Federal agriculture regulators gave the green light to state hemp production plans for both Oregon and Connecticut, allowing them to move forward with regulating hemp and registering producers for the 2022 season.

Hemp production throughout the U.S. must now comply with the final regulations developed for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Domestic Hemp Production Program under the 2018 Farm Bill.

Registered hemp producers in those states must reapply under the new program to produce hemp this year.

Some key changes under the federal rules to both states’ hemp programs included requirements for participants to:

• Submit a criminal history.
• Report location and acreage of hemp planted.
• Collect hemp samples for testing 30 days before harvest.
• Register with the USDA’s Farm Service Agency.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which regulated its hemp program under the 2014 Farm Bill’s pilot research program, did not report its acreage or number of licensed producers to Hemp Industry Daily, though the state has been an early leader in hemp production since the pilot program was created.

In September, more than 100 licensed hemp producers in the region were found to be growing marijuana illegally, according to the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, the state’s marijuana regulators, who started inspecting hemp grows in August to root out illegal cannabis growers.

Comparatively, Connecticut is the third smallest state with little farmland, and in 2021 licensed 98 producers who planted 85 acres outdoors and around 10 acres of indoor production.

Still, the Connecticut state agriculture department, which also ran its 2021 hemp production season under the 2014 pilot program, finds value in keeping the state program.

“USDA’s approval of our state plan for hemp production allows us to align our program with their final rule,” Connecticut Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt said in a statement.

“This offers the opportunity for continued growth and diversification necessary for farm sustainability and we look forward to working with producers to administer the program.”

With USDA’s approval of state hemp programs in Connecticut, Oregon, nearly every state will move forward with a state plan, aside from states that have opted to let the USDA oversee their growers including Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Mississippi and Wisconsin.

Aligned federal regulations could offer additional stability for the U.S. hemp industry compared to past years with programs operating under a patchwork of state regulations.

U.S. health authorities are signing off on human trials of CBD to treat opioid addiction.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light this week to Ananda Scientific to start human testing of its CBD drug Nantheia ATL5, the company announced.

The trials will be run out of UCLA and are funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The federal clearance for CBD opioid-addiction research “further re-enforces our vision of developing CBD as a therapeutic for a number of key indications.” Ananda Scientific CEO Sohail R. Zaidi said in a statement.

The clearance comes two years after the FDA issued a warning letter to Massachusetts-based Curaleaf for marketing its CBD product’s potential to treat opioid addiction. Curaleaf scrubbed its website, though national drugstore chain CVS Health dropped some Curaleaf products anyway.

Ananda Scientific is privately held and has offices in Los Angeles and Greenwood Village, Colorado. A company spokesman reached by Hemp Industry Daily did not immediately say where the CBD comes from or if it is naturally derived or synthetic.

The only plant-derived cannabinoid medicine approved for human use in the United States remains Epidiolex, a CBD drug that treats rare forms of epilepsy and is owned by Ireland’s Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

An Idaho man is accusing his onetime partner of foiling a hemp-processing venture in Montana and making off with some $2 million.

Jeremiah Skaggs says in the lawsuit that Clinton Boone was hired by Isotex Health LLC of Texas in 2019 to start a CBD processing facility in Lincoln, Montana.

Isotex promised locals that the CBD facility would eventually employ 120 people.

Skaggs says he moved to Montana to start the project and was supposed to receive 45% of its proceeds. However, Skaggs says, Boone diverted funds and machines intended for the Montana facility.

The project was terminated in 2020. Skaggs is asking a federal court in Montana to award him unspecified damages.

Law 360 first reported the lawsuit. Boone’s attorneys did not immediately reply to the complaint.

Federal agriculture regulators continue to approve hemp production plans for state and tribal programs following the Jan. 1 deadline when pilot programs were due to expire and the final rules under the 2018 Farm Bill were set to take effect.

Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved hemp production programs for Alaska, Arizona and Montana.

All current hemp license holders in these states must apply for new licenses.

According to the Arizona Department of Agriculture, with approval to comes eligibility to USDA crop insurance, loan and conservation programs for hemp producers including:

• Whole-Farm Revenue Protection.
• Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP).
• NRCS-administered conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, Regional Conservation Partnership Program, and Agricultural Conservation.
• Easement Program Farm loans, including operating, ownership, beginning farmer, and farm storage facility.

Arizona’s newly approved hemp production plan allows producers to grow and sell new products such as hemp baby greens commercially, according to Robert Masson, an agriculture extension specialist for the University of Arizona’s Yuma County Extension.

“Baby leaf hemp can be grown in Arizona and shipped nationwide,” Masson told KYMA and KECY Yuma TV stations.

There have already been several trials done in edible hemp greens, he said.

“Moving forward, I think the big win for us will be the leafy green production,” Masson said.

“I think that will go great in a salad blend. I think that consumers will really get behind it. We’ve done some initial nutritionals and it’s very healthy.”

Fiber and grain hemp have been shown to be of higher interest now than CBD, according to Masson.

In Alaska, the state agriculture division director David Schade said hemp holds economic promise for the state, which produced the crop on 70 outdoor acres and in 14,000 square feet of indoor space.

“We have clean water, clean soil, clear air, so we can, in the right regions, grow great plants,” Schade told Alaska Public Media.

Schade said that harvest will likely grow under the new USDA approved plan.

“The goal is diversification of Alaska’s economy with the addition of a new crop for our farmers,” he said in a press release.

“Industrial hemp is one crop where Alaska is not years behind the Lower 48 in development.”

Montana, which has been one of the largest hemp production states since the hemp pilot program began under the 2014 Farm Bill passed, licensed 37 producers who planted 2,540 acres in 2021.

According to the state hemp program, the majority of the planted acres were for grain (1,700 acres), followed by fiber (590 acres) and CBD (250 acres).

About 2,000 acres of hemp were produced on tribal lands in Montana.

Applications for Montana outdoor producers are due to the Montana Department of Agriculture by May 30.

Hemp was lauded as a climate-smart commodity for its use as a construction material by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week as he highlighted new funding opportunities for farmers.

Speaking at a university in Missouri, Vilsack pointed to hemp Monday when he announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest $1 billion in climate-smart commodities.

The new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities fund will go to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who use climate-smart practices, Vilsack said.

“For far too long in rural America, we’ve taken products of the land and from the land, we’ve shipped them someplace else, where opportunity is created someplace else, where wealth is created someplace else,” Vilsack said.

“With this opportunity, we now have a chance to change it from an extraction effort to a circular effort. The ability to essentially create climate-smart commodities, the opportunity to convert waste into wide variety of bio-based materials. I saw some of them today – hemp in construction material, for example.”

“Those processing facilities can be located right where the crops are being grown.

“They can be sustainably produced; they can be a higher value; they can create jobs in rural communities; they can increase farm income; they can expand population centers in rural places, taking pressure off our urban centers; they can restore life and vitality in our small towns.

“That’s the opportunity side of this – we just need to understand the opportunity we have, and we need to fully seize it.”

The USDA defines a climate-smart commodity as a commodity crop produced using practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon.

The USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation will be used to fund pilot projects to provide incentives to:

• Implement climate-smart production practices, activities and systems on working lands.
• Measure or quantify, monitor and verify the carbon and greenhouse-gas benefits associated with those practices.
• Develop markets and promote the resulting climate-smart commodities.

Applications will be taken in two groups, sorted by the size of the proposals. Deadlines are:

• April 8 for the first funding pool (proposals from $5 million to $100 million).
• May 27 for the second funding pool (proposals from $250,000 to $4,999,999).

Learn more about eligibility and how to apply here.

Santa Fe Farms of New Mexico has bought a Colorado hemp-genetics firm to establish a line of propietary genetics.

High Grade Hemp Seed of Longmont, Colorado, will retain its name and location but will become a subsidiary of Santa Fe Farms, which grows hemp on about 200 acres but does not have its own line of genetics.

The companies said in a statement that they’ll prioritize developing hemp varieties “that will adapt to climate change,” in addition to looking for market opportunities.

Both firms are privately held, and terms of the acquisition were not announced.

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies has approved a bill to allow regulated marijuana and hemp industries. But the pending law still has hurdles to overcome and it could be years before a flourishing industry emerges.

Lawmakers in Mexico’s lower house voted largely in support of the bill, with 316 votes in favor and 129 against. There were 23 abstentions.

Next, the Senate needs to review and approve the bill’s revisions before it heads to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for his signature.

After the law is enacted, Mexico will join Canada and Uruguay as the only countries to legalize an adult-use marijuana industry.

However, the scope of the industry and available business opportunities will be largely carved out by the regulations in support of the law.

Those regulations, yet to be developed, will limit opportunities in some cases and open the door to others.

That could have unforeseen implications for businesses and investors.

The Senate approved its version of the legalization bill in November.

Mexico’s  Supreme Court earlier ruled that the absolute prohibition of recreational marijuana was unconstitutional, setting in motion the process to establish a formal law.

Read more about the Mexico vote at Marijuana Business Daily.

Socially disadvantaged farmers including those in the hemp industry are in line for new debt-relief funds in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021.

The legislation, which passed in the U.S. Senate Saturday and awaits changes and a final vote in the House, directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make payments to Black farmers and farmers of color that are equal to 120% of all direct loans and USDA-backed loans.

The measure defines eligible farmers as anyone in “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice.” The extra funds are meant to cover taxes from debt.

Loans from USDA help farmers buy supplies and equipment needed for production, but they haven’t always been equitably distributed.

The USDA had developed a backlog of more than 14,000 discrimination complaints by 2009, many from Black farmers who claimed that the agency had withheld loans because of their race, according to The Counter, an independent food systems newsletter.

Civil rights leaders criticized President Biden’s nomination of newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, because of his role in the USDA’s foreclosure on Black farmers and inequitable farm loan distribution during his previous stint during the Obama Administration.

The provision in the relief bill is similar to the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act, a bill introduced in the Senate last month by Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Proponents of the debt relief measure say that it’s a good first step to restore the 85% drop in Black-owned agricultural land over the past century, according to the Pew Charitable Trust.

Another pending Senate bill, the Justice for Black Farmers Act, would provide more support for Black farmers, including issuing land grants to make up for land losses, as well as allocating additional debt relief and research funds at historically Black colleges and universities.

An Oregon hemp producer seeking $2.5 million in damages after its warehouse was raided by authorities looking for illegal marijuana suffered a big setback in federal court.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke ruled that the search warrant used when authorities raided Oregonized Hemp Co., a farm and farm service contracting business, was valid.

The Grants Pass-based hemp company had argued that authorities from Josephine and Jackson counties was carried out improperly.

According to the (Medford, Oregon) Mail Tribune, the judge conceded that the company and its owner are “understandably frustrated with the actions of law enforcement in this case,” but he said the search was constitutional.

Clarke did note that Oregonized “suffered a large economic loss due to the destruction of their industrial hemp, which law enforcement misidentified as marijuana.”

The judge gave Oregonized time to file an amended complaint based on his ruling about the search warrant.

The nationwide hemp rules are taking effect March 22 as planned, with no additional delay or review because of the changed administration at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA gave notice Monday that the rules have been reviewed and are cleared to take effect as planned. The USDA was giving the hemp plan a second look because it was published less than 24 hours before former President Donald Trump left office in January.

Among other changes, the final hemp rules:

• Allow hemp farmers to use common disposal methods to destroy hemp crops with more than 0.3% THC.
• Give hemp producers 30 days before harvest to get their plants tested for THC, up from 15 days. 
• Give farmers more breathing room before being considered “negligent” for producing hot hemp. The new negligence standard is 1% THC, up from 0.5% THC. 

Not all the final rules have been embraced by the industry, though. The final rules retain a requirement that hot hemp flowers be destroyed and that testing labs be certified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The rules also require hemp to tested for total THC content, not just delta-9 THC.

Learn more about the final hemp rules in this free downloadable reference guide, “USDA Final Hemp Rule: A Handbook for Hemp & CBD Businesses.”