WeedLife News Network

Unscrupulous seed dealers, lack of experience with the new crop and regulatory hurdles contributed to a rough first year for Louisiana’s industrial hemp program, state officials said Monday.

“This is a growing pain for us,” said Angela Guidry, industrial hemp coordinator with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

The state has 95 licensed growers, not counting eight that have been approved but have not yet paid the $500 annual fee and 12 pending applicants. But of the 868 acres of hemp planted, only 138 have been harvested, according to the LDAF.

The Victorian Government says the future of an industrial hemp industry in the state is looking bright after a taskforce report was tabled on Wednesday.

While Victoria is striving to be a leader in medicinal cannabis in Australia, when it comes to hemp it’s quite the laggard – but perhaps that will change soon.

Approximately 200 hectares of hemp was planted in the state in the 2019-20 growing season.170 hectares were cultivated in 2018-19 and 600 hectares in 2017-18. The drops compared to 2017-18 has been primarily attributed to low water availability; but red tape wouldn’t be helping any.

When discussing sustainable cannabis, talk typically leans toward water conservation or energy efficiency. But, there are several overlooked areas of cannabis cultivation that are desperately in need of a sustainability overhaul.

Consider, for example, how much biomass is required to make cannabinoid isolates. Or, have you ever wondered how many outdoor plants are discarded every day due to mold, heat stroke, or wind damage?

Selective breeding could hold the key to addressing some of these issues and developing more resilient, vigorous varieties.

Big data. Machine learning. Artificial intelligence. All commercial cannabis cultivators should be paying attention to these concepts, as the application of data analytics is beginning to gain a foothold in the cannabis industry.

As the industry matures, operators are raising the bar for optimizing efficiency, increasing consistency and, most importantly, profitability. Data is the vehicle for accomplishing these goals.

Methods of Collecting Data

It all begins with data collection. Before turning on the switch for a flood of data, it’s important to understand what data points need to be tracked and why. Actionable data is the key here.

For Melisa Nelson-Baldwin, data is key. And what this trained crop research scientist sees is hemp is a great crop for Kansas farmers.

So much so that Nelson-Baldwin and her partners, husband Aaron Baldwin and brother-in-law Richard Baldwin, are ready to build a hemp fiber manufacturing plant in Great Bend – the first one in Kansas.

“We want to be up and running by the end of the year,” Nelson-Baldwin said.

The Baldwins grow both industrial cannabidiol oil and fiber hemp at their farm, South Bend Industrial Hemp, in Barton and Stafford counties. Aaron and Richard Baldwin are fourth-generation farmers in Great Bend, while Nelson-Baldwin grew up on a farm in Holton. The three work with both forms of industrial hemp on 55 acres of their traditional grain farm.

Oct. 17 marked the first day of medical cannabis sales in Missouri, and the state’s two operational cannabis retailers, N’Bliss and Fresh Green, have had quite the journey to serving patients in the nascent market.

N’Bliss, a subsidiary of Nirvana Investments, opened its first two stores in Manchester and Ellisville on Oct. 17, while Fresh Green opened for business in Lee’s Summit on Oct. 19.

“It was exciting—the energy is real,” N’Bliss Managing Partner and CEO Bradford Goette tells Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary of opening weekend.

Two small Maine-based marijuana businesses are suing the agency that oversees recreational marijuana operations, arguing state licenses were illegally awarded to out-of-state owners.

State law requires owners of marijuana operations to live in Maine and to have filed state income taxes for four years. But the Maine Office of Marijuana Policy ignored the requirement, based on the state attorney general’s conclusion that it’s unlikely to hold up to legal scrutiny.

The federal lawsuit contends out-of-state companies take away a competitive advantage for Maine business operators.

Wisconsin hemp groups say the state’s decision to delay new regulations will keep CBD growers from suffering under more restrictive regulations.

Global Hemp Recyclable Packaging Market 2020 by Manufacturers, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025 describes market introduction, product scope, market overview, and meticulous analysis of the Hemp Recyclable Packaging market in the forecasted period from 2020 to 2025. The report keenly analyzes significant features in major developing markets.

Growers, tenders, trimmers, producers and distributors all take different risks, skillsets and roles. Working with cannabis insiders operating on both sides of the law gives insight into the process of cultivating these plants and turning them into profit. Utilizing trim is one such way.

Two marijuana trade organizations filed a lawsuit today against the nation’s largest legal pot market over restrictions on stand-alone delivery services that have blocked them from obtaining licenses until 2025.

The lawsuit against Los Angeles and its Department of Cannabis Regulation seeks to overturn rules enacted earlier this year that postponed the availability of those licenses for certain businesses, even though broad legal sales began in the state in January 2018.

Under the changes, those licenses would only be available to so-called social-equity operators — people, many of color, who were arrested or convicted of a marijuana-related offense or lived in neighborhoods marked by high marijuana arrest rates.

Cannabis investors have endured a brutal 2020, and hopes that the November election will serve as a catalyst for federal US legalization are fading fast.

However, according to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Pablo Zuanic, a potential election “blue wave” victory for Democrats could be more bullish for cannabis stocks than investors realize.

Here’s an almost forgotten fact: Henry Ford spent a lot of time and money during the 1930s building a car entirely of plastics derived from hemp. He refined hemp biofuel to fuel it just to demonstrate it could be done.

The wonderful thing about this industry is that while the cannabis plant is the most important part, it isn’t the only part.

Will These Pot Stocks Show Bullish Interest Next Month?

Recreational cannabis has been legal for adult use in Maine since 2016. However, it took until recently for the “Pine Tree State” to open its first cannabis stores.

One of the biggest issues Maine faced was it narrowly received the popular vote for legalization four years ago. The state needed new administrations and the right cannabis legislation before it could open the door to legal sales. Not to mention, the COVID-19 pandemic has only thwarted these plans.

Finally, on October 9, Maine got the okay to open up recreational cannabis shops for business. However, this didn’t come without a new set of problems.

The East African Community could become a mass producer of medical cannabis for export to fast-growing markets in the West.

This is after Rwanda on October 12 became the latest EAC partner state to approve medical cannabis production for export, following closely in the footsteps of Uganda.

Tanzania and Kenya, which produce the largest amounts of cannabis in the region, are yet to legalise the commodity and so it is exported illegally.

Rwanda government officials said the decision to legalise the export of medical marijuana was based on the revenue potential for the country. 

Around the world, hemp has a varying degree of allowance in how it’s grown or ingested.

The UK, however, is unique in how it handles hemp.

In this article we will explore the ironic and limited ways hemp can be sourced via the UK’s farming industry.

Specifically how this affects British hemp farmers, in what they can do to earn a living so we can show their plight. 

Franny Tacy, the owner of Franny’s Farmacy, is the first female hemp farmer in North Carolina in over 75 years.