Industry leadership is essential to the hemp sector’s growth.  This isn’t unique to hemp, or agriculture, though agriculture has a long history of industry advocacy groups associated with a commodity, demographic, or tied to geography.  Industry advocates were effective in starting a hemp revolution, resulting in the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, and creating copious buzz in agriculture, but also in plain culture alone.  It is a phenomenon, in the amount of attention it has garnered in the press, and also in terms of agency attention at all levels of government. 

The work undertaken by industry advocates is not complete, there is still work to be done to normalize the crop on a national level.  But we’ve reached an inflection point in the development of the sector.  The issues confronting the industry now require a realignment of hemp stakeholders.  The…