National Hemp Association Goes to Africa

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week’s Hemp Podcast, we talk to Geoff Whaling from the National Hemp Association, who recently returned from a trip to Africa.

The trip, funded by a USDA Emerging Markets Program grant, focused on developing hemp exports to Malawi, Rwanda and Ghana.

The purpose of the trip, Whaling said, “was to undertake a review and to report back to USDA as to the barriers for exporting American grown hemp products into those three countries.”

In Malawi, he met with government officials, including President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera, who Whaling said was impressed with the economic potential of hemp in improving food security and creating industry.

One of the barriers Whaling found is that hemp is not on the World Food Program and USAID’s ingredients list.

That exclusion will hinder the export of hemp-based nutritional products from the U.S. to Africa, Whaling said.

Whaling also talks about the Lancaster County Hemp Circuit that took place last month. Whaling was instrumental in bringing Betsy Londrigan, the administrator of USDA’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service, to the event.

Whaling said her presence at the circuit signaled USDA’s interest in supporting the hemp industry, with potentially billions of dollars of funding available to the industry through Rural Development programs that Londrigan oversees.

Also on this week’s show, we follow up on that white deer Steve Groff saw on his way to the Cornell Hemp Field Day.

As you might have guessed, there’s more to the story.

A lot more.

An Army base. Nuclear warheads. An encampment of protesting women. A fence. A herd of inbred deer.

Who knew one white doe would be such a can of worms.

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