Chris Boucher's Thirty Year Journey into Hemp

After thirty plus years in the industry, Chris Boucher knows a thing or two about hemp. These days he’s the CEO of Farmtiva, a California-based hemp company that specializes in consulting, seed sales, and a hemp juice powder called JuiceTiva, but his journey with hemp started long before the Farm Bill created the pathway for the modern hemp industry.

He started a business in 1990 called the Hempstead Co. that made hemp wallets, hats, bags and such.

“Back then the only place you could get hemp was either in China, Hungary, Romania or Poland. And so I went over to China in ’92, and we sourced the hemp there,” he said during this week’s episode.

Boucher wanted to source his hemp in the U.S., and so in 1994 he secured permission from the USDA and became the first person to grow hemp in the U.S. in decades. But before the crop was harvested, local narcotics agents in California destroyed it by plowing it under, and the dream of U.S.-grown hemp had to wait.

Along the way he also co-founded the Hemp Industries Association, wrote an influential legal opinion about CBD, and imported the first CBD oil into the U.S.

He traces his career in hemp back to a chance encounter in 1990 when he was asked to sign a petition to legalize hemp by a man who had just published a book that explained the history and potential of hemp. That man was Jack Herer, author of the seminal hemp book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” The two became lifelong friends.

As the current director of the California Hemp Growers Guild, an advocacy group for hemp farmers, Boucher sees first hand the detrimental effect recent state legislation is having on California's hemp farmers.

He said it’s a big win for the marijuana industry and a big loss for the hemp industry. Hemp now falls under the jurisdiction of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control instead of the California Department of Agriculture.

Boucher said that the agency’s fee structure and regulations make it nearly impossible for hemp farmers to compete, and many have stopped growing hemp altogether.

“We’ve lost 90% of hemp farmers in California. We went from 800 farmers down to 120,” he said.

He said these new regulations will also make it very expensive for any out-of-state hemp companies wishing to do business in California.

Also in this episode, host Eric Hurlock reads a summary of the new definition of hemp set forth in the recently introduced Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, Chuck Schumer's bill to federally legalize cannabis.

All this and more.

Be sure to check out all of these links.

Farmtiva
https://www.farmtiva.com/

JuiceTiva
https://www.farmtiva.com/juicetiva-hemp-juice-powder

Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act Summary
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/caoa_overview_summary1.pdf

Thanks to our generous sponsors

IND HEMP
https://indhemp.com/

Mpactful Ventures

https://www.mpactfulventures.org/

Music by Tin Bird Shadow
https://tinbirdshadow.bandcamp.com/releases

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