By Yarygin
“For the first time in nearly a hundred years, commercial hemp production will no longer be federally prohibited in the United States,” said Justin Strekal, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), last December, when the U.S. Senate approved the 2018 Farm Bill.
The 2018 Farm Bill, which was signed into law by Donald Trump on Friday, Dec. 20, essentially legalized hemp on the federal level, designating it as a commodity crop. This law allows hemp to be freely transported over state lines so long as it was produced under a state plan or with a lawful growing license. As hemp is a strain of the cannabis sativa plant with less than 0.3% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC; the psychoactive component of cannabis), this bill is the first piece of legislation to ever federally deschedule some cannabis products.
In effect, growers cannot plant hemp in compliance with the 2018 Farm Bill yet, as it took several months to come up with the road plan for the regulation of the now-legal hemp. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had initially promised to deliver the plan by August, but the agency reportedly sent the long-awaited draft of federal regulations to the White House in mid-September, according to a UPI report.
“Until the USDA regulation is finalized and published in the Federal Register, research and development initiatives authorized in the 2014 Farm Bill [which was much less permissive] remain in effect,” the USDA declared.
2018 Farm Bill Removes Roadblocks to the Growing Hemp Industry
This news comes as a study by advocacy organization Vote Hemp found that more than 500,000 acres have been licensed to grow hemp in the first half of 2019—four times as much acreage as last year. Vote Hemp notes that less hemp will be grown than the maximum licensed amount; in 2018, 78,000 acres of hemp were produced. There is no doubt that the 2018 Farm Bill’s success directly contributed to the immense boom in interest for hemp farming. Vote Hemp’s report also notes “dramatic investments and growth in hemp processing facilities” this year.
“The 2018 Farm Bill [...] removes roadblocks to the rapidly growing hemp industry in the U.S., notably by authorizing and encouraging access to federal research funding for hemp and removing restrictions on banking, water rights and other regulatory roadblocks the hemp industry currently faces. The bill also explicitly authorizes crop insurance for hemp,” the report states.
Even before the 2018 Farm Bill, most states had independently chosen to pursue growing hemp, which shows the crop’s importance. Besides cannabidiol (CBD) production, hemp is incredibly useful for textiles, food production and many other applications, making it a large pool of potential income. Currently, only four states—Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire and South Dakota—have failed to establish a state program to grow hemp, and even they are considering the possibility of establishing such programs.
