Illinois Hemp Growers Association
Upcoming Events
On Wednesday February 5th, 2020, CEO of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association Rachel Berry will be a guest on the Midwest Hemp Council podcast hosted by Jason Dozier. Commercial agriculture educator Phillip Alberti from the University of Illinois Extension will be a guest as well.
The topic of the show will be the latest news and outlook on the Illinois hemp industry. Look for the recording to be released on February 6th, 2020.
On Thursday February 6th, 2020, the Shelby County Farm Bureau is hosting Rachel and Chief of Operations of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association Chris Berry to speak about the uses and reasons to grow industrial hemp as an alternative crop on your farm. Dinner will be served before the Discussion.
On Saturday February 8th, 2020, Chris will be attending a screening of Billion Dollar Crop. We will begin at 1:00pm with the film.
Following the film Chris will lead discussion with a few words and Q & A. This is a free event. The program will take place at: UUFD - Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Decatur located at 3773 n. MacArthur Rd. Decatur, Illinois 62526.
Ask Us Anything! - Reddit AMA
On February 10th, 2020, we will be participating in our first Ask Me Anything on Reddit! This AMA is hosted by subreddit r/ILTrees. Join us at 12pm CST to contribute to the thread. We're excited to take questions from the Illinois Reddit userbase! If you don't know what Reddit is, you can click here to learn more.
IHGA Membership Meeting
On February 13th, 2020, we will be hosting our first membership meeting in Princeton, IL. If you're a dues-paying member, check your email for an official invite to the event. If you are interested in attending the meeting, you can become a dues-paying member online or at the door on the day of the event. A gift basket of 100% hemp products will be raffled off at the meeting to a random member in attendance.
Some Original Content for You
Recently we created some content for the Midwest Hemp Council and the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council which means more content for the Illinois hemp industry!
The first piece is called IL Industrial Hemp Vibe Check for January 2020. We were asked by the Midwest Hemp Council to do a monthly check-in to contribute to their data collection for the hemp industry across the Midwest. We took a look at a recent news article with quotes from Jeff Cox as he was looking back on Illinois hemp production in 2019. The Vibe Check is our take on what Jeff was talking about. Keep an eye out for more monthly IL Vibe Checks from the IHGA and the Midwest Hemp Council in the future!
The second piece is called Industrial Hemp 2019 Infographic. A few weeks ago, Lenora Fisher, Director of Business Attraction for the Greater Peoria EDC wrote to us:
In preparing for additional Industrial Hemp conversations, our regional business attraction team asked for an info sheet to share with farmers. I.E. something we can share with them that helps outline the market potential for industrial hemp and why they may or may not want to consider planting hemp in the future.
Is there a good resource for that out there somewhere? A one pager that you'd recommend?
You know what? I couldn't find a good one pager that I would recommend. There is a lot of data out there and a lot of stuff needs to be explained. It's hard to fit it all on one page so I get why something comprehensive hasn't been more widespread. Since we couldn't find one - I did what we always strive to do here at the IHGA: make something that works. Enjoy and share, it's all free info from top industry sources. Download here: Industrial Hemp 2019 Infographic
CBD Safety?
Has anyone else reviewed the Required CBD testing Bill HB3906?
Provides that the Department of Public Health, the Illinois State Police, and the Department of Agriculture may inspect any business that manufactures, processes, transports, or distributes CBD products in the State to ensure compliance with the Act. Provides specified criminal fines, imprisonment, and administrative penalties for violations of the Act and directs that criminal fines collected under the Act shall be deposited into the CBD Safety Fund.
The bill was introduced by Representative Bob Morgan (D) 58th District back in October and aims to regulate CBD products. In its current form, we believe it specifically targets CBD products that are produced by hemp processors with greater than 0.3% Δ9-THC. These products are not regulated by any of the Acts that the bill mentions as exceptions.
Full spectrum oil has more than 0.3% Δ9-THC and if added at a high dose to a product like caramel could make the product more than 0.3% Δ9-THC by weight. People aren't labeling this fact in a standardized way or being regulated on it currently.
HB3906 looks like an attempt to adopt rules that require those products to be labeled stating they are tested for things like potency, contamination, and Δ9-THC content.
Ideally the regulation will allow you to do a single test on your stock of CBD extract and a single test on the final product's recipe to ensure compliance, then you could repeatedly make small batches with the same label and not have to pay to retest every batch.
On January 28th, 2020 the bill was assigned to Human Services Committee for further development. You can contact the sponsors of the bill and tell them you don't want to go to jail for making and selling your own CBD products.
House Sponsors Rep. Bob Morgan - Deb Conroy - Kelly M. Cassidy and Norine K. Hammond
Common sense tells us no reputable vendor wants to sell a CBD product that is way too potent, is contaminated, or contains enough Δ9-THC to get you high. If regulators want to wield the power of imprisonment, it's up to them to make it fast, easy, and cheap for the industry to provide defensible data to the customers so it's absolutely clear where the line of criminality is drawn.
As Illinois attempts to regulate its own CBD commerce, the FDA is progressing towards interstate CBD regulation as well. Last month Douglas Throckmorton, M.D. testified Before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health on the FDA's Cannabis Policies For the New Decade
Here is video of Dr. Throckmorton's testimony (starts at 36:44):
Speaking of Defensible Data...
One of our dues-paying members: tmil@signakey.com represents a company that makes this type of data accessible. SignaKey's highly encrypted, unambiguously unique marking technology provides anti-counterfeiting protection in addition to reliable tracking and authentication.
Our sponsor PathogenDX offers affordable, simple DNA-based testing. Helping growers clean up and eliminate listeria, powdery mildew, aspergillus, gray mold, and ecoli. PathogenDx's technology can rapidly identify and detect up to 50 pathogens all in a single test, in 6 hours providing triplicate data per analyte for certainty in results with a simple and easy process.
Would you like to be a sponsor?
We offer a one-size-fits-all sponsorship no matter how big or small your company. Your sponsorship dollars support the IHGA in developing resources for the Illinois hemp industry. If you're interested in becoming a sponsor of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association, you can download our latest sponsorship info sheet here.