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Proposed Farm Bill Could Give CBD a Big Boost

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]L[/dropcap]awmakers have reached a tentative deal on this year’s Farm Bill—one that would have a major impact on American farmers and the cannabis community as a whole.

Senate and House negotiators have come to an agreement regarding 2018’s Farm Bill, or the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, after a long struggle to come to terms with work requirements, forestry requirements and various other issues. The newest version will be headed to the House and Senate soon, and it is likely to contain a clause that would legalize hemp farming federally. The bill removes hemp that contains 0.03 percent or less THC and redefines it as a federally-legalized crop in the U.S.

“We have an agreement on the outstanding issues,” said Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, one of the leaders of the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry that has been working on the bill. “But until you get that language on the bill, and you know where we are with the scoring, it’s premature to say that we have a complete agreement.”

The previous Farm Bill, or the Agriculture Act of 2014 that expired on Sept. 30 of this year, allowed for hemp to be grown for research purposes. The new bill  would make it easier for farmers to grow CBD-rich cannabis crops and retailers can sell a variety of CBD products on their shelves. It would also speed up the rapid growth of the CBD industry, one that has been estimated to be worth over $20 billion by the year 2022.

“Reaching an agreement gives farmers and ranchers certainty that a farm bill is getting done and will help them weather the economic storms in their way,” said Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s especially important as banks are beginning to look with farmers at the next financial year.”

Bankruptcy rates for farmers have doubled between June 2017 and June 2018 in some areas with  eighty-four farms declaring Chapter 12 bankruptcy in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana alone. Low prices for crops like soy, corn and imposed tariffs from China are  decreasing profit margins for hemp farmers.

“In just five years, the markets developed rapidly into over a thousand companies and a number of large companies. The further protections of the 2018 Farm Bill will open the floodgates to the many who didn’t have the courage to get into the industry earlier but see a market booming,” said Bluebird Botanicals’ Brandon Beatty, who is on the board of director of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable.

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