🏛️ The 2018 Farm Bill is Expiring

And what implications is that going to have on the hemp industry?

I just got back from Washington, D.C.

This was my second time visiting, and both trips were around hemp advocacy.

I think I had an idea of how our government worked, but there has been nothing more eye-opening than actually getting involved.

As someone who operates a well-known hemp brand in the capital of Texas, advocacy quickly became an important area for us.

I found being proactive was better than being reactive, especially when it came to navigating the Texas Legislative session and hemp regulation.

And so in 2020, I decided to level up my efforts and join the Texas Hemp Coalition.

Advocacy to me means using my voice professionally to influence change, to understand who I need to work with to implement said change, and then to educate, educate, educate.

I think one of the biggest things I’ve taken away from participating in this process over the last few years is you can go in with a lot of asks, and in all actuality, you’re going to only get a handful of things AND on top of that, it could take multiple years to actually see the things you want to see come to fruition.

There are a lot of things at play and a lot of moving pieces.

To anyone who thinks advocacy is smoking a joint in front of the capitol while you flick off a cop I say do better.

You really have to look at it like a puzzle, begin to understand the game board, understand the players, and then be realistic with what outcome you’re after.

So here we are, my second time in DC, advocating for hemp.

I was there alongside Ilissa Nolan the Executive Director of the Texas Hemp Coalition, and we were there representing Texas Hemp in conjunction with the US Hemp Roundtable.

We had meetings scheduled with Senators and Representatives, as well as the Senate and House Agriculture Committees.

For those who haven’t advocated locally or federally, it goes something like this:

Depending on your position, your issue, and the person you are meeting with’s office, you may or may not meet with the decision maker.

For example, We met with both Texas Senators (Cruz and Cornyn) offices but did not meet with the Senators themselves, we had meetings with their staffers.

The staffer’s job is to take notes, listen to our concerns about specific legislation coming up, and then relay that back to their boss the Senator or Rep.

I have to put this in perspective, again it’s not a right or wrong thing, it is just the reality of how this goes.

You typically have a meeting scheduled for 15-30 min of their time, there is a 50/50 chance they are aware of your issues (for example Cornyn’s staffer was specifically overseeing agriculture so she was more knowledgeable than some staffers we met with about our issues pertaining to hemp), and then you are one of a dozen or so meetings they will take that day alone.

And imagine, this repeats daily for them.

All I’m trying to convey is your issue, is one of a dozen issues coming across their desk daily.

So contrast that with sometimes you do meet directly with the decision maker.

In our case, thanks to Ilissa and her Texas A&M agriculture roots, we had the opportunity to meet with the Senate Agriculture Committee AND the House Agriculture Committee.

These are the two committees actually writing the farm bill.

And the 2023 Farm Bill was the primary topic during this trip.

The Farm Bill is a piece of legislation that is an omnibus, multi-year law that governs an array of agricultural and food programs.

It provides an opportunity for policymakers to comprehensively and periodically address agricultural and food issues and in 2018 it included language that defined hemp to include any cannabis plant, or derivative thereof, that contains not more than 0.3 percent delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (“T H C”) on a dry-weight basis.

It is set to fiscally expire on September 30th, 2023 with the final crop season ending December 31st, 2023.

Again, this piece of legislation's impacts go far beyond hemp, but hemp is one of the contention points in trying to rewrite this thing.

As an industry, we look towards the federal Farm Bill for guidance.

So while it is “Expiring” they will most likely file for an extension.

And I know for a fact these people are actively working on rewriting it, which is why the timing of our meetings with them couldn’t have been better planned.

I would say our conversations were generally positive, but there is still a major stigma for cannabis federally.

There is beginning to be a push for separation (which I get) between consumables and industrial.

We heard it brought up in every single meeting and that was one of our talking points too.

The truth is there is just more industry around consumables, but the repercussions of that are the agriculture/industrial side gets lumped into the chaos happening with consumables.

I will also note that while the 2018 Farm Bill appears to be loopholed six ways from Sunday, it was also intentionally left loose.

The ripple effects however go far beyond anyone, even myself, could have imagined.

In fact, in the last 5 years, Hemp has been federally legal, you can now find pretty much anything you could imagine infused with THC from beverages to edibles, right here in Texas.

And due to the Farm Bill language, it’s proving to be a legal pathway to introduce cannabis federally.

Remember, marijuana is trying really hard to make progress federally.

It’s still a Schedule 1 drug in the Controlled Substances Act.

And here comes hemp just disrupting the whole flow.

Like no, that wasn’t the intent, but it sure has kicked the door wide open for these conversations.

Congress is aware, but how they take action is what we’re all waiting for.

Again, there is a natural inclination to separate the issues.

Hemp as an agricultural industrial crop used for building materials and hemp fibers is a much different conversation than consuming THC or even CBD for your inflammation.

In the meetings we had, we talked about Isomers of THC, Synthetics vs. Synthesis, and putting pressure on the FDA to regulate hemp as a dietary supplement.

We also talked about the squeeze on farmers from a testing perspective.

The whole industry is predicated on this <.3% THC language which in some states is total THC.

As a farmer, the sensitivity of this crop to potentially pop hot and test over that threshold is more common than not.

So examining the current language and how it’s impacting the supply chain was also top of mind.

Through it all though, you could see that to most of them “cannabis” is still a dirty word on Capitol Hill and they would very much like to focus on the industrial side.

But the industry is consumables, at least right now, and it needs direction and guidance.

I think the smart play (which we’ve been implementing) is understanding the language they like to speak, and then speaking to them in the language they understand.

It sounds rudimentary, but this is a complex plant.

So my take is regardless of how you feel about hemp, it is helping change sentiment which will ultimately lead to change for cannabis.

It’s getting us in the door to have these conversations.

And I’m grateful to play a role in helping tell our story to whoever will listen.

I’m just asking for you to think about, what will the next generation of the cannabis industry look like.

Do we want to see consumables and industrial separated out?

Who benefits when hemp loses?

Who benefits when hemp wins?

It’s too soon to tell, but I’m keeping my eyes peeled on the 2023 Farm Bill.