USDA issues final hemp rules in waning days of Trump administration

Among the final rules released in the waning days of the Trump administration were revisions to USDA’s hemp regulations.

The interim final rules eased requirements that many states, including North Dakota and Montana, said were too restrictive when it comes to THC limits and testing requirements.

Modifications include:

• Looser negligence standards. Industrial hemp is defined by federal statutes as containing no more than .3 percent THC. A crop could now reach 1 percent, rather than .5 percent, before eradication would be required.

• A wider sampling window. Producers get 30 days now instead of 15, to help prevent testing backlogs.

• Longer stems allowed. Pre-harvest samples must still be taken from flowers, but can have 5 to 8 inches of stem.

Performance-based sampling will be allowed, rather than stricter sampling requirements, and the requirement that hemp be tested at labs certified by the Drug Enforcement Agency has been delayed until Dec. 31, 2022.

USDA is still mandating that hemp be tested for total THC content, rather than delta-9 THC as stakeholders had requested, and a temporary revision that “hot” hemp be eradicated on site was made permanent, but a requirement to have a DEA or law enforcement presence has been eased.

These revisions will of course be frozen for a time by the incoming Biden administration. That is generally standard procedure during a presidential transition for new rules and revisions issued by the outgoing administration. 

North Dakota Commissioner Doug Goehring, who served as president of the National Association of Agriculture Departments in 2019, said he isn’t expecting the Biden administration to make radical changes on the new hemp rules.

“They actually have come out with some pretty reasonable approaches here,” Goehring said, noting that many of the changes were things he and other Agriculture Departments had discussed with USDA at some length.

“We are still going through the final interim rule,” Goehring said. “The devil is always in the details. But, right now, with the changes they made, we are about on par with them. We would have continued on our pilot program anyway until this comes to some resolution, but now we can just move forward.”

Montana’s Hemp Program Coordinator Andy Gray, meanwhile, agreed that the revisions seem to be a step in the right direction, though he, too, is still going through them and looking at the finer details.

“It looks favorable,” he said. “They recognized that there are differences between different regions and different states. The flexibility to allow states to make hemp programs fit their state is a positive.”

Montana won’t be operating under a USDA approved plan in 2021. It will eventually submit a plan for USDA approval, but doesn’t have to do that this year. At least, so far.

Montana has been a leader in hemp production nationwide, producing 50,000 acres in 2019. The number of acres dropped substantially in 2020, however, to 12,000. Markets were not quite ready for so much production, Gray said.

“The market crashed for CBD prices,” he said. “That was a big reason for the drop. I think 2020 is probably closer to normal.”

Most of the 2020 acreage was fiber and grain, Gray added.

“I think in the long-term, grain and fiber will be the future for Montana growers, because that lends itself better to our farming practices and norms,” he said. “CBD is always going to have a place, I think. But they are not going to have the volume on an acre basis.”

The number of hemp acres in North Dakota, meanwhile, dipped only slightly in 2020, going from 3,940 to 3,392, but the state added 16 new growers. There was also a shift away from grain and fiber toward CBD production.

“We went from nine processors to 20 in North Dakota in 2020,” Goehring said. “Most of it is all around CBD. That seems to be where it is most lucrative.”

That picture could change in North Dakota, as efforts to develop products from Hemp continue. In Montana, for example, MSU is quantifying the properties of hempcrete for builders, a project funded by Montana Farmers Union. And, in North Dakota, researchers are conducting a feed study, to verify that it is a safe grain for livestock.

This article originally ran on sidneyherald.com.