{"id":92789,"date":"2019-07-27T03:41:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T03:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/usda-to-issue-hemp-farming-regulations-this-fall\/"},"modified":"2019-07-27T03:41:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T03:41:45","slug":"usda-to-issue-hemp-farming-regulations-this-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/usda-to-issue-hemp-farming-regulations-this-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"USDA to issue hemp farming regulations this fall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Lawmakers
Lawmakers legalized hemp after a decades-long campaign, but some of the details are still being ironed out, including rules around banking services and insurance coverage.<\/span>Katherine Frey\/Washington Post file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

WASHINGTON \u2013 When U.S. Congress legalized hemp in the 2018 Farm Bill, it allowed Colorado\u2019s burgeoning hemp industry to thrive even more.<\/p>\n

The number of acres registered for hemp cultivation in Colorado jumped from 12,024 in 2017 to 30,950 in 2018, according to the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Data for this year\u2019s acreage is not yet available, but it could exceed 60,000 acres as the number of registered land areas rose from 1,075 in 2018 to about 2,600 so far in 2019.<\/p>\n

But as hemp products such as CBD oil grow in popularity, some hemp growers and businesses have had trouble securing financial services from banks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sort of an intertangled issue, cannabis as a whole,\u201d said Erica Stark, director of the National Hemp Association. \u201cWith hemp being legal, marijuana is still not federally legal, and as you can tell, people are confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hemp and marijuana both come from the cannabis plant, but hemp is not marijuana. The 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp as a controlled substance at the federal level as long as its THC concentration doesn\u2019t exceed 0.3%.<\/p>\n

But while hemp is now a legal crop, growers are still operating under the 2014 Farm Bill \u2013 which authorized some hemp research pilot programs \u2013 until the U.S. Department of Agriculture issues its hemp regulations. As a result, hemp growers haven\u2019t yet benefited from crucial commodity crop Farm Bill provisions, such as crop insurance.<\/p>\n

This gray area between legislative legalization and administrative rulemaking has also spooked some banks from providing financial services to hemp businesses, Stark said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a perceived risk,\u201d Stark said. \u201cI think more so it\u2019s because there haven\u2019t been official regulations released by USDA. They\u2019re still able to use that as an excuse to say that there\u2019s uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg Ibach, undersecretary of agriculture for marketing and regulatory programs, told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday that the USDA is reviewing a draft of the rule. The agency plans to publish it by this fall in order to accommodate the 2020 growing season. Until then, hemp organizations, bank associations and lawmakers have called for leadership by federal financial regulators.<\/p>\n

Last month, the American Bankers Association wrote a letter to the Federal Reserve calling on it to clarify hemp\u2019s legal status. Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote to the Farm Credit Administration in April asking it to ease any concerns member institutions may have about providing financial services to hemp businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cLegal hemp businesses should be treated just like any other agricultural businesses and not discriminated against,\u201d the senators wrote.<\/p>\n

While federal agencies have yet to give guidance on the issue, Michelle Bowman, a board member of the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking Committee June 5 that her agency would do so soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would not discourage banks from banking with these types of customers,\u201d Bowman said. \u201cWe\u2019ll try to clarify that. Hemp is not an illegal crop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration will also play roles in regulating parts of the hemp industry, such as hemp feed for animals and CBD oil for human consumption.<\/p>\n

William \u201cWild Bill\u201d Billings is a co-founder of the Colorado Hemp Project, an education and consulting company. He said he welcomes regulations because they will help alleviate the banking problem and inform consumers about pesticides used in hemp farming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industry\u2019s only been rockin\u2019 and rollin\u2019 for a few years,\u201d Billings said. \u201cIn the first three years, it was still the Wild West, and now it\u2019s going to be regulated by the USDA. So them days are over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once the USDA issues its regulations, it will solicit plans from states, territories and tribes about how they want to tailor industrial hemp cultivation guidelines to their jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

Colorado state officials will hold stakeholder meetings on their plan, the Colorado Hemp Advancement and Management Plan, through December. A public meeting will be held Aug. 16 at the Old Fort in Hesperus. Interested parties are invited to RSVP online or by calling (303) 869-9103.<\/p>\n

James Marshall is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Industry seeks clarification about banking services, crop insurance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5737,5736,5735],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-92789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-news","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92789"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=92789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}