Interesting read. Hopefully this brings the prices back up.
Eight short months ago, hemp was the fastest growing crop in US agriculture. As of August, US farmers have reported slashing the planted acreage of the crop by 67%, from 137,000 acres in 2019 to 45,000 acres, according to newly released data from the US Department of Agriculture. This drop follows four consecutive years of US farmers more than doubling their hemp acreage annually.
This is just because those farmers have biomass just sitting collecting dust with no avenue to sell. The prices are never going back up on hemp. Maybe once it hits like $5 a lb for biomass it can go up but there isnt a huge future for CBD hemp. Industrial Hemp is a whole different animal and i expect companies to exploit more niches within that industry but Smokable Hemp is gonna be a cheap commodity in the next 3-5 years if not already.
i remember when this forum started. People in the CBD game kept arguing the price would go up come fall…2018 prices fell…2019 prices fell even harder. 2020 will be disgusting combined with covid and a national election. i think niche farmers and extractors can always make it but the commercial side witll be filled with scams and ponzi schemes.
This is also the year when a lot of countries have begun hemp production and are able to export to the US, especially China (https://asiahorizongroup.com/ is getting a ton of attention).
Curious how retail product prices will fare…
i think the problem with the retail side is there isnt enough demand from what i can gather. I really do believe in CBD for things like epilepsy. I know i joke around a lot with the CBD people but i do believe there are SOME benefits. Not the long list of cures its marketed as.
With the limited demand, retail stores have to charge a high price even when the cost is low because the demand is low. I think if the US federally legalized THC then CBD can be used as a cut to lower potencies in THC products and would have more of a market sector especially if d8 can be sold with d9 legally. This is assuming a lot and i really cant see federally legal cannabis in the next 8-10 years. I think when half the country has rec cannabis and another 1/4 has medical then it opens the door to federally legal cannibis but not enough states have legalized the plant to move to federal legalization.
This is just my opinion but how ive invested in the cannabis industry to this point.
Everything killa said, hemp, once the industrial side is tooled up, has a lot of potential, however, the run to extract CBD from it, crashed the market, once there are proper avenues to make generally useful things from it, then the market will correct.
Everybody talks hemp plastics and fuels etc, etc, etc, but there really isn’t a commercial market to manufacture these things, especially in comparison to the other cheaper ways to create standard fuels and plastics.
Hemp may be able to make plastics, but if it isn’t cheaper than oil, it will just be a luxury item that prius drivers use to be more “woke” about the environment.
im not sure on hemp plastics and fuels but paper, clothes, and rope seem better suited like it was in the 1800 to early 1900. I like history. i think it repeats it self. im betting on the cycle to come full circle on hemp like it was in the early stages of this country. when you think of the time when dinosaurs walked the earth. 125 years dont seem like a long time ago. 
Blends and Brands like Marlboro (big names) are going to be all 50 states and keep their margin. I’m honestly surprised a hemp cigarette hasn’t locked the market yet.
If hempcrete can pickup steam I hope to do 3D printed homes. It’s a huge investment for the printers and getting them stateside, but I figure it’ll happen sooner or later.
Once big established brands really start to make use of the fibers, then you’ll see a massive uptick. LEVI’S making hemp jeans is a start, but hemp doesn’t need to be a buzzword, it needs to be a standard.
Until it goes from an eco friendly, earth friendly, conscious, biodegradable, vegan friendly, low soy, non fat, would you look at that, limited run, specialty, high end, eco imaginative commodity.
To becoming a standard, nobody even thinks about it, it just is product, it won’t have the same umph as what’s already being used.
I wanna see it just be a thing. Like if you could compress the fiber to make a plastic ware type product, I would lose my s***.
Because then, it would be so standard, you’d think nothing of it, just as any other product.
And 125 years isn’t that long ago, thats two grandma’s.
The farmer always gets the short end of the stick. There are so many huge parcels in hemp that the price will never come back. I think it will be more mechanized with 1 farmer doing 1,000+ acres by themself and make $500/acre like they do with corn now. No one can compete with that.
The industrial infrastructure just hasn’t been built yet, that’s why it’s expensive at the moment. A few large textile+clothing manufacturers are investing big into hemp processing plants and at least in theory, the end product will be competitive with existing offerings. And the fiber quality will be higher.
Literally the reason why I got into cannabis was to fabricate a hemp car body a la Henry Ford ha - 12 years later there still isn’t a cost efficient way to do it. Think it’s totally possible in time though.
Since most plastic is made from oil, the viability of hemp plastic relates to oil prices, in that it makes sense when oil prices are high, which they are not right now.
The article fails to mention the rule changes coming up in November that will essentially turn every hemp farmer into a trafficker of illegal narcotics. And they think acreage was slashed this year. It will go from unprofitable this year to mostly illegal next year.
I agree 100% its gonna take time for the industrial portion to fully materialize.
What’s the bottle neck for large scale implementable car part production
Supply and demand. How do you create a supply without demand. How do you create a demand without a guaranteed supply? Time, money, and education
Or straight arm twisting government regulations.
Firstly the lack of large scale processing facilities in the US - most can only process a max of 4 tons/hour.
For the actual production of parts I’m hoping to flesh that out soon. I think starting with something small/niche like junior formula suspension arms would be ideal. If anyone wants to collaborate, let me know!
It’s not really a farming out of country. It’s basically a cost of growing.
10 years ago a pound of flower for marijuana was $3-4k and the gold standard was a pound a light. Precovid it was around $1k but the cost and risk of growing has gone down where the standard is 3+lbs/light.
This is the same as the hemp industry - you’re not only fighting the greater macro conditions, basically you need to be efficient to grow where I’ve seen farmers this year expand their operations as their cost per lb of hemp is around $.50 and they expect $3/lb for their product.
On a side note, China is not going to be able to compete on farming as they cannot change their genetics and with the cost of hemp it makes no sense to extract as a byproduct.