Congressional leaders agreed to a one-year farm bill extension that maintains current hemp regulations while putting off any anticipated changes to the industry until 2025, according to new reports this week.
The extension, part of a 1,547-page government funding package released on Monday, maintains the status quo on hemp despite separate House and Senate proposals that could alter the plant’s definition and THC limits in ways that could “functionally end” most hemp farming, even for noncannabinoid fiber and grain markets, Jonathan Miller, general counsel at the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, told Cannabis Business Times.
Other recent hemp bills include Sen. Rand Paul’s plan to increase the THC limit to 1% and Sen. Ron Wyden’s proposal for FDA oversight of hemp products.
“There’s also some discussion of synthetics and a lot of the products in the industry, the delta-8 products, for example, you take the CBD, and you synthesize that into delta-8. The bill is talking about now not using some of these extracts for synthetic preparations,” Jonathan Havens, partner and co-chair of the Cannabis Law Practice at Saul Ewing LLP, told Cannabis Business Times.
However, Havens noted that regardless of potential hemp definition changes, the farm bill strictly deals with agriculture, not finished products.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., said he hopes “to move quickly to enact a five-year farm bill” in the next Congress, working alongside incoming Senate Agriculture committee chairman under a unified GOP Congress.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., expressed mixed feelings about the deal.
“I am so pleased that we were able to secure much needed economic and natural disaster assistance for farmers across the country and that we did it without pitting one part of the Farm Bill against another,” Stabenow said in a Tuesday statement. However, she called it “political malpractice” that Republicans rejected incorporating Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding into the farm bill baseline.
The current spending measure requires congressional approval by Dec. 20 to avoid a partial government shutdown. The farm bill extension would run through March 14.
The news may finally wrap up a hectic year for hemp, as a slew of states across the country wrestle with oversight of intoxicating hemp products, while similar court battles took place, including a federal appeals court ruling in June that all products made from compliant hemp are legal, to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chagrin.
The delay also comes after Whitney Economics slashed its 2030 hemp acreage forecast by 82%, citing regulatory uncertainty that could cost farmers $3.1 billion in lost revenue.
At the same time, major cannabis companies are increasingly positioning themselves in the growing, more inclusive market. Organigram Holdings (Nasdaq: OGI) just closed a C$90 million deal to become the biggest Canadian cannabis company by market share, with plans to leverage Motif Labs’ operations for hemp-derived products in the U.S. market.
Other established players, including Tilray Brands (Nasdaq: TLRY) (TSX: TLRY), Curaleaf (OTCQX: CURLF) , Wana Brands and Green Thumb Industries (CSE: GTII) (OTCQX: GTBIF), have launched similar hemp-derived product lines, particularly in the beverage sector where sales jumped 143% in 2023, according to recent Brightfield Group data. The segment is projected to reach $500 million by 2026 from $180 million in 2021.
[[{“value”:”The farm bill extension would run through March 2025.
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