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Through our sister organization, National Hemp Association, we are proud to present our members with this educational webinar series!
We’ve gathered experts to present you the information you need to know to get started in the industry. Topics include:
- CBD Cultivation Best Practices
- Fiber and Grain Cultivation Best Practice
- Selecting Genetics
- How to Read a Certificate of Analysis
- Understanding THC Testing
- CBD Extraction Methods
- Taking Products to Market
- And More!
You must be logged in to view the full length videos but here is a taste!
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"Pennsylvania state officials will be working to bring attention to hemp during its annual farm show, including a presentation for students about hemp plastic as a sustainable material.
The virtual event, Cultivating Tomorrow, occurs Jan. 9-16 and includes sessions on hemp that review previous actions the state has taken and its future plans for the crop.
“After being banned by federal law for more than 80 years, Pennsylvania’s budding hemp industry is ripe for innovation and holds tremendous promise for the future,” Shannon Powers, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, told Hemp Grower. “Fiber varieties of hemp promise seemingly endless opportunities for sustainable building materials, bioplastic industrial components, fabrics, and a myriad of other environmentally friendly materials.”
Sustainability will be a focus of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educational programming provided to students each day of the show. These STEM sessions include a Jan. 12 presentation about bioplastics, including hemp-based products. “Daily STEM demonstrations of at-home activities for K-12 students will include lessons on how to make butter, plant-based plastics made from hemp and other sustainable materials,” according to a press release.
Sustainability is especially relevant for the hemp industry, given the incoming Biden administration’s focus on the issue as one of its priorities.
There will also be a panel discussion on Jan. 11 by members of the Pennsylvania Hemp Steering Committee to explain their vision for the future of the state’s hemp industry. This includes efforts to develop an economic and workforce development plan in partnership with the state’s Department of Agriculture and industry members, ranging from farmers and processors to product designers, merchandisers, and consumers.
Also, there is a Jan. 13 panel discussion, Cultivating Impact—A Year in Review of Pennsylvania’s First Farm Bill—that explores what the state has done so far to build the hemp industry. For example, the state granted nearly $233,000 in state Specialty Crop Block Grants to five grantees to advance the new industry."
www.hempgrower.com/article/hemp-pennsylvania-sustainability/
Pennsylvania Sees Great Promise for Hemp in 2021
www.hempgrower.com
Officials from Pennsylvania’s Department of Agriculture and Department of Education are highlighting hemp in presentations during the state’s 2021 farm show as a versatile, sustainable crop."In another sign of the normalization of hemp, K-12 students in Pennsylvania will have the opportunity to learn about how to make sustainable plastic using the crop, the state Departments of Agriculture and Education jointly announced on Thursday.
During the state’s annual Farm Show, which will take place virtually in January, students can participate in a variety of programs—learning about everything from organic farming techniques to how to raise livestock. But hemp will serve as the basis of a lesson on sustainability.
“Lessons include how to make butter, plant-based plastics made from hemp and other sustainable materials, and more,” according to a teacher’s toolkit.
Details about what the hemp lesson will entail are not available, but it is the case that the plant’s cellulose represents a more biodegradable and non-toxic alternative to the petroleum-based plastics that are a major source of environmental pollution worldwide.
“There are a wide range of career options in STEM fields across Pennsylvania, and agriculture offers an avenue to many of those opportunities,” Acting Education Secretary Noe Ortega said in a press release. “The virtual panels and interactive sessions will provide a variety of educational experiences for learners of all ages—and will also serve as an opportunity to gain a new or restored appreciation for the many ways our agricultural industry benefits the commonwealth.”
The crop is now legal both in Pennsylvania and federally under the 2018 Farm Act, and there’s rapidly growing interest in utilizing the many functions of hemp.
This Farm Show hemp lesson comes as the states continues to pursue broader cannabis reform—though those efforts are targeted at adults rather than elementary and high school students.
Since adopting a pro-legalization position last year, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has repeatedly called on the legislature to enact the policy change. He’s stressed that stressed that marijuana reform could generate tax revenue to support the state’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and that ending criminalization is necessary for social justice.
In September, he took a dig at the Republican-controlled legislature for failing to act on reform in the previous session. And in August, he suggested that the state itself could potentially control marijuana sales rather than just license private retailers as other legalized jurisdictions have done.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), a longstanding legalization advocate, has been similarly vocal about his position. In speeches and on social media, the official has expressed frustration that Pennsylvania has yet to legalize cannabis.
He’s said that farmers in his state can grow better marijuana than people in New Jersey—and that’s one reason why Pennsylvania should expeditiously reform its cannabis laws."
www.marijuanamoment.net
In another sign of the normalization of hemp, K-12 students in Pennsylvania will have the opportunity to learn about how to make sustainable plastic using the crop, the state Departments of Agricultur..."THE ISSUE
Industrial hemp is increasingly becoming an important crop for farmers in Lancaster County and across Pennsylvania. But it’s a tightly regulated industry, because of the connections between legally grown hemp and marijuana, which is “considered an illegal drug in Pennsylvania when not grown or used in an approved medical capacity,” LNP | LancasterOnline’s Sean Sauro reported Sunday. The key for farmers is maintaining a sufficiently low level of the psychoactive substance THC in their hemp crops. But that’s no easy thing, Sauro reported.
Lancaster County has a rich agricultural heritage. Farmers here and across the nation are the unheralded folks who toil to provide us with food and other needed everyday products.
Their hours are long, the labor can be backbreaking and the profit margins — in a good year — are often just enough to get by.
This editorial board strongly supports farmers and local farmland preservation, and so we have been encouraged in recent years by Pennsylvania’s move to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp as a cash crop. They need all the options they can get in the ever-changing agricultural commodity market.
The state has been correct to move cautiously and tightly regulate aspects of industrial hemp farming, limiting licenses and staging inspections. But we believe we’re at a point when the reins can be loosened in one area.
As LNP | LancasterOnline’s Sauro detailed, any industrial hemp plant “with a THC level above 0.3% is considered marijuana — a limit set within the federal Farm Bill, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture officials, who regulate the hemp industry.”
So, hemp farmers whose crops are at or below that level are fine. But if the THC level is above 0.3% — a low limit that’s easy to accidentally exceed — the penalties can be devastating, local farmers told Sauro.
They are forced to destroy any crop fields that exceed the limit. And a state Department of Agriculture official must be on hand to witness the destruction.
Each acre destroyed can cost a farmer as much as $5,000, Erica Stark, executive director of the Pennsylvania Hemp Industrial Council, told Sauro. Others suggested even higher per-acre losses.
About 9% of lots tested across Pennsylvania in 2020 have had to be destroyed, Sauro reported.
“Of the 758 lots tested this year in Pennsylvania, 66 were above the legal THC limit,” he wrote. “Seven of those lots were in Lancaster County.”
This might seem like proper diligence on the state’s part, but the catch is that the regulated THC level of 0.3% appears to be arbitrary.
It’s well below a level that would cause any intoxicating effects, said Stark, who is unsure how the long-standing federal figure was derived...
There are reasonable reforms we support.
First, the 0.3% THC limit enforced in Pennsylvania is unlikely to change unless it’s by an act of Congress. And that’s what U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, proposed earlier this month.
You won’t find us agreeing with Paul on much, but his Hemp Economic Mobilization Plan Act of 2020 would change the federal definition of hemp to raise the THC limit from 0.3% to 1%.
That would, according to Rand’s news release, “protect legitimate hemp farmers, processors, and transporters by requiring hemp shipments to contain a copy of the seed certificate showing the hemp was grown from 1% THC seed, and it would address current uncertainty by defining a margin of error for testing THC levels.”
It would be good news for Pennsylvania farmers.
Second, we agree with state Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding, who wrote a letter to the USDA that suggests raising the negligence limit from 0.5% to 2%, Sauro reported.
“The 0.5% threshold is too low given that THC levels are subject to swings based on several factors, including location, weather and timing,” Redding wrote.
We completely agree. The current threshold is unfairly punitive."
lancasteronline.com/opinion/editorials/pennsylvanias-industrial-hemp-farmers-need-less-restrictiv...
Pennsylvania's industrial hemp farmers need less-restrictive regulations [editorial]
lancasteronline.com
THE ISSUE"On this week’s Industrial Hemp Podcast, we talk to Fred Strathmeyer, Deputy Secretary of Plant Industry and Consumer Protection at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture where he oversees the state’s industrial hemp program.
We talk about some of the challenges that Pennsylvania farmers and the team at PDA faced this year in terms of sampling, testing, and COVID-19.
He also unveils some details about the changes to the hemp program for 2021 — most notably the plant minimum and acreage requirements. The permit application process opens for mail-in applicants December 5.
Applicants interested in easier application, renewal and online payment are encouraged to wait until January, when the upgraded system is expected to be available.
We talk about the Pennsylvania Hemp Steering committee and how it was instrumental in shaping the program for next year. Strathmeyer also says why he thinks the USDA will change the 15-day-to-harvest requirement in the final rule. And of course we talk about this week’s Pennsylvania Hemp Summit, Dec. 8 and 9."
www.lancasterfarming.com/community/podcasts_and_audio/fred-strathmeyer-unveils-the-2021-pennsylva...
Fred Strathmeyer Unveils the 2021 Pennsylvania Hemp Program
www.lancasterfarming.com
On this week’s Industrial Hemp Podcast, we talk to Fred Strathmeyer, Deputy Secretary for Plant Industry and Consumer Protection at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture where he oversees the s..."The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture begins accepting mail-in applications for the program on Saturday, Dec. 5. Online applications will not open until January.
In 2020, the second year of the state’s commercial growing program, following a two-year research pilot, the department issued permits for more than 500 growing sites and 60 processors statewide. Permits for the 2020 season are valid through February 2021.
Applications for 2021 will be accepted through April 1. The program is operating under the requirements of the 2018 Federal Farm Bill and the USDA Interim Final Rule for hemp production. Processor permits were new in 2020 and continue in 2021. Information about permit holders will again be on the department website to inform business decisions and help connect growers and processors.
New or aspiring growers are encouraged to review application instructions and information on new minimum plant limits and opportunities for written exemptions for qualified commercial projects including planting for removing soil contaminants.
Each property where hemp is grown requires a separate permit. An initial permit costs $150. Permit renewals are $50. Applicants interested in easier application, renewal and online payment are encouraged to wait until January, when the upgraded system is expected to be available.
“Hemp production represents a return to our heritage and a wealth of new opportunities,” said Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding. “Hemp has seemingly endless uses as sustainable building materials, fabrics, paper and resins, plus scores of food products all spell out a bright future for growers and processors alike. Pennsylvania is committed to creating a commercial hemp program that works for small and large growers, new and established businesses, and urban and traditional agriculture.”
www.lancasterfarming.com/farming/industrial_hemp/pennsylvania-opens-hemp-permit-applications-for-...
Pennsylvania Opens Hemp Permit Applications for 2021 Season
www.lancasterfarming.com
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture begins accepting mail-in applications for the program on Saturday, Dec. 5. Online applications will not open until January.Keep informed and join our mailing list: