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.

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.

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.

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.”

Federal agriculture officials plan to collect hemp acreage and production data from thousands of U.S. farmers in the coming months.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture published a notice in the Federal Register late last month, requesting permission to gather data about hemp production from the White House.

Though the type of data USDA is after is not yet clear, the agency said it expects approximately 20,000 responses from hemp producers, based on a list of hemp producers being developed by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

According to the notice, the data will be collected under the authority of the Domestic Hemp Production Program, run by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.

NASS management met with representatives from AMS, as well as the USDA’s Economic Research Service, Farm Service Agency, Risk Management Agency, and the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture to determine the type of data needed and the frequency of collections.

NASS plans to send questionnaires through the mail and will use “multiple mailings and internet data collection tools, followed up with phone” and limited personal calls to non-respondents to increase responses.

The notice invites comments on why the information is necessary and best practices for gathering the information until April 26.

The USDA’s final hemp production rules were released Jan. 15 and are expected to take effect this month.

The request for hemp production data is separate from a hemp production costs and practices survey the USDA planned to execute last year in collaboration with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the University of Kentucky.

The USDA’s data collection arm, the National Agricultural Statistics Service, is also sending “content tests” to farmers this spring as it gears up for the 2022 Census of Agriculture, which will include hemp farmers for the first time.

Download this free report to learn more about the new hemp rules taking effect this month: “USDA Hemp Rule: Update for Hemp and CBD Businesses.”

(Editor’s note: This story is part of a recurring series of commentaries from professionals connected to the hemp industry. Jillian Hishaw is an agricultural strategist and former U.S. Department of Agriculture Adjudicator of the Office to the Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights. She’s now Founder & CEO of Family Agriculture Resource Management Services (F.A.R.M.S.) and author of “Systematic Land Theft” and “Don’t Bet the Farm on Medicaid.”)

Disparities in the hemp industry, just like the field of agriculture, are apparent.

Many top hemp companies are run by white men supported by an executive staff and board that are seldom diverse.

It’s a similar landscape at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since the USDA was established in 1862, just one white woman (Ann Veneman) and one Black man (Mike Espy) have been secretary.

There was some speculation President Joe Biden would choose the first Black female to lead the agency.

Instead, Biden chose Tom Vilsack, a white man and a former Agriculture Secretary under President Barack Obama. Vilsack has a record of ineffective race relations matching the history of USDA.

This history has led to the drafting of the Justice for Black Farmers Act — legislation sponsored by Sens. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand — providing Black farmers with debt relief and more.

The USDA’s record on Black farmers and landowners is shameful, and the disparities continue. Black farmers were foreclosed on at a 13% rate between 2006 to 2016 but made up less than 3% of USDA’s direct-loan recipients.

Currently, whites own 98% of U.S. farmland while Black, indigenous and people of color own the remaining 2%. These statistics are even more dismal in the hemp and cannabis industry.

Black farmers’ approval of hemp licenses is extremely minimal. And even after acquiring their licenses, many cannot afford to grow due to lack of capital and infrastructure.

“The lack of capital and the historic system of being forced to compete in the good-ole-boys network locks many Black farmers out of the industry,” said Gagan Hunter, CEO of Mother Earth Bounty, a seller of natural cannabis products that’s been in business for nearly 20 years.

No social equity in hemp

The term “social equity” is often tossed around as an application requirement to secure a cannabis license. But the term has become words on paper.

The 10-year restriction on getting a hemp license for anyone with a drug felony conviction is just another example of Congress allowing USDA to lock Black Americans out of the industry.

“If equity was really in place, we would be put in the front of the line,” Hunter said.

The challenges of living in the Southeast and being a Black farmer are far too familiar — but the work it keeps getting done by farmers on a shoestring budget.

I recently spoke with Dreu VanHoose, CEO of VanHoose Hemp Co. in Alabama. She’s a first-generation farmer growing on her grandfather’s land.

“I expected challenges, but I learned about resilience and failing forward,” she said.

VanHoose’s grandfather was one of the first Black pharmacists in Washington DC.

“And now I am happy to continue in his footsteps of growing natural hemp products ” for medicinal and industrial purposes, she said.

VanHoose experienced a setback at the beginning of the planting season last year when she purchased “organic” fertilizer that was not so organic.

After her transplants were either burned up by the fertilizer or eaten by the bugs, VanHoose replanted a late crop, which resulted in a successful harvest.

But VanHoose did have her share of challenges during her first year of being a rural Black farmer.

“Relocating from DC to Alabama was an adjustment period, you can say– realizing things you can do in the city cannot be done down here.”

VanHoose said the key to her success this year was the guidance she received from neighboring older Black farmers and the support from organizations like F.A.R.M.S. and Tricolla Farms located in Upstate New York.

Lonely profession

Other farmers did not fare as well this past season.

Tannur Ali, CEO of iLOGIC at Solomon’s Garden, located in Alabama, is a Black produce farmer and aspiring hemp farmer who has experienced many of the challenges Hunter saw.

Like Hunter, Ali moved from the Northeast.

“My first couple of years of farming were spent proving myself. People expected me to fail and move back home,” she said.

Last year Ali secured her hemp license but was unable to plant.

“It took me getting my license to identify the full costs associated with growing hemp, and it wasn’t something I could afford. It was either take out a loan to plant hemp or just not plant, and I chose the latter.”

The isolation she felt made things worse.

“The most challenging thing (about) being a woman farmer is the loneliness, because women farmers are so few and far between,” she said.

Despite these challenges, Ali said, “I remain optimistic about the whole process. I knew there would be difficulties I didn’t see coming.

“In my mind, the process speaks for itself — first you build the soil, then you expect the plants to grow.”

Her background in administrative and community work gave her an advantage, she says.

“Following the law is an essential part of farming.”

As we end Black History month and enter Women History’s month, the words and work of VanHoose and Ali will resonate with future women farmers who plant behind them.

The barrier of discrimination in the agricultural industry, no matter what the crop, is historically apparent.

Unlike VanHoose and Ali forging a new path for Black women in hemp, Biden missed an opportunity to appoint the first Black woman Agriculture Secretary. As more women enter the field of agriculture, the demographics in the field will ensure an accomplished woman of color will be Agriculture Secretary one day.

Jillian Hishaw can be reached at [email protected]

To be considered for publication as a guest columnist, please submit your request to [email protected] with the subject line “Guest Column.”

Hemp farmers may have seen something new in their mailboxes this winter, as federal agriculture officials prepare for the 2022 Census of Agriculture, which will include hemp farmers for the first time.

Over the last two months, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service sent “content tests” to a sample of 36,000 producers from various agriculture segments across the country.

The content tests are brief surveys to help the agency market projections for the larger census.

The NASS conducts the Census of Agriculture once every five years, giving the USDA a complete count of U.S. farms and the people who operate them.

The ag census looks at land use and ownership, operator characteristics, production practices, income and expenditures, and is a source of uniform, comprehensive agricultural data for every county in the nation.

Through the census, agricultural producers provide information that can influence decisions that shape their industry segment and the future of U.S. agriculture.

According to USDA-NASS, there will be several tests running concurrently through this spring to address producer requests and technological trends, including the inclusion of previously reported data.

NASS is also testing the way it collects its data. The content test is a short survey that includes a handful of screening questions to determine if operations meet the definition of a farm, helping to fine-tune the accuracy of the sample list for the upcoming census.

Most important for hemp producers, the NASS is testing questions for the new commodity, which will be included for the first time in the 2022 Census of Agriculture.

All content test results will be considered for incorporation in the upcoming census, and in accordance with federal law, USDA-NASS will keep all responses confidential and uses them only for statistical purposes.

Farmers who received a content test can get assistance for completing it by calling 888-424-7828.

Three weeks after clearing his Senate agriculture committee hearing, the full Senate voted 92-7 Tuesday to confirm Tom Vilsack as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

Vilsack, an Iowan, served in the same role for all eight years of the Obama administration, and oversaw the USDA during passage and implementation of the 2014 Farm Bill, which allowed states to experiment with hemp production.

With bipartisan support, Vilsack received unanimous votes in his favor from Democrats, although his nomination was sharply criticized among civil rights advocates for his role in the agency’s foreclosure on Black farmers who had outstanding discrimination complaints, and inequitable farm loan distribution to Black farmers.

During his virtual Senate agriculture committee hearing, Vilsack said he would form an equity commission.

Vilsack did not mention hemp during the initial hearing, but he did update senators about Biden’s plans to make agriculture carbon neutral, an idea that could lead to new opportunities for hemp farmers.

Immediately out of the gate, Vilsack will likely be focused on pandemic-related farm aid, including the $3 billion in farm relief that Congress made available through the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and other initiatives.

As is customary with new administrations, President Joe Biden put a freeze on all spending during the transition, including a freeze on direct payments to farmers “until further notice.”

Over the past four years, Vilsack served as president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

In the United States currently, humans can eat foods made from hemp – yet we can’t legally eat meat or eggs from animals that have eaten hemp.

But with recent action by the Hemp Feed Coalition (HFC), a Fort Collins, Colorado-based nonprofit seeking to gain federal approval for hemp and its byproducts as a source of commercial animal feed and nutrition, the industry is a little closer to seeing that become a reality.

That’s because the HFC has completed its first submission for hemp to become an approved animal-feed ingredient for consideration by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.

If approved, the ingredient application will allow hempseed meal and cake to be legally used as commercial feed for laying hens.

The submission is the culmination of a two-year effort that has included ingredient investigation of hempseed cake and meal, along with a clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of hemp as feed for laying hens.

“One of the big opportunities for us as an industry, and one of the best ways that we can support our farmers in those ancillary markets, like our livestock producers, is by commoditizing those very nutritious and valuable byproducts that come out of the production and processing of hemp,” HFC Executive Director Hunter Buffington said during the 2021 World Ag Expo. The event is based in Tulare, California, but was held virtually this year.

The HFC focused on hempseed meal and seed cake as a first step because there are tons of the material sitting idle in farmers’ warehouses as a byproduct of the human-foods segment that is driving production of hemp grain to be crushed for oil, Buffington said.

“When you look at the nutritional composition, there’s no reason we can’t be feeding it,” she said.

But first, U.S. regulators needed data from American producers, not those from other parts of the world that have continued feeding hemp to animals for decades, she said.

To meet the rigorous standards for safety and efficacy that the FDA-CVM holds, hemp industry members from across the U.S. submitted certificates of analysis for their crops, demonstrating that the hempseed cake and meal can be consistently grown and processed.

“It really is going to take a concerted effort to not only understand the ingredient profile, to answer all the questions that FDA-CVM has about the ingredient itself, but then we also have to conduct clinical feed trials to show safety and efficacy for these products as well,” Buffington said.

“To add to that, we have an additional challenge that only American-grown and American-processed hemp, fed to animals at research institutions in the United States, can be used to present our argument for approval to FDA-CVM, so you can see why we really needed a coalition of folks to take on this challenge.”

Why animal feed?

Hemp as an animal foodstuff sounds to some like the opposite direction of where the industry should be headed, considering the implied low-value of commodities that typically make up animal feed, such as corn and soybeans.

“If you want (hemp) products to compete on a global scale with these commodities, they have to be priced competitively,” said Scott Propheter, a farmer and CBD executive in North Carolina.

“That’s a double-edged sword, because now you’re talking about taking what we all talk about as a value-added crop and making it a commodity crop … and your margins compress dramatically.”

That’s not to say farmers can’t make money off commodities, Propheter added, but ultimately, it’s not to the same scale as many farmers expect when they invest in hemp cultivation.

But looking at the potential market that hemp could capture shows why that’s not necessarily the case for animal feed, said Wendy Mosher, president and CEO of Fort Collins-based hemp plant-breeding company New West Genetics, a founding HFC member.

According to projections by Grand View Research, a San Francisco-based market research and consulting company, the animal feed market is expected to top $415 billion by 2023, up from $336 billion in 2017.

The seed and grain segment of industrial hemp is expected to expand by nearly 20% by 2027, and the animal-care segment of the industry is projected to grow by nearly 10%, according to the HFC.

Currently, 190 million tons of animal feed are produced in the United States every year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We’ve always known … that could be the greatest opportunity,” Mosher said. “Part of it is because (of) the nutrition of the grain – and if we feed it to our animals and then we consume those animals, how much healthier is everybody going to be?”

Further, hemp grain prices are being driven down by Canadian producers – making it tough for U.S. farmers to compete with their northern counterparts’ scale and history of processing – and there’s not a large enough market in the U.S. yet to sell their grain crops, Mosher said.

“There’s nowhere to sell their grain to – niche human foods cannot compete acreage-wise with animal feeds, (and) why would you not want our animals to have an alternative to soy and corn?” she said.

“All in all, it’s better for animal health and for our farmers to have a place to drop it off.”

Hemp for animal feed is not going to replace all soy, because a large percentage of animal feed is derived from soy currently.

But animal feed can edge in on that market share, while addressing consumers’ interest in genetically modified crops and other concerns that they’ve been trending toward for the past 12 years, Mosher said.

Next steps

Hemp still has the disadvantage of not being an established crop and will likely need to enter as a niche segment.

But there is time to develop the market and the supply chain while the hemp industry awaits approval from the AAFCO and FDA-CVM, Buffington said.

The animal-feed ingredient approval process typically takes up to four years, though AAFCO and FDA-CVM authorities promised to fast-track it, which could reduce the wait to 18 months to 24 years, Mosher told Hemp Industry Daily.

Meanwhile, some farmers aren’t waiting for permission from federal regulators to sell eggs from chickens fed with hemp.

Kreider Farms, an egg and dairy producer in central Pennsylvania, added a line of cage-free hemp eggs to its Chiques Creek brand last December. Kreider says its chickens are fed with 20% hempseed meal, which produces eggs with more omega-3s, lutein, vitamins B12, B2, B5, E, biotin, choline and selenium than conventionally produced eggs.

With the first application under review, the HFC is now pivoting to research on other hemp byproducts, including oil, sediment, hulls, pulp and screenings, to look at their potential as feed ingredients.

The group’s research focus will include the clinical trials necessary to add ruminants – animals such as cattle, sheep and goats – to the submitted AAFCO and FDA-CVM application for hempseed meal.

The group plans to bring together researchers, members of the hemp and feed industries and coalition advisers for additional applications.

Laura Drotleff can be reached at [email protected]

Montana is considering a new requirement that medical marijuana growers keep their operations confined to indoor environments, leaving the outdoors for hemp production only.

A state Senate committee Thursday heard from hemp and marijuana growers on the bill that aims to prevent cross-pollination between hemp and marijuana, the (Helena) Independent Record reported.

The bill would require marijuana to be grown indoors in greenhouses or hoop houses.

The bill sponsor, Sen. Tom Jacobson, said that that most marijuana growers already grow indoors to maximize year-round production, while outdoor Montana farmers could use hemp to diversify their operations.

Montana’s agriculture department is also in favor of the bill.

But medical marijuana growers objected, saying the bill would impact the investments they have already made in outdoor facilities, and arguing that the industry is more lucrative and has been in place longer than the state’s hemp program, and shouldn’t have to move in favor of hemp.

The proposal would not grandfather marijuana cultivators already licensed to grow outside.

Montana voters legalized adult-use marijuana in 2020, which will make the industry more economically robust than hemp, medical marijuana producers contended. Rules for adult-use marijuana production in Montana are still in development.

The Montana debate comes as outdoor marijuana and hemp farmers are increasingly coming to loggerheads over pollen drift, setting the stage for growing disputes in areas with thriving outdoor cannabis production.

According to researchers at Michigan State University, a single male cannabis flower can produce 350,000 pollen grains capable of traveling great distances in the wind.