The USDA rolled out a new webinar series this week highlighting key issues in the hemp sector.  The series, running through May 4^th, kicked off yesterday with Jeff Kostuik’s presentation on outdoor hemp production.  Kostuik – a long-time Hemp Bulletin reader – is a competent hemp agronomist with decades of hemp production under his belt.

Hemp is emerging in the US after many decades of an innovation moratorium, when relatively little progress has occurred in the areas of plant breeding, plant pathology, modern production systems, and the intersection of them all.  In Canada, however, producers have been seeding hemp for over two decades.   

Hemp production systems are woefully underdeveloped compared with existing commodity crops, but hemp farmers and machinery companies have made considerable progress in a short period of time. Companies like Formation Ag and Bish Enterprises have a variety of solutions for hemp growers…