The market for hemp is blooming, but so are the challenges of building a business around a plant that looks exactly like its illegal cousin.
For farmer Llew Boyd, the headaches range from thieves stealing hemp plants from his fields in Marion County to trouble finding a credit card vendor to process his financial transactions. For John Kerns, founder of New Blooms Labs, the hurdles come in the form of shipments from clients that never arrive at his St. Elmo business because they’ve been confiscated by law enforcement somewhere along the way. For Chattanooga police officers trying to tell legal hemp from illegal marijuana during a traffic stop, the ability to verify the authenticity of the legal stuff is key – but they aren’t always sure how to do it.
“There’s a small group of local hemp producers trying to educate the community and stakeholders,” Kerns said.
A dozen of those folks gathered Friday morning at Landrace Bioscience, a local hemp processor with operations just off Amnicola Highway. Landrace is pioneering new ways to extract CBD from hemp for uses in a range of products, and has set up a series of tours and round tables to encourage conversation and communication about these issues. The people around the table Friday included Chattanooga Police Department narcotics officers, an attorney who specializes in hemp issues, and the owner of a business that sells CBD products.
Hemp vs. marijuana
Hemp and marijuana are the same species of plant, but hemp contains very low levels of THC, short for tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive compound in marijuana.The passage of the federal Farm Bill at the end of 2018 cleared the way for industrial hemp farming across the country.