Getting Real with 357 Hemp Logistics

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Kevin Schultz, co-founder and president of 357 Hemp Logistics, a company that specializes in transportation and supply chain management solutions for companies in the hemp industry.

According to Schultz, there’s a whole lot more to logistics and supply chain management than most people realize.

“Logistics is sometimes a thankless job, you know, because everyone assumes it should go perfect,” Schultz said. “And when it does, a lot of times behind the scenes, there was a lot going on to make that go smooth.”

He compared logistics to a referee in sports. “If you don't know the ref is there, they probably did a pretty good job. But if all you're talking about is the referee the next day, they probably blew a call.”

Since the founding of the company in 2019, one of the challenges with the logistics of shipping hemp, Schultz said, has been unreliable paperwork and a lack of transparency.

Hemp companies are required to provide certificates of analysis, commonly called COAs, when shipping hemp products.

“We do a lot of work trying to make sure that the COAs we're getting are not tampered with,” Schultz said. “There's a lot of COAs I feel that when we see them have been edited, so we have to verify with the labs that that product is what the lab says it is.”

Schultz said he has seen fewer of these doctored certificates as the industry has matured, but it still happens.

A solution to this problem, he said, would be a tracking and tracing system similar to the cannabis industry with full seed-to-sale transparency.

“And boy, that would make our life so much easier,” he said.

357 Hemp Logistics was also recently named as a partner in a USDA-funded Climate Smart Commodities project, spearheaded by Iconoclast Industries, that will receive a $15 million grant to provide open-access industrial fiber and grain supply chain data in a digital marketplace.

357 Hemp Logistics
https://357company.com/

News Nuggets

Hemp Feed Workshop, October 26-27
https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/hempfeedworkshop/registration/

Rodale Institute Celebrates 75th Anniversary
https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/news/rodale-institute-celebrates-75-years-of-organic-education-and-research/article_7404139c-442c-11ed-8c63-f3df53c016df.html

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