Hemp Industry Daily
Federal agriculture officials have determined that hemp farmers don’t qualify for a $16 billion fund designated for farmers who saw price drops because of the novel coronavirus.
Kenyan millers failed to take advantage of the lower import duty that was issued by the government in order to manage the maize shortages in the country and to allow maize flour prices to remain stable for the consumer.
The USDA Farm Service Agencies (FSA) Crop Acreage Report on industrial hemp left the PanXchange’s hemp team scratching our collective heads. Only 47,250 total planted acres were reported, which was 22.9% of last year’s total planted acreage. Even when accounting for late reported acres (+27% between August 2019 to end of year-2019), a forecast of 60,008 planted acres for the crop year 2020 far fall below even the most extreme expectations.
Denver Business Journal
We are so honored to announce that Julie Lerner won the category of Small Business Leaders at Denver Business Journal’s Outstanding Women in Business event.
U.S. farmers appear to be fleeing the hemp market after a rush last year to meet over-hyped CBD demand resulted in plunging prices and warehouses full of unsold supply.
Kenya’s maize imports in the second quarter of 2020 have mainly been supported by Tanzania and Uganda as Kenya’s demand for the the grain continued even during the lockdown period whereas the total maize traded in the region fell due to the restrictions and closures of many businesses and public institutions.
Even in the hemp industry, virtually all facets, including extraction equipment and greenhouse grows, ultimately have a large carbon footprint. In fact, According to the Global Footprint Network, just one joint generates around 1.5 kg of CO2 emissions, roughly the equivalent of leaving a 100-watt light bulb turned on for an entire day. This figure is an incredible statistic, but only captures such a small piece of our market and an inconsequential piece of the global carbon footprint. However, hemp is often touted as a carbon-negative material and regurgitated by many people as such.
After the 2018 Farm Bill, financial institutions have been struggling to come to terms with how to regulate their hemp-related business customers. FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, sets regulatory guidelines for banks to follow when conducting their customer due diligence. The International Compliance Association describes customer due diligence as the process in which banks decide how much risk they are willing to take on when signing on a new banking customer. For a little over a year, many banks have remained skeptical about working with customers in the hemp industry. This skepticism can be attributed to their lack of understanding of the differences between cannabis, CBD, CBG, Hemp, other cannabinoids, and overall uncertainties in conducting a thorough analysis across the hemp supply chain.
PanXchange’s July hemp benchmark report was published on Wednesday. If you have been following this space you will not be surprised to learn that hemp prices remain depressed. Low prices for biomass and hemp-derived products reflect the overhang from last year’s harvests and processing. With reliable or official information about this year’s crop largely unavailable, the industry has to just wait and see what materializes.
Managers of the Strategic Food Reserve (SFR) stated that they might not realize the target of buying four million bags of maize this season after farmers opted to sell the produce to millers who are bidding as high as Sh3,400 per 90 kg bag.