Legendary investor Warren Buffet’s investment company just broke the Trillion-Dollar valuation barrier. What does he think is the most important quality to look for in an executive? Ethics. Why has hemp failed miserably since federal legalization? Ethics.
From grifters new to hemp to bankruptcies, from the Hot New Thing in scams to outright fraud, since 1999 hemp in North America has suffered one ethical mishap after another resulting in real harm to consumers and those who do business honestly. The 95% loss of acres in the U.S. since federal legalization testifies to that, ironically, nothing hurt the hemp industry more than legalization!
The billion-dollar hempseed food industry took it on the chin from “hemp THC” gummies. Dirty bathtub “hemp THC” vape pens and gummies made from cheap foreign CBD and sold by gas stations to teens in prohibition states became the new “Billion-Dollar U.S. Hemp Industry,” as domestic acres fall to their lowest level in the modern era. We traded achenes, hurd, and bast for delta-10 THC, Hydrogenated THC, and THC-O acetate as well as a dictionary full of bizarre compounds, the unintended consequences of subjecting CBD to acids and metals to make the world’s cheapest THC.
Meanwhile, those who enabled the lack of acres continue to drive us off the bridges they burned with those who knew better; chasing dollars above all else wherever they may lead. One industry leader admitted in a surprising moment of candor “we used to say it didn’t take any inputs. We used to shout it from the rooftops, ‘it doesn’t need this, it doesn’t need that, and frankly none of it was true!” and for that was recently given a lifetime achievement award. The associations say they are helping farmers, but to be frank they never did say which nation’s farmers because it doesn’t appear to be American.
So yes, considering the industry’s celebration of grifters and miscellaneous bad people, the crash was disappointing but not surprising. When I saw that one farmer left a hemp expo thinking she would easily be able to double-crop just because a goat-herder told her so, I knew we were in trouble.
I can’t process hempseed into foods and brand them if y’all don’t grow it, and now 30 years later I’m still waiting! Ironically, the hemp grain producers have been sitting on billions of seed for years anxious for AAFCO approval to dump into the CAFO market, grain which could have jump-started a domestic hemp food industry, taking hundreds of millions of dollars in sales away from China and Canada. Then they could have paid the outstanding farmer invoices with that money and literally paid them again to grow more, instead of storing it in bins and siloes all this time.
Read more about a Unicorn, namely Warren Buffet’s Trillion-Dollar company built on ethics at: https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-tops-1-trillion-market-value-2024-08-28/