Hemp. What's it all about?
/Fall 2021 update - the fact that no real hemp markets exist and the predication that farmers would be hurt has come true. The 2018 Farm Bill that allowed hemp farming caused:
Licensed hemp production to explode by 445% from 2018-2019 with 510,000 acres of hemp being cultivated in 2019 versus only around 112,000 in 2018
The price of wholesale CBD to decline by 50% between May 2019 and October 2019
Most farmers who were able to sell hemp, did so at a loss. Many others are still struggling to find buyers
Hemp production plummeted by more than 80% in 2021
See more detail on the failed hemp provisions in the 2018 Farm Bill below.
Read Kevin Sabet’s recent article in Newsweek - The Unintended Consequences of Hemp
Furthermore, and worse, new very potent psychoactive cannabinoids are being extracted from hemp in labs. Read more about the devastating realities of Delta 8-THC products that have come online in illegal and legal marijuana markets. Hemp was never supposed to involve the addictive and psychoactive components of marijuana.
Hemp Explained - Hemp is proclaimed by many as the most useful plant to ever be grown - with potential uses in every category of products. This is an exaggeration.
Hemp is typically grown for seed and fiber and is a cannabis plant with low levels of THC (the psychoactive cannabinoid found in cannabis/marijuana plants). THC is fat soluble and accumulates in the body’s fatty tissues. We don’t know if accumulation of low-level THC like that in hemp is benign or not.
Hemp seed is sometimes touted as a good supply of CBD (another cannabinoid - not psychoactive - found in cannabis/marijuana/hemp plants). The quality and the bio-availability of CBD coming from hemp seed is questionable however, and while CBD products are widely available they are not regulated. All kinds of product contamination issues are found in these products.
Although the 2018 Farm Bill allows it to be grown, their are two problems with expanding hemp acreage in America.
First, there are no visible differences between hemp and other marijuana strains with high levels of THC. So, a hemp farmer could be growing marijuana without any detection. The only way to know if a plant is hemp is to chemically test it. A hemp plant could be growing next to a high-THC variety and both would have to be tested to know which was which. Even an unsuspecting farmer’s crop can transition to higher levels of THC because of pollinating tendencies in cannabis plants. Regulatory enforcement is expensive and is not currently well funded in any state. There is no reason to believe the FDA will be able to deploy necessary enforcement to contain hemp crops. “Cultivation of low-potency industrial cannabis hemp as a commercial field crop would necessitate enormous monitoring costs to prevent it from being diverted to the illegal drug use market. Making a psychoactive, addictive, and illegal drug readily available would undermine public health and safety, diminish environmental quality, and contribute substantially to the world’s drug problems. These predictable consequences should convince all nations to reject the false claims of cannabis/marijuana hemp legalization advocates.” (Dr. John Coleman, DEA Operations Ret.)
Secondly, the market potential for hemp is always grossly overstated. Only 252,187 acres of hemp were planted in the entire world, including Canada in 2016. At no point since 1988 has hemp acreage reached 500,000 acres worldwide. This means at no point has demand for hemp seed and stock been significant. The world-wide acreage in 2016 produced 165,424 tons of hemp (seed & stock). US acres of USDA approved hemp totaled 9,651 in 2016. it is worrisome that hemp may become like corn when the US tried to force market growth with corn subsidies. These subsidies created excess and unneeded levels of corn which forced unhealthy uses - remember massive use of and inclusion of corn syrup into the food supply. Even if America can find uses for hemp seed, it will not likely compete well against the subsidized European niche market or China, with its extremely cheap agricultural labor dominating the hemp market and production today. Look at worldwide hemp numbers and maps here (FAOSTAT).
