High on
hemp For hemp, CBD is just the start. Bigger things lie ahead for Florida’s new field crop – and Ocala is at the forefront. BY BRAD ROGERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY RALPH DEMILIO
M
ention hemp these days and most people think CBD. And, for now, CBD – short for cannabidiol, a close cousin to marijuana – is the face of the hemp industry that is taking root here in Marion County and elsewhere around Florida. But industry experts say in the not-too-distant future the number of hemp-based products will not only expand but likely change entire industries. CBD will be but a small piece of the hemp pie. After just one year of allowing Florida businesses to be licensed to legally grow, process and sell hemp-based products like CBD, there is optimism about the future. Holly Bell, the state cannabis director for the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, gushed about the progress the state has seen since last April when licenses were first issued. So far, there are about 7,000 retailers offering mostly CBD products, 300 hemp processors and 18 extractors. Plus, more than 90 permits have been given to colleges and
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universities for research purposes. Yet, hemp is still a start-up business and an experimental crop whose viability and practical uses are still being discovered and developed, said Bell, a former bank executive and entrepreneur. Over the next decade, though? “Nothing is a huge crash crop when an industry is just starting up,” she said. “Five years from now, will we be having a different conversation? Oh, yes.” But for now, the emergence of hemp as an agricultural commodity is being welcomed in Ocala. OM talked with four people who are at the forefront of the hemp revolution in Florida and Marion County.
A FARMER’S DAUGHTER IS FIRST Robbie Ergle is the daughter and granddaughter of farmers who still have a farm in McIntosh. Ergle left a long career as a teacher and then a college professor to launch U.S. Hemp & Oil, a CBD processing and distri-
bution company that operates out of a warehouse on Ocala’s northside. Ergle, who got her state license as soon as the state began issuing them, was the first CBD processor in Central Florida, and it was intentional. “As a start-up, we wanted to get out front,” she said about her brand, Mother’s Original CBD. “It’s one of the few businesses where there wasn’t any competition. “And CBD is not going away. They’re doing more and more studies and they’re all positive.” These days it’s the health benefits of CBD that Ergle and others in the hemp business tout. The say CBD products can help ease anxiety, cure insomnia and, as Ergle puts it, “help your body heal itself.” The CBD market is growing exponentially, according to Bell and others, and U.S. Hemp & Oil strives to be at the forefront of a new industry. “We focused on extraction, because that was the need,” Ergle said. “The farmers
