Lebanon, KY: It is almost harvest season at Cornbread’s hemp farms. 

The Kentucky-based CBD and THC company is just one of many across the country facing existential crisis amid ongoing state and federal attempts to regulate, if not outright ban, their business.

Tucked in between growing residential zones in Lebanon, Kentucky, two of Cornbread’s farms encompass a total of 35 acres of hemp across the street from one another, with about 25 additional acres at a third location.

“We have to make plans for the long term, so we’re betting long,” said Jim Higdon, Cornbread’s co-founder and Chief Communications Officer. “We don’t even know what’s going to happen next year.”

Unlike the sterile indoor operations where legal cannabis is often cultivated — especially in the north where colder months last longer — hemp is typically grown outdoors.

The process is a lengthy one. 

Seed gets planted into cups over the winter and starts its journey in a greenhouse. By late May, those cups have largely been transported into the soil, where they will grow for the summer. 

Harvest time comes in early October.

“We have about two weeks until harvest,” said Higdon, as he walked along rows of bushy hemp plants in late September.

After the COVID 19 lockdowns, the company pivoted to e-commerce, direct to customer sales. This constitutes most of the company’s business. Higdon said that the company has about 11,000 customers throughout Tennessee, and that the bulk of those sales are for sleep gummies purchased by women over 60.

“Sixty percent of our customers are over 65,” he said.

Recently, the company launched a line of THC beverages which are currently being distributed to about a dozen states.

Business has been booming. This year, Cornbread is set to harvest 60 acres-worth of hemp, up from 40 acres last year.

Most of the crops are dried and cured in converted barns. Farm land in Kentucky and Tennessee is full of old barns that were once used for tobacco. Cornbread has expanded so much that this year, for the first time, they’re actually building a new barn.

“That does not happen much,” said Higdon.

Despite this year promising the company’s largest crop yet, Cornbread, along with most of other hemp companies that thrived in the wake of the 2018 Farm Bill, are facing an uncertain future thanks to the potential of looming federal prohibition along with many states enacting their own flavors of tighter regulation.

Earlier this year, Tennessee lawmakers passed a hemp ban that prohibits direct-to-consumer sales and requires all intoxicating hemp products sold in the state to also be produced in-state. The new restrictions go into effect January 1.

Cornbread sued the Volunteer state on September 17, claiming that the restriction violates the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.

"Despite the hard work of its founders and the loyalty of its customers — and with no evidence of consumer dissatisfaction or public health concerns — Tennessee now seeks to force this burgeoning industry into an antiquated, anticompetitive, and irrational regulatory framework that was originally designed for the alcohol industry after Prohibition," reads the 15-page complaint, which was filed in the Middle District Court of Tennessee.

Other states, such as Texas and Florida, considered similar bans this year.

Meanwhile, there have been efforts from the federal government to ban intoxicating hemp. 

A few months ago the House passed an appropriations bill that included a redefinition of legal hemp to exclude any measurable THC or THCA. The Senate considered the same prohibition, but ultimately removed the redefinition. As the legislature considers a looming government shutdown, there is still a possibility that the ban could be re-inserted into the final version of the appropriations bill.

The US hemp industry generates approximately $28.4 billion annually and supports about 320,000 jobs, according to a September 16 letter signed by eight senators urging their fellow lawmakers to preserve the industry. 

Losing their right to grow and sell hemp, could have other, broadly negative impacts. Increasingly, large new homes have been sprouting up along the outskirts of farm land, potentially threatening the land’s future use for crops of any kind.

Hemp has also been a boon for farmers in the region. While more and more of them struggle to survive, hemp generates a profit margin that can be two to three times as large as soy or corn.

“We’ve got to make sure we’ve got stability in the market for the sake of our farming partner,” said Higdon.