U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signs the 2018 Farm Bill
On December 12, Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, which now only awaits President Donald Trump’s signature before the end of the year in order to go into effect.
“The boost this bill delivers couldn’t come soon enough,” said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in remarks made on the Senate floor after the bill’s passage. “It’s no secret that these are tough times for farm country. Falling prices and volatile markets make it harder to make ends meet. Net farm income continues to decline. The threat of natural disasters is a constant fear for even the most skilled and prepared farmers.”
“Families in my home state of Kentucky are all too familiar with these challenges,” McConnell continued. “We’re home to more than 75,000 farms. They produce everything from soybeans and poultry to horses and corn. Those families are looking to us for help and stability. And when President Trump signs our Farm Bill into law, more stability is just what they will get.”
In addition to keeping the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) relatively unchanged, with no addition of much-debated stricter work requirements, the bill also fully legalizes industrial hemp, a longtime staple of Kentucky’s pre-industrial economy. Hemp has seen renewed interest in Kentucky, as the state opened the door to new pilot growing programs and research in recent years.
Under the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s Industrial Hemp Research Pilot Program, which began in 2014, Kentucky’s acreage of planted hemp jumped from 2,300 acres in 2016 to 3,200 last year, to 6,700 in 2018. That ranks Kentucky as a national leader, second only to Colorado. The acreage trend, together with investments by processors and manufacturers, and full legalization in the 2018 farm bill, position the state’s hemp industry for significant growth.
In the early wake of the farm bill’s passage through Congress, Winchester-based GenCanna Global USA Inc., a hemp genetics and cannabidiol (CBD) formulation company, announced the addition of a new facility in Graves County, with a $40 million investment expected to create 80 full-time jobs.
Tom Wilmes
The announcement follows the company’s fifth growing season. The new 100,000-square-foot facility will include drying, storage, extraction and processing operations and is expected to boost the company’s capacity to 20 times the product currently grown to date. The operation will enable GenCanna to serve food and beverage industry customers with products including fruit chews, ingestible oils, beverages and cosmetics. Construction is expected to begin in early 2019 and be complete late next year.
“This new facility in Graves County represents the consistent and sustainable growth of both GenCanna and the hemp industry as a whole,” said GenCanna CEO Matty Mangone-Miranda in a release announcing the new location. “We’re proud to continue scaling our economic impact in Kentucky communities by helping farmers farm and making strategic steps like this to expand our leadership position.”
Founded in 2014, GenCanna develops hemp-derived products for wholesale to clients throughout the United States and internationally. Through partnerships with Kentucky farmers, the company produces hundreds of acres of hemp biomass each year, which are processed for CBD used in the creation of ingredients and white-labelled hemp-derived CBD products. The company currently employs approximately 150 people in Winchester.
“With the new legalization provisions for industrial hemp in the federal Farm Bill, this is an exciting time for the hemp industry,” said State Rep. Richard Heath of Mayfield. “I couldn’t be more excited to see Graves County play a key role in this agricultural comeback, and would like to welcome GenCanna and the 80 new jobs to our community with open arms.”