The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is actively looking for a device that it can use to determine whether a given cannabis plant is federally legal hemp or still-prohibited marijuana. In a “sources sought” notice published in late February 2019, the agency said that the 2018 Farm Bill, which federally legalized industrial hemp and its derivatives, […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is giving prospective hemp farmers a status update on the Trump administration’s efforts to regulate the newly legal crop. The plans include a public listening session to be held in March 2019. While the 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp, the USDA has to develop a regulatory process and […]
Farmers (and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) aren’t the only ones who are excited about hemp. According to a recent study, the crop also attracts a variety of bees — and that can help inform ecologically sustainable agriculture practices. For the study, published in February 2019 in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy, researchers at Colorado […]
The 2018 Farm Bill included language federally legalizing hemp, and the authors of that provision told the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a letter in mid-February 2019 that such policies must be implemented “expeditiously” and “as Congress intended.” “We specifically drafted the Hemp Farming Act in a way that allows hemp pilot states to […]
Industrial hemp production significantly increased in the U.S. in 2018, with farmers cultivating three times as many acres of the crop as compared to the previous year, according to a report released Jan. 28, 2018. Farmers grew more than 78,000 acres of legal hemp last year, the advocacy group VoteHemp reported. In 2017, they grew […]
President Donald Trump on Dec. 20, 2018, signed into law the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalizes industrial hemp after decades of the crop being caught up in broader cannabis prohibition. The signing ceremony represents the culmination of a months long debate over various provisions of the wide-ranging agriculture legislation. But after the House and Senate […]
