Hemp imports were cited as a main driver for Congress voting in 2014 to authorize limited experimentation with the crop after decades of head-scratching policies allowing hemp to be bought and sold in the United States — as long as it was grown somewhere else.

But hemp exports have grown dramatically ever since.

Hemp imports grew 82% in the first year after the passage of the 2014 Farm Bill, from $42.9 million in 2014 to $78.1 million in 2015.

Hemp imports continued to climb after hemp authorization was expanded four years later.

Last year the U.S. imported an estimated $87.8 million in hemp, according to the 2021 Hemp & CBD Factbook.

Non-CBD hemp imports into the United States grew by 10% in first 10 months of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. 

The value of incoming shipments of hempseed through October jumped nearly a quarter compared to 2019, while the value of raw hemp imports leaped by more than a third.

The 10-month values for these two categories exceeded the full-year values for 2019 and offset severe drops in the import of hempseed oil and oilcake in 2020. 

According to the International Trade Commission, Canada remained the top source for hemp imports in 2020, supplying more than 85% of incoming non-CBD products in the 10 months ended October.

China, Romania, the Dominican Republic and Poland rounded out the top five countries delivering hemp fiber, textile and seed products to the United States during that period. 

Compared to 2018, Lithuania, Germany and Bolivia were new entrants to the top 10 list of hemp-exporting countries in 2020. 

More exclusive intelligence about the hemp industry is available in the Hemp & CBD Industry Factbook 2021 Edition. It’s on sale here.

The Senate Agriculture Committee talks to an experienced hemp regulator Tuesday when it considers the confirmation of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture.

Vilsack, an Iowan, is President Joe Biden’s nominee and served in the same role for all eight years of the Obama administration.

He oversaw the USDA during passage and implementation of the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed states to experiment with hemp production.

Vilsack is considered to be a “confirmable” pick for the narrowly divided Senate. He was unanimously confirmed in the Senate in 2009, though within the hemp industry has drawn a mix of reactions due to his contribution to a 2016 USDA memo outlining the limits of legal hemp production.

Others are optimistic that Vilsack’s experience will provide the necessary regulatory clarity for the hemp industry to move forward.

Kevin Shea has been serving as acting agriculture secretary during the presidential administration transition until Vilsack’s confirmation hearing is complete.

Congress made hemp a national commodity in 2018 and again put USDA in charge. The agency spent two years crafting rules for the new crop. But because those rules were published just a day before Biden took office, the new administration is taking a look at them and may consider further changes.

To read more about how the USDA plans to regulate hemp, download our free guide here.

(This is the first in a series of stories from Hemp Industry Daily examining the developing hemp markets on tribal lands in the United States. For more detail about tribes growing hemp, check out Hemp Industry Daily’s Hemp & CBD Factbook, available for purchase here.)

It’s been more than two years since nationwide hemp legalization offered a legal pathway for American Indian tribes to produce hemp and CBD and find commercial outlets for selling it.

But it hasn’t been an easy road for tribes to establish hemp production.

When Congress first allowed experimentation with legal hemp, through the 2014 Farm Bill, states were granted the authority to set up hemp pilot research programs. But the law did not provide American Indian tribes the authority to implement their own industrial hemp cultivation programs regardless of state law.

The Menominee tribe of Wisconsin found out the hard way in 2015.

The tribe tried to grow industrial hemp, only to have federal agents seize 30,000 plants from its reservation after a federal court ruled that year that the 2014 Farm Bill required that hemp be cultivated in compliance with state law. At the time, hemp production was not yet legal in Wisconsin.

The 2018 Farm Bill, aimed to fix that, directing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a system for American Indian tribes to submit plans for hemp production on tribal lands.

Delays continued

Even after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, tribes were forced to wait until the USDA established hemp production regulations that could apply to indigenous lands.

By the summer of 2019, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe in South Dakota filed a lawsuit against the USDA over delays.

The tribe argued that that under the 2018 Farm Bill, the agency was required to approve production plans within 60 days, regardless of whether regulations were in place. Failure to do this impeded American Indians from capitalizing on hemp production during the 2019 season.

The tribe requested a temporary restraining order against the USDA and a preliminary injunction to allow it to proceed with its hemp crop in 2019. But the request was denied, citing the USDA’s announcement that it had planned to finalized rules in the fall, in time for the 2020 growing season.

To date, some 40 tribes have received USDA approval for their hemp production plans, while five plans are still under USDA review. Three other tribes have indicated they are working on production plans for submission.

It is difficult to quantify how many acres of hemp are under production or exactly what is being grown in the United States.

Trouble in the tribes

Another concern among American Indian tribes is corruption within tribal councils.

Tim Houseberg, a Cherokee Nation citizen and co-founder and vice president of the Native Health Matters Foundation, said that rulemaking can be frustratingly slow for tribal citizens.

“The only thing harder on Indian tribes than the United States government has been the tribal government,” Houseberg told Hemp Industry Daily.

Some tribes have dealt with unsavory practices in which tribal members have taken advantage of the land they have leased by growing federally illegal marijuana under the auspices of hemp production.

A three-day FBI raid of 21 farms in the Shiprock area of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico late last year destroyed more than a quarter million marijuana plants that were allegedly grown illegally as unlicensed hemp on the tribal nation’s lands.

Such issues have made some tribes wary of getting involved in high-THC marijuana production as well.

USDA’s next steps

In the first quarter of this year, the USDA is expected to release its State and Tribal Hemp Annual Report, which should provide more clarity on the size and scope of hemp production in 2020.

States and tribes are required to report the total acreage planted, harvested and disposed in their jurisdictions.

The agency addressed one slowdown facing tribes just this month when it released its final rule for nationwide hemp production.

Laura Drotleff can be reached at [email protected]