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The future of medical hemp

CBD companies who survive the punishment of the current overheated market will be those with deep pockets who already have established business relationships and supply chains, who nurture innovation and put a strong emphasis on quality.

That’s how representatives of leading global CBD companies assessed the market going forward during the Future of Medical Hemp Summit held at HempToday Center in late August, 2019. 

Delegates to the summit also said CBD stakeholders should self-regulate toward strong consumer safety standards, and agreed the sector should take more of a proactive approach to media communications to overcome misunderstanding in the marketplace.

The Summit also found:

• Current massive oversupply in the CBD markets will trigger a “race to the bottom” in which a lot of enterprises will suffer.

• The explosion of CBD in the USA after passage of the 2018 Farm Bill legalizing hemp has hit European CBD players hard.

• Despite passage of the U.S. Farm Bill last year, stakeholders in the USA still face challenges with regulatory issues at the federal level while individual state programs still need time to be refined.

• The industry can rapidly increase its footprint and message by adopting an aggressive media strategy that combines leading hemp media enterprises, industry trade groups and hemp producers to produce a better communications framework and more awareness of the critical issues facing the industry.

• More scrutiny is needed regarding so-called brokers, whom some delegates to the Summit said are contributing to image problems both on the buyer and seller side.

• Progress is being made to make hemp flowers legal under international regimes such as the World Health Organization. Major efforts in this area have been underway for the past two years, and may pay off in 2020.

• The success or failure of efforts to exempt extracts from the EU’s Novel Foods Catalogue will shape the future of the CBD and hemp food sectors in Europe.

• Thailand and Colombia are markets moving fast, representing two of the most dynamic regions around the globe: Asia and Latin America.

• Smart CBD companies will begin to diversify around the whole plant.

Get the HempToday CBD Intelligence Bundle, with full analysis of the sector and moderated presentations from The Future of Medical Hemp Summit.

Sources and partners:

Sensi Seeds

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