This week’s hemp podcast guest is Patrick Atagi, president and CEO of the National Industrial Hemp Council of America (NIHC), a DC-based organization that advocates for and lobbies on behalf of the hemp industry.

ON this episode, Atagi discusses industry priorities for the next Farm Bill and the work the NIHC is doing to put hemp on a level playing field with other commodities in the eyes of the USDA.

The NIHC has formed an informal coalition with more than 30 national and regional hemp groups and associations, including the US. Hemp Round Table and the Hemp Industries Association, to develop a list of issues they would like addressed by Congress in the Farm Bill.

Unlike more mature ag industries that usually advocate and lobby as a unified front, the hemp industry groups haven’t coalesced into a single voice, which makes it confusing for policy makers who rely on industry insiders for information and education about a given industry.

“On Capitol Hill, I get that all the time, ‘There’s so many groups, who do we listen to?’ type of thing,” Atagi said.

The Farm Bill priorities list is an attempt to bring the industry together, but because the hemp plant can be used for everything from medicine to houses to biofuels, the industry naturally has many voices.

But some consensus was achieved, Atagi said.

The list of industry priorities includes: regulating CBD and other ingredients derived from hemp, reducing regulatory requirements for producers of hemp fiber and hemp grain, permitting hemp grain as a commercial livestock feed, and raising the THC limit of hemp to 1% from 0.3%.

Atagi also talks about NIHC’s work developing overseas markets for American hemp products. He said the NIHC was recently granted cooperator status in the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) Market Access Program.

He said this new status puts hemp on a level playing field with other ag industries.

“This means that we're on par with cotton, we're on par with grain. We're on par with 75 other commodities,” he said.

What will that mean for the industry?

Listen and find out. National Industrial Hemp Council of America https://nihcoa.com/

 

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