Farmers, as usual, are getting ripped off. Farmers are now only offered less than $10 per pound for hemp flowers when the finished product is getting over $2,000 retail from that pound. That is a 1:200 differential—something many farmers will be familiar with, with all the value added going to brokers, middlemen and retailers. There is immense economic opportunity in farmers having direct ownership of the extraction, packaging, distribution, and marketing of CBD.
Most hemp won’t be sold this year, due to bad seed, bad actors, and bad practices. Regulation through the Farm Bill will protect farmers, and we are already ahead of the curve with that through our collaborations with CHAMP and CSU (see: Appendix A).
Extraction facilities are blocking farmers from capturing any value added. Due to oversupply, all extractors are low-balling farmers. They have stopped offering tolling and instead are saying “Here’s $5 to10 per pound, take it or leave it.”