Hemp

Hauling hemp can be risky for drivers even though it’s now legal to grow it, process it and sell it — which is why some states are including provisions in their hemp plans to try and ease the pain, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) top legal official.

Speaking at USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, USDA general counsel Stephen Vaden said that a handful of states are requiring that drivers hauling hemp have documentation verifying that their cargo is legal.

As lawmakers are poised to pass a package of bills to aid the struggling agriculture industry, hemp farmers want something to help their industry too.

Members with the Wisconsin Hemp Alliance are asking state lawmakers to consider legislation to expand research and innovation for hemp fiber.

A new scanner can quickly determine whether plants are hemp or marijuana without damaging the product, say researchers.

Hemp is technically legal in Texas, but proving that hemp is not marijuana can be a hurdle, requiring testing in a licensed laboratory. So, when law enforcement recently detained a truck carrying thousands of pounds of hemp near Amarillo, Texas, the driver spent weeks in jail awaiting confirmation that the cargo was legal. Events like these inspired the researchers to create the device.

In October 2018, the USDA activated their official hemp rules in the form of the "Establishment of a Domestic Hemp Production Program". With those rules came additional guideline documents for sampling and testing, through a set of agricultural practices to ensure production of compliant plant biomass.

Agriculture Department officials today announced the availability of crop insurance programs to protect hemp producers’ crops from natural disasters and discussed what program regulations they can write and which ones would have to be changed by Congress.

In a news release and a call to reporters, officials said hemp growers may qualify for two insurance programs:

Two bills that aim to fix “glitches” in the state hemp program passed their first committee stops unanimously Tuesday.

The bills allow licensed hemp growers to use any seeds deemed safe by the USDA, clarify that hemp products must be properly packaged and labeled and require that licensees who break rules while distributing or selling hemp extract complete corrective action plans.

Colorado farmer James Bennett has been growing industrial hemp since 2014. Last year he raised 1,000 acres of industrial hemp across seven states. With several growing seasons under his belt and experience as a seedsman, his goal is to compress the learning curve for farmers who want to follow in his footsteps.

They say it grows like a weed, and according to the chief executive officer of Denver-based Physical Commodities Exchange (PanXchange), the over-the-counter exchange that sets the price for hemp, there is a huge surplus.

The surplus is significant enough to have dropped the per pound price from $40 in July 2019, to around $10, currently.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the latest states to have their plans approved under the U.S. Domestic Hemp Production Program.

Delaware, Nebraska and Texas all scored a guernsey, adding to the original state plans approved late last year –  those for Louisiana, New Jersey and Ohio.

As well as states, a number of Indian tribes have also had their plans approved:

The United States government has approved guidelines submitted by the Texas Department of Agriculture to allow Texans to grow hemp in the state, agriculture commissioner Sid Miller said Monday.

The state submitted the rules to the United States Department of Agriculture in December.