it comes to this category that it’s hard. I mean, I guess the regulation from the FDA and just knowing how we’re all going to move forward would probably be the most impactful thing at this stage. Because right now we’re all just theorizing how we think that this is going and we’re all doing what, not all of the companies but the companies who are trying to do it well, we’re doing what we think we’re supposed to be doing. It would be nice for everybody to have defined terminology on what is full spectrum versus broad spectrum? Are we keeping isolate? Is that still going to be a competition factor here?

Maggie Frank:
Where’s Nanotech and [inaudible 00:33:54]? Are we going to get efficacy studies on these type of new scientific approaches and extraction methods? That would make my job a heck of a lot easier.

Matt Baum:
Well you did just agree on the rules basically. That would make everything a lot of easier.

Maggie Frank:
Yeah. Yeah if we can all just… And really I think that that would make it so much easier for a consumer.

Matt Baum:
Absolutely.

Maggie Frank:
If this was what all the labels looked, if this is how what the terminology meant for every company, if we knew that these were the testing standards and that every company who was selling a product in the U.S in a legal way was required to follow them. You don’t always immediately know that.

Matt Baum:
Right. The same way you would go buy acetaminophen and you would say, “Oh, there’s 25 milligrams in there. I take two of those.” And the box looks the same. It says there’s X amount in here. This is how much CBD you take. Start low, go slow and find where you’re supposed to be.

Maggie Frank:
Yeah. And I would love for them to really… I mean, I would love personally for them to cap milligrams on products sold.

Matt Baum:
I agree. I totally agree.

Maggie Frank:
The fact that we have 15 milligram grass affirm products sitting next to 55 milligram products, it’s confusing. People are, I feel like they’re being marketed into the more is better mentality because companies are willing to give people what they think America wants. And it’s really hard to evolve in a conscious way and navigate your company in a conscious way and only follow the science if everybody else is doing it for money.

Matt Baum:
Yeah. Maggie, thank you so much. This has been great and you’ve got-

Maggie Frank:
Okay, Matt.

Matt Baum:
… a hot yoga class I don’t want to keep you from. So, it’s important. We’ve got to stay flexible. Thanks again to Maggie coming on the show. And you will be able to find links to her information and links to PlusCBD in the show notes for this episode.

Final thoughts from Matt

Matt Baum:
Well, that about does it for another episode of the Ministry of Hemp podcast. Thanks for joining me and thanks for supporting. And like Kit mentioned earlier, if you want to show your support, check out our patreon where this week we’ve got a special article detailing Ministry of Hemp’s time at South by Southwest. And in this week’s Ministry of Hemp podcast extra, I am going to give you a recipe for a delicious and very simple and easy to make hemp oil vinegarette that you can adjust to your needs to add to just about anything.

Matt Baum:
Thank you to everyone that is already supporting, and like I said, if you want to support head over the show notes where you can find a link to our patreons. Speaking of our show notes at the Ministry of Hemp, we believe that an accessible world is a better world for everyone, so you can find a complete written transcript of this episode right in those show notes I mentioned.

Matt Baum:
And while you’re at ministryofhemp.com, check out Elijah Pickering’s latest article on how hemp fabric is made and why it’s better than traditional fabrics. Next time on the show, I’m going to be talking to Doug Fine about his new book that’s coming out. Doug was an NPR contributor and he is a fantastic author. This is his second book about hemp and this time he’s growing it himself. I can’t wait for you to hear this one. But for now, this is 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 CBD Education In Action: A Conversation With Maggie Frank Of PlusCBD Oil appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

This episode’s guests include:

Our new Regulation Wrangler (cool title right?) Jenn Price from Golden State Govt. Relations where she serves as a consultant in the cannabis industry. Jenn opens the show talking about the challenges of USDA and FDA regulations that could slow down the industry.

Josh Hendrix, Director of U.S. Hemp Production for CV Sciences, Inc and Plus CBD Oil, talks about hemp farming and the challenges of growing a crop that’s been illegal for 75 years.

And finally, the show closes with an introduction to the Indigenous Perspectives of Hemp panel at this past NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver Colorado. Olowan Martinez of the Oglala Sioux Tribe spoke about a major issue facing tribes growing hemp on reservation lands that I hadn’t even considered.

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.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

More about Hemp Farming

Read more about hemp farming in the U.S.:

• Full Traceability — From Seed to Shelf
• George Washington’s Hemp Farm
• How Hemp Saved A Piece Of Vermont Farming History
• The Many Uses Of Hemp On Smaller Farms
• What The 2018 Farm Bill Means For US Hemp & Agriculture

Episode Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast.

Matt: Last time on the show we were talking about eating hemp and how to introduce it into your diet, but that hemp has got to come from somewhere. So today on the show we are going to look at hemp farming and the challenges that American hemp farmers face.

Matt: Now, I’m sure you’ve heard that recently the 2018 Farm Bill passed, and that Farm Bill allowed farmers to start growing industrial hemp. The Farm Bill defines hemp as cannabis that contains less than .3 per cent THC. I’d love to tell you that was it and farmers everywhere are rejoicing, but there’s not quite hemp gold in those fields yet, son.

Matt: Now that the government is involved, that means Uncle Sam has some rules and regulations that he’s going to need farmers in all 50 states to follow if they want to get in on growing hemp. Towards the end of last month, the FDA and the USDA made some announcements that they were going to open the floor to listen to representatives and their plans for how their states would like to grow hemp, sort of like the meeting of the committee to form a committee if you will.

Matt: Of course there’s going to be lots of rules and regulations coming down, now I am not a lawyer, I only pretend to be one on my comic book show every once in a while. Not here, this is serious stuff. So I found the next best thing.

Jen Price D.C.: Hi, I’m doctor Jen Price, D.C., I am the director of state compliance at Golden State Government Relations and I work with people on regulatory compliance for cannabis, and as hemp has become the big hot topic, we are transitioning towards helping folks with hemp as well.

Matt: Jen is great, she is a super passionate cannabis activist, she is a doctor of chiropractic, and she knows her way around these legal rules and regulations pretty good, so I have made her the official Ministry of Hemp legal consultant. Bad news Jen, I’m afraid it doesn’t pay well.

Jen Price D.C.: I just want to say, before I go into any of this, I am not a lawyer. I work in regulation and compliance so we are following all of this, I do work with all of this, but nothing I’m saying here is legal advice.

Matt: Okay, so unlike lawyers you’re not full of B.S. is what you’re saying?

Jen Price D.C.: Right, I’m just going to give it to you straight.

Matt: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: There’s a couple things that have been going on since the 2018 farm bill passed so everybody’s been super excited that hemp has basically been legalized, but what a lot of people don’t realize is there’s still some more steps to go before this is actually going to be a real thing that’s operationally happening.

Matt: This is legalization on a federal level only, right?

Jen Price D.C.: Correct, and it is going to apply to all the states but it’s just a little more complex. You can pass a law but just because you passed a law doesn’t mean that you have the regulatory framework to put that law into place, so where we are right now is at that time where we need to put the regulatory framework into place. And what’s just happened this week is we’ve had some announcements from both the USDA and the FDA about their plans and timeframes that they’re looking at to actually implement these things that had just recently become legal because of the 2018 farm bill.

Matt: Legal in quotations, right? Because-

Jen Price D.C.: Legal in quotations.

Matt: – On a state level, like a red state like Nebraska can decide no we’re not legalizing it here yet.

Jen Price D.C.: There are still states’ rights and really what’s going on right now is, until the United States Department of Agriculture comes up with their regulatory framework, nobody can start to really utilize the benefits of the 2018 farm bill.

Matt: Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: They’re going to have to put into place what the process is going to have to be for regulation, and then there’s going to be two scenarios: either a state can adopt the USDA’s regulatory framework, or if a state wants to have their own regulatory framework, they need to apply to the USDA to have it approved before they can implement it. But they’ll accept applications from states or plans from states at this point, but they aren’t going to start reviewing them until after they’ve decided what they want to do at the federal level.

Matt: Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: So, the federal regulatory framework comes into place, then they’ll start looking at the individual states and what individual states want to do. And so there’s kind of two parts that I want to discuss because we’ve got what’s going on with growing hemp and the USDA, and then we’ve got what’s going on with hemp derived CBD products and the FDA.

Matt: Okay, so let’s get into the first one, the growing hemp and the USDA.

Jen Price D.C.: Yes, the 2014 Farm Bill allowed for states to choose to start pilot programs for growing hemp for the purposes of research, the three that have the strongest programs are Kentucky, Colorado and Oregon.

Matt: Let me ask you real quick, when you say growing for research what does that mean?

Jen Price D.C.: Well, it means that that’s all that the feds allowed for, so part of these pilot programs is they need to be collecting some kind of data for quote “research purposes” and some of the states have taken that to mean market research. And so that’s why we’re seeing hemp derived CBD products that are gray area legal coming out of Colorado, out of Oregon, out of Kentucky, stuff is coming in from outside of the US as well, and it’s really been this area that has technically always been illegal. If you look at the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which is what the FDA goes by, none of this has ever actually been legal as far as they’re concerned for inter-state commerce, but they just really don’t have a lot of resources to enforce.

Jen Price D.C.: But with the Farm Bill coming out in 2018, which has taken hemp and all of its derivatives off of the CSA’s list of drugs, so it basically took it off the scheduling, so there’s now a different definition for hemp [crosstalk 00:06:11] than for marijuana-

Matt: Schedule 1 was basically illegal drugs, they said like marijuana, and heroin, and crack cocaine, obviously, are all schedule 1.

Jen Price D.C.: Right, so hemp used to just get lumped in ’cause it’s cannabis. It’s cannabis and what they’ve done is they’ve now made a distinction so hemp, which means that it has less than .3 per cent THC for the whole plant, is now considered different than all other cannabis which they call marijuana.

Matt: And since this is USDA related, we’re talking about hemp that will be grown for food, for tinctures, for stuff like that-

Jen Price D.C.: Exactly-

Matt: – Not necessarily hemp that’s used for paper or fabric.

Jen Price D.C.: Well, it is going to include the stuff used for paper and fabrics, it’s going to be all industrial hemp.

Matt: Oh is it? Okay, gotcha. So the floodgates aren’t open yet, but the floodgates are opening, if you will.

Jen Price D.C.: They are opening, and so it’s basically …

Matt: Jen is wonderful, and my conversation with her went on much longer than this. And yeah, there’s going to be a big scary regulation show coming, and I’m still trying to figure out a way to make it interesting, so pray for me.

Matt: So, now that we’ve talked about regulation and how scary that’s going to be, let’s get down in the dirt and let’s talk about farming. That’s where this guy comes in.

Josh Hendricks: So, I’m Josh Hendricks I’m the director of domestic hemp production for CV Sciences, makers of Plus CBD Oil. I also sit on the board of directors and serve as president of the US Hemp Roundtable, as well as the board of directors for Friends of Hemp.

Matt: Okay, so you might know what you’re talking about is what you’re saying.

Josh Hendricks: Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’ll give it a good guess.

Matt: Okay. So Josh we’re talking about where hemp comes from, and when I say where it comes from I mean literally how we grow hemp. Just recently the FDA has said we can start to grow hemp and they’re putting together a plan so that farmers can do so, there are some states where they’re already growing it. Tell me about hemp, is it hard to grow? Is it easy to grow? Is it different than say soybeans or corn? I’m a Nebraska guy so that’s what I know.

Josh Hendricks: Well, I also forgot to mention that I did grow hemp for 3 years on my farm, I took 2018 off ’cause I think I was on the road somewhere North of 200 days last year. So it would have been a little hard to farm, and quite frankly I’m not a farmer. I moved home to get involved in the hemp industry, I quit my job the day after the Farm Bill passed in 2014 and decided to move home and utilize my family’s farm, which is small, but also really just to get involved in the hemp industry. I started the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association, I started my podcast The Hemp Happy Hour, started working with CV Sciences, et cetera.

Josh Hendricks: I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not easy to grow hemp.

Matt: Really?

Josh Hendricks: Of course. It’s no different than what soybeans was like in the ’60s and that’s a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States now as an agricultural [commodity 00:09:07], not even just including the food products and things that-

Matt: Sure, sure.

Josh Hendricks: – are made from soy. So, we had a 75 year gap in growing that here, so the variety, the cultivars that have been developed in terms of hemp are either brand new to the US and being bred here in the US, or from cannabis, or they’re certified hemp seeds from around the world that haven’t been grown here and that are being trialed in different states, and regions, and geographical type areas within states even. So trying to figure out what seeds work best, what varieties work best for both CBD seed grain and/or fiber production.

Matt: So basically the biggest challenge right now is what grows the best where.

Josh Hendricks: I would say there’s some other challenges for sure, obviously you don’t have any pesticides or fungicides, and that doesn’t mean the bad ones, I’m very anti chemicals and things like that. But there are organic ways to do that kind of stuff, and we’re still playing with a lot of those going on.

Josh Hendricks: I mean it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that we’ve been given this 75 year break, I know it stinks to think we missed out on this opportunity for so long, but now we have an opportunity really to not [inaudible 00:10:15] with GMOs with particular plants, we can do it the right way, we can learn how to farm this organically, which we’re forced to do right now because there are no approved pesticides, [inaudible 00:10:25], or sprays or anything of that nature for hemp, and hopefully that’ll stay that way for a while so we can figure out how to grow this organically.

Josh Hendricks: At CV Sciences we’re working with the Rodale Institute along with the likes of Patagonia and Dr. Bronner to try to help them further, and really advance as fast as we can the organic research on this new crop because this can also hopefully transition farmers back to the organic way of farming.

Matt: Sure. Okay, now you’re in Kentucky, is that right?

Josh Hendricks: I have an apartment in Kentucky and a farm there I don’t see it very often.

Matt: Oh okay. When you say I moved home you

Matt: … home to Kentucky, but you travel all the damn time.

Josh Hendricks: I established residency there, yes.

Matt: Got you. Okay. So growing hemp, in and of itself, is it easier or harder in the sense that like compared to another crop as far as pests and challenges with the weather and soil and stuff like that? Or is it the kind of thing where it’ll really grow anywhere if you do it right?

Josh Hendricks: Again, it’s very variety dependent. So, if you lived in Florida, you’re not going to have the same type of hemp growing very well in Florida that you would in say, Minnesota, if you’re using soil. Now if you’re greenhouse, or indoor controlling it, which I just think is not the way things are going to be considering hemp is going to be a commodity no matter how good it is, or how high it is in CBD, it’s still going to be a commodity. And the race is to efficiency. But I think different varieties for different climates, different soil types, et cetera. It’s no different than any other. You don’t grow the same type of soy in Indiana as you do in Kentucky.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: Actually you do, they’re actually close.

Matt: Okay.

Josh Hendricks: But in certain parts of Kentucky, you grow different kinds of corn than you would literally in the same state. We have three very different farming regions between western, central, and eastern Kentucky. And so, there’s going to be different varieties for different areas because you’re trying to efficiently be able to produce that crop and get the most yield, obviously. I mean that seems like common sense.

Matt: Right. I mean that’s anything you’re growing, right?

Josh Hendricks: Right. Right. And given this new crop, we’re really still experimenting. You can look at the states every year and see how many acres are approved. And then you can see how many acres are planted. And then you can see how many acres are harvested. And a lot of that loss along the way is weed suppression, right?

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: The canopy doesn’t come up, they’re still trying to figure out what time of year to plan some of these crops. Maybe it’s later than they think. Maybe it’s easier than they think. Soil preparation is key, obviously, to try and get as many weeds out of there as possible, but also have good nutrients in the ground. So yeah, it’s very dependent on all those factors. And I think we’re still very much in the early stages. But as you’re seeing, there isn’t a lot of success being had too, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the people failing are doing a bad job. Some of it’s weather related.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Some of it’s information they’ve gotten from other folks, honestly. So, yeah I think it’s new and it’s exciting, but it’s very new.

Matt: So the hardest part is really due to the fact that we had a 75 year break while this was illegal. And people just kind of forgot how to grow it.

Josh Hendricks: Of course. I mean, we started sourcing in the Netherlands in 2012 before you could even get hemp here in the US. And trust me, they weren’t having any problem growing it. They’ve been growing it. Those seeds are bred for that climate, that weather.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: That soil. All we did was ask them to harvest in a different way. So, that’s the difference in what’s going on right now. Obviously CBD’s driving the train, but I think what you’re going to see is hemp seed oil becomes big in cosmetics and food and body care. And as the fiber, hopefully, takes over the composite materials industry and, you see it in dashboards and overhead compartments in airplanes. That’s when the rubber starts to meet the road and hemp really does become a commodity. Even the floral material that’s being used for CBD production, or hemp extracts, you’re going to start the see the price of that go way down. So it will be a race to simple efficiency and who can farm it the best and create the best quality, but also at the lowest cost.

Matt: Sure. Now, the hemp that you are growing, do you grow different hemp for something like hemp seed oil, than you would grow for CBD oil? Or you would grow for say, fabric or composite plastics? Is it all different hemp?

Josh Hendricks: Industry specific hemp, such as fiber hemp, is what we actually use for our CBD material. It’s not high in CBD, but there’s enough CBD in there and there’s enough nutrients and [inaudible 00:14:49] for us to produce, what is currently the top retail brand CBD in the world. I think there’s a misconception of, oh the more CBD, the more money because everybody is chasing after Ice woods which is a whole nother ball game that we’re not in. We don’t do Ice woods because we actually believe that that’s going to go the way of the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what GW Pharmaceutical uses, although their CBD is from marijuana. CBD ice wood from hemp is still a little bit more, gray I would say.

Matt: Okay.

Josh Hendricks: So hemp extract is really what we focus on. But that being said, people are producing hemp extracts with all female type grows growing, which you would refer to as maybe tomato, or tobacco style, or even all indoors in their climate, really control environments. Which cost a lot of money, right?

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: And so, the price of a pound of hemp is X, tomorrow or next year it’s going to be Y. And if their cost of doing business is Z, and Z is higher than Y, than that’s not really going to last forever. And so as more and more hemp gets produced, the price of hemp, the price of CBD for that matter, comes down. So it really is a race to efficiency and that’s where I believe direct seed agricultural farming using machines and mechanization, automatization, those kind of things are really going to further this industry over the next three to five years.

Matt: Now what about like nutrients in the soil? One of the things that farmers deal with in western Nebraska is they’ve been growing soy beans and corn for so long that they’ve literally stripped all the nutrients out of the soil. Does hemp behave differently? Is it the kind of crop that could possibly be used to reinvigorate nitrogen levels and stuff like that? Or is it a lot more … is it very nutrient heavy?

Josh Hendricks: Yeah. So it’s a phenomenal rotation crop given that it actually leaves the soil better than it found it. It’s a reginative crop. So, it’s going to sequester CO2 in the soil, and if you add it to that rotation now, it actually makes corn and soy a little bit more sustainable because you’re not having to use all that. You know when I come in with corn or soy behind hemp, I’m going to use less chemicals, less nutrients, things like that, and it’s going to cost me less money which means I’m going to make more money hopefully off the corn.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: But also, going to hopefully start steering that into more sustainable direction as well.

Matt: Now, we don’t have like you said, a commodity for stuff like this yet, but people are growing it and selling it. What is it comparable to something like cotton, or something like soy beans, or something like corn?

Josh Hendricks: Depends on the market, or what you’re growing it for. Obviously if you’re growing it for fiber, you’re looking at more along the lines of a kenaf pricing. A little bit better than hay obviously because it is a little bit more labor … or not labor intensive, but a little bit more work and it costs a little more to do it.

Josh Hendricks: When you talk about grain or the seed, you’re definitely going to get more than soy or corn. It’s not going to be a ton more, but it’s really not any more cost prohibitive to do it.

Josh Hendricks: And then when you talk about CBD, that number’s astronomical right now.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Everybody’s paying added percent per pound. So let’s say you have a 5% CBD, if you get $3 a pound, you’re getting $15 a pound, and you’re getting in the neighborhood of five figures an acre. And hopefully you have less than five figures to make [inaudible 00:17:59].

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: So, and that’s unheard of in agriculture. And that’s not going to last forever. Just like it’s not going to last that way forever with marijuana.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Break people’s … most people’s bubble there. But they were giving away weed in Oregon.

Matt: So we’re going through like a boom right now. And when this all comes together, and finally they … the FDA does approve everything and we have farms everywhere, do you see a bust coming?

Josh Hendricks: I do. I mean I think … like I said, this is a race to efficiency. I’ve been going around the country, I’ve been preaching that for six months to a year. And I’ve told everybody that there’s a lot of people out there recreating the wheel, because they believe in their genetic. And that’s fine, I totally appreciate that, I support it. I mean we need people working on new genetics everyday.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: But there’s a risk involved in that. And that’s, how much money are you willing to spend to develop a genetic and to develop a growing philosophy, if you will, or production philosophy, cultivation philosophy that is very costly? Of course there’s going to be niche markets and people are going to pay high dollar for certain things. But I do think that what you’ll see, eventually, is a commodity style pricing on hemp for both hemp flower material, hemp seed crushed up, hemp seed oil, and then obviously, hemp fiber and hemp herd. You have five different markets there that the prices are going to fluctuate based on supply. And eventually, the supply meets the demand.

Matt: Of course.

Josh Hendricks: Price starts coming down. So, that’s the game with any agricultural crop or soon to be commodity. I think we’re just on the cusp of it.

Matt: Sure. So let me ask you, you said you have a small farm. How big is your farm?

Josh Hendricks: My grandfather’s farm is about 100 acres. And then we have a couple other small farms and one big farm that’s really more just woods.

Matt: Okay. So how much of that are you using to grow hemp? Of that 100 acres?

Josh Hendricks: So we grew 11 acres each year, the three years that we did grow. Then my neighbors are growing somewhere in the neighborhood of a little over 100 acres this coming year.

Matt: Okay. So, what do you think you can get out of 100 acres? Like what does that produce? Let’s say it’s all successful, no problems. Best case scenario. What are you producing in 100 acres?

Josh Hendricks: Well if we’re growing with direct seed, and we’re harvesting the tops and we’re harvesting the stock the way that they do it in Europe, you’re looking to get 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of not … it’s not going to be high CBD, you’re looking at 1% to 2% CBD. But once we CO2 extract that, we can get what we need at CV Sciences. And then bailing up the fiber, you’re going to get a little less than average. I don’t even know the number off the top of my head, because that’s not my business. But, they’re going to get another … so basically they’re going to get a check from us based on the dry weight produced off the field and the floral materials, their stems and seeds in there because it’s both male and female.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: And then they’re going to get a check from another company like say, a Sunstrand who’s in Mobile, Kentucky who’s a fiber processor for weight of each bail of the stock that they have.

Matt: So the real benefit is you’re not just growing a strawberry. You’re not just growing an ear of corn. You’re growing a plant that is used a lot of different ways. And because it’s used a lot of different ways, you can sell it to a lot of different people.

Josh Hendricks: Well, and the guys doing this are big time farmers that they understand that it’s a numbers game, right? They need to rotate their crops. It’s going to benefit them on the corn and their soy. Especially these organic farmers that we’re looking at. I mean, they’re looking at it as [crosstalk 00:21:25].

Matt: Right. [crosstalk 00:21:29]

Josh Hendricks: [crosstalk 00:21:31] commercial farmers are doing and doing organic. Kind of insane.

Matt: Again, Josh and I had a much longer conversation here and he’ll definitely be back on the show. He brings up some really good points about how young this industry is, the hemp industry. And sure, there’s a lot of challenges to be face right now. But there’s also a lot of chances to do it the right way. And that’s pretty unique for agriculture in this country.

Matt: For the final segment of this show, I wanted to play

Matt: A little bit of a talk that I listened to at the NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver just the other weekend. This was the introduction to the Indigenous Peoples Panel that I sat in and listened to and they bought up some challenges that I didn’t even think about. The panel was introduced by a woman named [Oloah 00:22:20] from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who’s been growing Hemp for a while and doing pretty well with it. Unlike a lot of other farmers the Pine Ridge Reservation has to be very careful with what they do and how they treat their crops I let Oloah speak about some more.

Jen Price D.C.: Indigenous language [00:22:38]. Good morning or good day volunteers, my name is Oloah and I have traveled here from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just like many of you, to make connections, network, try to find, I guess, a hemp family is what we’re doing. When I was asked to give opening statements I kept thinking to myself what do I want the Hemp Industry to know about the mentality in the not so indigenous nations, the true landlords of this continent and I want to start out with … by saying, with any industry we know that there’s good and bad in everything.

Jen Price D.C.: So, being a landowner also, land I inherited from my grandparents I see this is a very dangerous time for Indian country again, because we see predators coming in to our homelands trying to obtain land through promises of money, through promises of status, so I want to say we need to pay attention to this fat-taker mentality, so I wanted to talk about a [locota 00:24:09] word that we have and that locota word is [wachetu 00:24:12]. And through our history that word has come to define a white man, but that isn’t the literal term for it, although it could probably explain color. But I guess I wanted to say this word is, in today’s world is more a mentality set or a mindset. Wachetu is taker of the best part of the meat, takes the best part for him or herself, takes the best part of it for self. So I guess I wanted to explain that word that in today’s world Wachetu isn’t just white. There’s red, there’s brown, there’s black and yellow fat-takers today, but see we learned this well.

Jen Price D.C.: So, I guess I wanted to speak about that word because my fear is that this industry becomes fat-takers industry and we don’t want that to happen. I heard [Winona 00:25:26], a hero of mine also, speak earlier and she talked about how this industry is led by white men and I think a big part of my nervousness today was, in my mind, I thought that’s who would be in the audience, is all these … this different side of the hemp industry and looking out at everybody I don’t see that. So, I’m taking it that they’ll review our videos, our statements later. I’m hoping because we don’t want, as indigenous people, we don’t want to be these historical relics to be mocked anymore. As I mentioned before being the true landlords, caretakers of this continent, and we forgot our part. I see our Nations as coming out of historical, generational, chemically induced, oppressive state of mind, but that’s over now. We’re taking our future into our own hands and taking it back from fat-taker.

Jen Price D.C.: So, I guess I wanted to come and express that in this relationship building in this industry, I think of it as how … I think of allowing people into my home, not just anybody get to come in. As Indigenous Nations we’ve seen, you give an inch, they take a mile. So if we only let em into our doorway will they flood our homes? Will they come in and just takeover and assume and assert themselves? We’ve had that happen to us before and I think, now that we’re out of this chemically induced oppressive state of mind, we’re not going to let that happen anymore. So, with this industry being a light for many Nations to come out of that ration line, I’m hoping that these relationships will go for generations. I want to leave everyone in this industry with a question or something to think about.

Jen Price D.C.: Are you here as a fat-taker? Are you willing to share knowledge? Because if you come in a good way we always accept and return in a good way as Nations, as Traditional People of these lands. And again, I do want to acknowledge the [Arapoho 00:28:21], like Winona mentioned earlier, cause traditionally this was their land before Denver ever existed, these town, these buildings, this was already a home to a Nation. So, I think that’s a part that this fat-taker mentality of the hemp industry refuses to see also is that coming out of denial that no, you don’t own land. You stole land. You’re illegally growing and living on stolen land. And so that brings guilt, you know, we’ve seen all this. So, again we’re here about being neighbors and to discuss healing aspects for self and earth, for a mother we all share. That’s Mother Earth and locota it’s [Euchimacar 00:29:17] for us, our grandmother. She was always here for us so it’s time to take responsibility back again, like Winona said, and give back.

Jen Price D.C.: And the locota we know in our history, we were to always feed the spirits and what land and things contaminate it, how are we going to do that? So again, we’re taking responsibility back into our own hands. And so those are just some insight I wanted to share, and again, leave you with something to think about is … Are you here in the hemp industry as a fat-taker?

Jen Price D.C.: We’ve had dealings with fat-taker and we don’t want to deal with fat-taker anymore. So we’re hoping to build relationships that eventually turn into something more solid. And again, also with the bad, just because we allow you into our homelands, don’t assume that you’re being invited into our spiritual spaces. That’s also boundaries as relationships and as relatives as we need to understand. So again, lets keep our common mother in mind in all our interactions with each other and it’s Mother Earth.

Jen Price D.C.: Thank you.

Matt: That whole Indigenous Peoples Panel that I sat through was really amazing and they talk a lot about how successful they’d been with growing hemp and how much respect they have for the plant. They spoke about farmers selling their genetics for seeds and whatnot and how nobody owns these plants and how they bought some of these genetically modified seeds and they returned to feral plants on their own land that grew better there.

Matt: It shows a real respect for the hemp plant itself that, I hope, stays in this industry and it filled me with a lot of hope for the industry. You’ll hear a lot more about my time at NoCo in the next show. I’m gonna do a whole diary on it, but I hope you learned something about growing hemp this week and I’d love to hear your reactions and your questions.

Matt: You can always hit me up via email at matt@ministryofhemp.com. Call us anytime, day or night, at 4028196417 with your questions or comments and I’d love to play them on the show. Shoot us a tweet @ministryofhemp on twitter, hit us up on Facebook at facebook\ministyrofhemp and please, ask us question, that’s what we’re here for. We’re trying to demystify this and learn together. As always, there will be a full written transcript in the show notes for this episode, and please if you get a chance and you enjoy this, leave us a rating on iTunes. It really does help other people to find the show. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions will ya.

Matt: This is Matt and the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.

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

• Ministry of Hemp Podcast Episode 3 Transcript PDF
  

The post Farming The Fields Of Green: The challenges of the Hemp grower in America appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Ministry of Hemp teamed up with PlusCBD and and San Diego mixologist to offer this great CBD cocktail recipe!

Looking for other CBD cocktail recipes? Check out these favorites from our archives:

• CBD Cocktails to Relax & Entertain
• CBD Mulled Apple Cider
• Cranberry Sparkling CBD Cocktail

And look for more CBD cocktail recipes coming up next month for Valentine’s Day!

The post CBD Cocktail Recipe With PlusCBD & Ministry of Hemp (VIDEO) appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

Part of the appeal of shopping at a farmer’s market is the luxury of following our produce from farm to table. Wouldn’t it be nice to have that assurance for all of the supplements we take? These days, with growing popularity around hemp CBD, many new CBD brands are launching daily. It can be difficult to find one that you can trust. So, what is there to know before choosing a hemp CBD supplement?

We’ve got the answer for you: Find a company dedicated to full-traceability, from seed to shelf.

FULL TRACEABILITY OF CBD — FROM START TO FINISH

A fully traceable company must be involved in every step of the manufacturing and supply chain process. A fully traceable company should be able to provide information on a specific process or component of their product, given that information is not proprietary. This transparency is exactly what is needed from hemp CBD companies.

It is no secret that CBD can be obtained from more than one source aside from agricultural hemp, such as high-THC recreational or medicinal cannabis. While the body does not recognize the difference between CBD from hemp or CBD from psychoactive cannabis (“marijuana”), not knowing the source of a product, how it was made, or the levels of the other cannabinoids could make a huge difference if the products are not formulated properly. Being able to track and trace the source of hemp CBD supplements can be empowering and give peace of mind.

GOOD MANUFACTURING PRACTICES (GMP) AND QUALITY MANAGEMENT

While tracking the source and controlling manufacturing process are important for transparency, having quality systems in place really shows that the brand is dedicated to quality, safety, and consistency.

Part of this commitment means following guidelines for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). Brands should test their product for cannabinoid content and contamination. Without test results, there is no way to know if the CBD levels match the claim on the label or if the THC levels are too high (pun intended). This mistake would be like drinking green tea and finding out later it was green colored water containing the equivalent of 5 shots of espresso.

So what can we do to ensure we’re getting CBD? ALWAYS ASK FOR TEST RESULTS.

There are very few companies that have proper quality systems in place and their own in-house laboratory to test their products. At the very least, all hemp CBD companies should have their products tested by an independent third-party laboratory for all cannabinoids (not just CBD and THC), pesticides, heavy metals, and molds and bacteria. In Indiana, a CBD company cannot even sell products in the state without visible test results. Looking for a company to trust? Ask them for the certificates of analysis (COAs) for their products. Bonus if their quality management provides in-house test results, too!

FULL TRANSPARENCY FROM THE FARM TO THE LABEL

The hemp can be traced back. Check. The test results are available. Check. Now, does the product list CBD on the label, and if so, does it match the COA?

The final component of a fully-traceable product is checking product labeling. Make the label clearly lists CBD content and make sure that information matches their lab tests. Responsible communication about the products and what’s in them should be paramount for all CBD companies. If the label reads 10mg of hemp CBD per 1 capsule, the test results should reflect that same amount.

Following a hemp CBD supplement from the moment the hemp is planted in the ground to when it is placed in our hands is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Our bodies are the best instrument we’ll ever own and it is time to take control of our health. Start a healthy life by not only demanding fully-traceable hemp CBD products but transparency for all things our body needs to promote wellness.

DISCOVER THE TOP CBD BRANDS

The market is getting saturated with many different CBD brands. We’ve compared the top brands to help you with your decision. Check it out.

The post Full Traceability — From Seed to Shelf™: The Key to Finding the Best Hemp CBD Product appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.