Hemp industry advocates decry federal regulations during first day summit in Danville | Local News

Anything testing above this threshold must be destroyed, which, for the farmers, means sending tens of thousands of dollars and months of hard work up in smoke.

The impact of such regulations on this budding industry was a frequent topic of discussion Monday, when the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research kicked off its third annual conference focused on driving hemp production forward.

As in its first two years, the event sold out well in advance, drawing 400 attendees from 25 states, organizers said. In the audience were growers, government regulators, attorneys, CBD (cannabidiol) product retailers, lab workers and others with a stake in the industry.

Many of the presentations on day one of the two-day conference arrived at a similar conclusion: Hemp is in a time of flux in the United States, as federal and state governments are still grappling with how to manage a crop that was illegal for decades.

“The biggest issue facing the industry across the country is the THC limit,” said Institute Executive Director Mark Gignac. “It is very difficult to grow crops that are within the legal limit while still having relatively high CBD content.”

At issue are proposed rules in the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the production and sale of hemp and its extracts in the U.S. but also tightened restrictions on farmers. Under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposal, growers must have their crop sampled within 15 days of harvest and delivered to a Drug Enforcement Agency approved lab for testing.

Critics, however, question the accuracy of sampling and testing methods and say they could unfairly penalize growers.

“We don’t want to see farmers banned from growing hemp just because they have a couple of crops come in hot,” or over the THC limit, said speaker Eric Steenstra, head of nonprofit advocacy group Vote Hemp.

Steenstra presented a report released by the Institute showing the top of the cannabis plant has the highest amount of THC. “The only way to get a fair reading is to sample the entire plant,” he said. He also noted there can be wide variation in THC levels among plants on the same farm.

In addition, testing facilities have not caught up to the demand, he said.

“Lack of labs for testing is a serious concern. All licensed growers are bringing their crops in around the same time of year, all needing testing at the same time. There’s not enough capacity to handle that,” Steenstra said.

The good news for industry advocates is that the regulations are not yet set in stone. The USDA plans to use the 2020 growing season as a chance to test drive the interim rule and identify any needed changes before it is finalized, said speaker Bill Richmond, chief of the agency’s Domestic Hemp Production program.

“We certainly expect it to evolve,” Richmond said in a presentation about the 2018 Farm Bill changes. “Stay tuned, and we certainly appreciate your input.”

U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Charlottesville, whose 5th District includes Pittsylvania and part of Henry County, was a last-minute addition to Monday’s agenda and used his time at the podium to criticize over-regulation of hemp producers.

In his introduction of the congressman, Gignac noted that Riggleman spearheaded efforts last fall to add Virginia to the list of states eligible for crop insurance for hemp for the first time. He also advocated for a lessening of regulations in a recent letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.

“I want this district to be known as the hemp district, and I want to be known as the hemp congressman,” Riggleman quipped. His goal, he explained is “trying to deregulate hemp and enact legislation that is practical, farmer-based and processor-based.”

To that end, he told the audience, he and his staff have been working on a bill for months called the Hemp Opportunity Zone. “I want to submit this bill in the next month or two,” he said.

Riggleman took issue in particular with the 0.3% THC limit and the “negligence threshold” of 0.5%, meaning, if a farmer’s crop tests above that level, “he could be prosecuted under the law,” he said.

“It’s a ridiculous rule. I think 0.3% is a pretty arbitrary number. I even think 0.5% is too low,” he said, to widespread applause. Instead, he said he would propose a 1% threshold and extend the testing timeline from 15 to 30 days before harvest.

Also, he said: “I think we should also have private certified testing centers without the DEA being involved in that process right off the bat.”

Not all of the provisions of the 2018 Farm Bill are bad, Steenstra said in his remarks. He praised the USDA for “working very hard” and releasing the new guidelines quickly, as well as removing hemp from the list of controlled substances.

“We’re at a very key moment here,” he said. It was a major step forward “getting hemp included in the Farm Bill, and having it made a legal crop again, but we’ve got a long way to go before it becomes a commodity crop. There was a long period where it wasn’t grown, and the knowledge of how to grow it was lost.”

Gignac noted Virginia has only been through one full growing season. “We are a year and three months into a new industry. This is all brand, brand-new,” he said.

After hemp was legalized, many farmers rushed into the market, leading to an oversupply in many places and a drop in prices, several state agriculture representatives noted Monday in a panel discussion.

Panelist Paul Adams of North Carolina said: “Money is being made in North Carolina, but the story overall for 2019 is there’s a lot of biomass in the barn. I think that’s largely a result of people growing blindly. They ran out and got a license and started growing.”

Gignac noted that “a lot of people got burned” in the first year of hemp cultivation by growing without lining up buyers for their product first.

“Start small. Slow down, whether you’re a grower or an investor. This will all get worked out eventually,” he said.