The story below is from our May/June 2022 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Most experts agree that if hemp is not the potential savior of our society, it’s close. So why all the obstacles in its way?
There is one simple, easy fact about the future of hemp these days: Hemp is complicated.
It’s about relieving pain and getting to sleep, building homes, creating long-lasting textiles and limitless rope, making shoes, bioplastics, insulation, jewelry, biofuel, high protein powders, CBD and THC, veggie burgers, tea, coffee and a world of other drinks.
There is considerable evidence that hemp will ultimately not only be used to build homes, but to provide almost everything inside them, according to Debbie Custer of The Hemp Mill in Vinton, among others with considerable expertise. Henry Ford built an automobile body from hemp in 1941.
All of which sounds like a world-saver. But we haven’t yet gotten to the politics of it, of big pharma, political will, millions of dollars, laws that limit and … well … lots of controversy.
Hemp use dates in recorded history to 8,000 BC in China and Taiwan. Businesses dealing with hemp finally got the official blessing from the federal government in 2018 with the Farm Bill, removing it from the list of Schedule One controlled substances. Its cousin marijuana has recently been conditionally legalized in Virginia.
Susan Cromer, owner of Lily Hemp and a member of the Virginia Hemp Coalition’s board of directors, sees the brouhaha over Delta-8 as a distraction from the overwhelming value of hemp in our lives. It can, for example, replace wood and create recyclable, non-polluting plastic products. Many ordinary plastics contain potentially toxic chemicals, according to the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. Hemp has medicinal value and it likely has many other uses not yet discovered.
(The Delta-8 distraction often blurs hemp’s extraordinary contributions to so many parts of our lives, so we’ve dealt with it in a separate story here.)
Sam Eakin, a big, bearded farmer who owns Jubilee Hemp, grows hemp in three counties. He began growing it three years ago on three acres of Craig County land. “That was a lot” of land to be dedicated to hemp at the time, he says. But he pointed to drag racing champion Matt Hagan’s 80-acre TruHarvest Farm near Christiansburg—which absorbed nearly $1 million in investment—as the role model for hemp farms.
“There’s a lot more work in doing it right than meets the eye,” Eakin says. “You have to concentrate on temperature and humidity control, and it’s all done by hand. We founded a small cottage niche, growing high-quality flowers,” which can be used for food, among other things.
“Problem is, you can hardly make a living on a small farm, and few in this area do. Hemp’s future is in industrial fiber, but the infrastructure is not there yet. Europe’s a couple of decades ahead of us in developing it. I mean, just look at the hemp clothing industry. Hemp is incredibly durable. I think it’s on the cusp of breaking loose as an industry, but it will take investment and vision. We’ll need mills and there is only one functioning mill in Virginia [in Elliston] and the fact is you can’t ship hemp and make a profit. You need more mills.”
Cromer insists that “you’ve gotta have both growers and processors” if the industry is to flourish. “We would like the THC limit for growers to be increased to one percent [from the current level of .3 percent] because meeting that low limit is difficult when growing. When processed into a product, the THC limit can be decreased to the legal limit.
“In an evolving industry such as hemp, new laws made to address products of concern need to be written so they don’t harm the accepted parts of the industry or historical uses of hemp.”
The new laws are structured to deal with Delta-8, she says, “to keep people out” of the process.” She agrees that the “industry needs regulation” but Delta-8 is “muddying the water” for those serious about hemp’s other potentials.
Eakin insists that “CBD has a place because of its medicinal value, sleep aids, aches, pains” and the like, but agrees that regulation is vital at this point if the industry is to be the breakout that many have predicted.
Custer, who two years ago predicted hemp to become a billion-dollar industry, says its growth “has been explosive to some extent, but not the extent” she predicted, especially in this region. Getting the banks to jump in with start-up loans is crucial, she says, but they are afraid of Delta-8’s lingering impression as “marijuana lite,” which those in the know insist simply isn’t true. “Hemp is still in the risky category,” she says. “It raises red flags” to bankers.
Legislators have been overwhelmingly skittish.
Setting up a series of dispensaries, insists Cromer, is “a way to get up, but it is very expensive getting in.” On top of that, there are a frightening number of nit-picky regulations (outlining the shape of gummies, for example) that inhibit the sale, even though you can buy CBD at the gas station or convenience store.
Says Derek Wall, co-owner of Buffalo Hemp in Roanoke, Blacksburg and Floyd, “Big pharma is pushing everybody else out” with its enormous sums of money going to lobbying. “If they don’t have it their way, they’d rather ban” Delta-8.
Wall’s partner, Daniel Sowers, predicts that severe CBD legislation “will kill the business.”
Wall, who considers himself a real estate professional first (“I haven’t made any money from hemp”) says hemp “is a hard industry to navigate.”
The Hemp Mill’s Custer, who is moving and expanding the shop, says another inhibitor is that hemp remains “a cash-only industry … and that can be fraught with fraud.” She compares the “framework” as “the same as alcohol years ago. You remember the blue laws, I’m sure.”
The approach to hemp, she says, “was letting the genie out of the bottle without a process” in place. The state will have to go over a lot of bumps before it figures this out.” She points to the Virginia Innovation Collective in Buena Vista as “developing value-added products, generating sustainable products and doing research. The Advancement Foundation [in Vinton] has secured grant support for it. … It is still an infant industry, yet to define itself.”
Serial entrepreneur Bonnie Cranmer of New Castle (Green Enterprises) “saw the waste the CBD manufacturing was generating” and created what has become popular paper products from that waste. “It was an opportunity to create lifestyle products,” she says.
Custer bemoans “the vast number of people in the industry who are doing it for the wrong reasons: they want to get rich quick.”
But there are a lot of serious professionals who are in it for “the right reasons.”
The Killing of an Industry?
D
erek Wall and Daniel Sowers, owners of Buffalo Hemp believe recent action by Virginia’s legislators and governor will kill their business and a lot of similar businesses across the state. They sell hemp-based CBD products that buyers often use to generate a little buzz.
Delta-8 is the product that caused the General Assembly to have such a conniption. It is a new product being developed from hemp. “People are going to use it because it has been effective for them, so regulation is necessary to ensure safe product,” says Susan Cromer of Lily Hemp. “Changes in legislation have to be sensitive to the needs of the rest of the industry and not make the state definition of hemp more restrictive than the federal definition.”
Although it is not FDA approved, CBD has some solid, wholesome and productive medical applications. Its anecdotal uses include helping people get to sleep and easing chronic pain from conditions like fibromyalgia. “It is very healthy,” says Sowers. Wall insists that “CBD has amazing medical benefits” and deserves better than to be misunderstood … and legislated against.
Even with the feds closing in, Delta-8 continued to be legal in Virginia until the General Assembly and governor recently said it wasn’t, effectively laying waste to an industry in its infancy.
The poorly-written bill affects the entire industry and needs to be re-written so that products that are federally legal are not illegal in Virginia, say opponents of the bill. The result of the bans is likely to be the closing of a number of small businesses, removal from the shelves of some CBD products, which have become pervasive in convenience stores, much like cigarettes and beer.
Hence the overwhelming support in the General Assembly to ban these products. There appears to be substantial misunderstanding.
The story above is from our May/June 2022. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!