Bill Could Turbocharge California Hemp Market » Holtville Tribune

Proposed legislation to approve products and extracts made from hemp in food and dietary supplements awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature.

Congregation Law 45, written by Congregation member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Davis, sets the framework for industrial hemp under the Sherman Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act. The bill requires manufacturers of products containing industrial hemp or hemp products to register for processed foods and to adhere to good manufacturing practices.

John Currier, a cannabis grower and partner in Imperial Valley’s only company press, Imperial CBD Extraction, is seen at his Imperial facility in May. | CAMILO GARCIA JR. PHOTO

The legalization and regulation of hemp in dietetic products should give a much-needed boost to California’s hemp industry, which is lagging behind other states.

Processors in other states have been extracting cannabidiol and infusing it into a variety of over-the-counter drugs, beauty products, and foods and beverages for years. CBD-fortified products flew off the shelves.

“This is going to be huge, huge for our business,” said John Currier, a cannabis grower and partner in Imperial Valley’s only company press, Imperial CBD Extraction.

“It used to be illegal to add CBD to a dietary supplement. The only legal part was growing it. They allowed us to make it and grow, but there was no regulation for retail, ”Currier continued. “(AB 45) will take away the gray area for selling CBD at the retail level.”

Imperial County’s board of directors has long been interested in hemp production in the valley and voted to support AB 45 in February 2021 on its desk with many others.

“Imperial County has nearly half a million acres of farmland. With our abundant agricultural opportunities, the hemp industry could create new jobs, new economic opportunities and more development in our district, ”the letter says.

In fact, Imperial Valley seems like the perfect place for hemp growing and processing. But the glacier bureaucracy and a few other setbacks meant that growers started hemp relatively late. After millions of dollars were invested in seeds and processing projects, the industrial hemp market collapsed.

Baby steps and a fresh start

AB 45 is California’s latest step on a tangled, bureaucratic road to a fully legal hemp market.

The passage of Senate Act 566 in 2013 redefined marijuana to exclude industrial hemp and regulated hemp production by established agricultural research institutes and commercial growers.

Congregation member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Davis, is shown at the Capitol in Sacramento. She is the author of Assembly Bill 45, which sets the framework for industrial hemp under the Sherman Food, Drug & Cosmetic Law. The bill requires manufacturers of products containing industrial hemp or hemp products to register for processed foods and to adhere to good manufacturing practices. Your bill is waiting to be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. | ASSEMBLY WITH PERMISSION PHOTO

Commercial cultivation only became legal when Proposition 64 went into effect on January 1, 2017.

California was late for the party by then.

In April 2017, the state Department of Food and Agriculture commissioned each of California’s 58 agricultural commissioners to register hemp in their respective areas.

Seven months later, in November, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors passed its first “Cannabis and Industrial Hemp” legislation in one combined ordinance. Growers who wanted to grow hemp for industrial purposes in the Imperial Valley had to register with the office of Agriculture Commissioner Carlos Ortiz.

But other states were faster and the market was heating up. The number of states growing hemp rose from 15 in 2016 to 19 in 2017, and the total acreage nearly tripled to 25,713.

The county’s board of directors was so optimistic about the plant’s promise that they held a hemp summit with Imperial Valley Economic Development Corp. in September 2019. organized that attracted hundreds of business people, growers, marketers, and advocates.

Several local businessmen submitted proposals for CBD presses in Imperial County but did not proceed with their projects.

The brothers and partners John and Andrew Currier invested around 5 million US dollars in the construction of the Imperial CBD Extraction on Aten Road in the industrial park of the city of Imperial. This plant was the only one that was put into operation.

Hemp, grown in Imperial Valley for biomass and cannabidiol extraction, will be on display at Imperial CBD Extraction in Imperial in August. | PHOTO WITH KINDNESS

Sutton Morgan’s project was the most ambitious, with so many local breeders betting on what seemed like a sure thing. He teamed up with Escondido’s Mark Samuels to create Primordia LLC, which invested “millions of dollars” in a “vertically integrated” facility that “processed, dry, grind, grind, extract, and THC-free (CBD) distillate from biomass should produce “. or water-soluble powder “on an” industrial scale “outside the city limits of Brawley, according to Samuels.

Their bold claims reflected the hemp fever that swept the valley. Local growers planted a little more than 13,983 hectares of hemp on 242 plots, according to the office of the ag commissioner of the district.

A form of cannabidiol distillate processed at the Imperial CBD Extraction facility and laboratory in Imperial will be shown up close in August. | PHOTO WITH KINDNESS

But as hard as they tried, the Imperial Valley breeders were late for the game.

“It seemed like we could have got in on the first floor,” said Ryan Kelley, District 4 Imperial County’s supervisor, in a recent interview. “The hemp conference made money as predicted. What happened after the hemp conference; the cost of distillate and isolate in tanks. “

Primordia LLC collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, leaving its producers stuck.

“Three years ago, CBD oil was wholesale $ 2,000 per liter. Now it’s $ 2 a liter, ”said Currier. “If you, as a farmer, only grow (hemp), that will not be thinned out. It’s hard to make money with it. “

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Imperial CBD extraction is doing well and business is getting better month by month, Currier said. He produces an average of 300 liters of CBD oil a week, and most of his customers buy one liter at a time.

“We have around 200 customers. We want companies to buy 100 or 200 liters at a time. I would rather deal with four customers buying in bulk than hundreds buying small quantities, ”he said.

The passage from AB 45 should help. Currier expects several of its customers – beverage and personal care companies that have experimented with CBD – to introduce new products as soon as it becomes legal. He also expects wholesale prices to rise.

“It’s definitely going to open doors and eat up biomass inventory,” said Currier. “A lot of the biomass that has been grown in the past three years is still in the inventory. This will increase prices at the wholesale level. “

The bill has some critics

AB 45 levies a tax on smokable hemp products. But until such a tax is passed, the manufacture and sale of smokable hemp products is prohibited in California.

The law is “a harmful law against farmers, disguised under the guise of consumer safety and will regulate the emerging industries to the death,” according to a press release from the California Hemp Farmers Guild.

However, according to Currier, this shouldn’t be a problem for growers in the Imperial Valley who work with hemp.

None of the hemp grown in the Imperial Valley was of sufficient quality for smokable products. In order for it to be good enough to smoke it needs to be grown indoors, he said.

Not to be confused with legal medical and recreational cannabis in California, smokable hemp is not an attempt to get high like cannabis; Rather, it’s a different way of absorbing the medicinal benefits of CBD.

Still, AB 45 “paves the way to better assist producers in knowing what to do and what not to do in terms of what and how it can be processed for consumption,” Tim Wright, CEO of Cannafornia, a cannabis producer, -Retailer and sales project in Heber.

Imperial County Farm Bureau officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Laboratory technicians at Imperial CBD Extraction in Imperial work on the processing of cannabidiol, which is obtained from hemp that is pressed in the facility. | PHOTO WITH KINDNESS

(Photos courtesy of Imperial CBD Extraction Instagram account, @icbdextract).

source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/10/01/bill-could-turbocharge-california-hemp-market-holtville-tribune/