Search Results: hemp (560)

Two powerful federal agencies have given some optimism to Colorado hemp farmers and CBD companies.

Late last month, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a temporary suspension of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s involvement with industrial hemp testing, a factor of federal hemp regulations that worried Colorado farmers for a variety of reasons. Days later, the Food and Drug Administration announced a more collaborative approach toward future CBD regulations with stakeholders of the hemp-derived CBD industry.

Organizers of the NoCo Hemp Expo — definitely Colorado’s, and possibly the country’s, largest annual hemp-industry conference — have just announced that it will be postponed because of worries over COVID-19.

The expo, originally slated for March 26 through 28 at Denver’s National Western Complex and Renaissance Denver Stapleton Hotel, will now be held August 6 through 8 at the same locations, according to NoCo Hemp expo producer Morris Beegle.

Eric Jensen feels trapped. By now, the 43-year-old thought he’d be able to travel from his home in southeastern Colorado to see his son play college ball in the Midwest. But instead, he can’t cross the border into Kansas. He’s stuck hanging around his home town, where most of the residents have turned their backs on him, believing that he’s a hardened drug dealer. Instead, he’s facing criminal charges for something that’s completely legal in Colorado: hemp.

Eric and his brother, 39-year-old Ryan Jensen, grew up in the town of Holly, ten miles from the Kansas border. Early on, they started working on the family farm, the fourth generation to do so, and by 2007, they’d taken over for their father, Robert. They grew wheat and corn and onions and cabbage, which was harvested and shipped to grocery stores across the country. But their biggest crop was cantaloupe.

Songwriter and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder has joined the throngs of musicians – from Willie Nelson to Nathaniel Rateliff – who are getting into the cannabis, CBD and hemp fields.

But instead of launching a strain named after himself, Tedder is putting out an “all-new hemp extract sparkling water” called Mad Tasty that promises to bring “wellness to the masses in the tastiest way yet.”

Many American farmers were handed seeds of opportunity in October, when the United States Department of Agriculture released its much-anticipated regulations for farming hemp. The new federal rules came nearly a year after Congress legalized hemp farming, and almost half a decade after the Colorado Department of Agriculture established its own program for farming hemp. And this state’s rules don’t exactly line up with the ones just announced by the feds.

Two years after voters approved Amendment 64, legalizing recreational marijuana, Colorado decided to opt into the 2014 Farm Bill, a federal law that allowed states to create pilot programs for hemp licensing. As a result, Colorado is now one of the largest producers of hemp in the country. While every Colorado farmer growing hemp will probably have to change a few things once the federal regulations take hold, those same regulations also bring credibility to an industry essentially stuck in a federal gray area, according to Corey Cox, an attorney with Vicente Sederberg who represents clients in Colorado’s hemp industry.

A Colorado research laboratory is teaming up with a space-tech firm and University of Colorado Boulder research institute to send hemp and coffee into outer space, in order to learn more about the power plants.

Front Range Biosciences, an agriculture technology company that researches hemp and other cultivation aspects, just announced a plan that will transport hemp and coffee tissue cultures to the International Space Station, where they will be cultivated and studied for potential genetic mutations that the plant cells undergo at different stages of gravity, which could have commercial and medical applications.

Most hemp farmers across the country got a big boost when the United States Department of Agriculture released its first round of industrial hemp regulations earlier this week; the new rules took effect today, October 31.

“I applaud the USDA for moving forward on hemp rulemaking and recognizing hemp production as an agricultural activity,” Senator Cory Gardner said in a statement after the regulations were announced. “Legalized hemp has the potential to be a major boon to agricultural communities across Colorado, giving farmers another viable and profitable option for their fields.”

But for farmers in states like Colorado, where hemp has been an established crop for almost five years, the new rules might not seem so progressive.

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