NEWS & OPINION FEATURE
CANNABIS IN QUESTION The future of hemp farming in North Carolina faces multiple threats
Pg. 4 APR 20 - MAY 3, 2022 - QCNERVE.COM
BY RYAN PITKIN
When Armaney Richardson-Peterson and Charles Peterson launched The Hemp Source in 2017, for which they transitioned their Wendell tobacco farm into a hemp farm, the couple expected to face their share of obstacles. “They say with the hemp plant, like anything you grow, your third year is like your first year farming,” Hemp Source CEO Richardson-Peterson told Queen City Nerve during a recent phone call from Wendell. “We had a lot of hiccups with mice, figuring out the soil, all the hurdles that come with farming. It’s not tobacco, it’s not any other grain, and it’s not marijuana — with all the lighting and stuff marijuana is a little bit different. It took a lot of test runs for us.” The two entrepreneurs faced other barriers that they couldn’t have expected. There was Hurricane Florence in 2018, which led to the loss of half The Hemp Source crop that year. Then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, forcing them to scale back their production for two years. Despite the obstacles, The Hemp Source saw growth and success over its first five years. After humble beginnings — producing a kilo of hemp every two to three months and selling the resulting products at farmers markets and other pop-ups — the married couple opened their first dispensary in Wendell in 2018. They saw their first franchise location, which you can read more about on page 6, open in Charlotte the same year. They now supply seven Hemp Source franchises spread across North Carolina and two more in Alabama. Now, as the Wendell farmers return to preCOVID crop numbers — planting about 30 acres as they did in 2019 — they and others who work in the North Carolina cannabis industry face new threats: legislators and law enforcement agencies that appear to be turning their back on an industry that has exploded over the past five years. On June 30, language included in state law that
exempts “industrial hemp” from the definition of illegal marijuana will expire, and if allowed to do so by legislators, the new law that takes effect on July 1 will make all forms of cannabis, including hemp, illegal. There are also concerns about overreach from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which one South Carolina hemp company claims has been unlawfully regulating certain products derived from lawful hemp, actions that the company and others say have “serious, immediate, and irreparable consequences” for hemp producers and processors. Then there’s North Carolina’s Senate Bill 711, which would legalize medical marijuana in the state, but in a way that would effectively shut out independent hemp farmers and others in the hemp industry from participating, and could push them out of the cannabis industry altogether. Richardson-Peterson hopes that when the North Carolina General Assembly reconvenes in May, legislators will act to extend the hemp exemption. “I wouldn’t panic yet,” she told Queen City Nerve. However, she does worry that the actions being taken to further regulate North Carolina’s rapidly expanding hemp industry could have disastrous effects if they’re allowed to move further. “That would be chaotic. It would be chaos after COVID, after all these things that have happened, to snatch people’s livelihoods, and to just say, ‘OK, this is illegal as of this day.’ “I don’t foresee that happening because we’ve worked so hard to get it here, and the industry blossomed so well that we became known — the hemp grows so well in our soil, North Carolina has become like a hub for hemp growing,” RichardsonPeterson said.
THE HEMP SOURCE HAS PLANTED ABOUT 30 ACRES OF CANNABIS FOR HEMP FARMING THIS YEAR. PHOTO BY ARMANEY RICHARDSON-PETERSON
whether growing or not,” followed by a long list of specifications of what those parts are and what they might include. However this long definition currently includes a sentence that has been critical to the livelihoods of many in the CBD and cannabinoid industry: “The term does not include industrial hemp as defined in G.S. 106-568.51, when the industrial hemp is produced and used in compliance with rules issued by the North Carolina Industrial Hemp Commission.” On June 30, if legislators don’t take action before The hemp exemption then, that language will be removed from the law Current North Carolina law defines marijuana as “all parts of the plant of the genus Cannabis, and the NC Industrial Hemp Commission referenced
therein will be disbanded. As reported by Asheville-based hemp attorney Rod Kight in April, the Industrial Hemp Commission discussed these upcoming changes during an Aug. 5, 2021, meeting. “[T]he NC Industrial Hemp Research Pilot Program will no longer be valid due to the 2018 Federal Farm Bill establishing a Domestic Hemp Production Program,” the minutes from that meeting read. “This action will be effective as of June 30, 2022….” That would do away with all laws on the state books protecting hemp growers, processors or
