American Hemp: The Origins of Our CBD

Where does your CBD come from? That’s an excellent question to ask these days as we’re seeing an explosion of new CBD products available to consumers. Cannabidiol (CBD) is a compound found primarily in the flowers and leaves of the hemp plant. Hemp has a contentious history here in the United States, but thanks to activists and lawmakers, we have seen a recent resurgence of this useful and versatile plant.

After years of prohibition began in the 1930s, hemp cultivation is finally starting to flourish in America again. A few states with medical marijuana laws began growing cannabis in the early 2000s. The first modern commercial planting of hemp happened in 2013 when Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin harvested a 55-acre crop. It was the first in the nation since 1957. Then the Farm Bill of 2014 passed, which authorized five-year pilot programs through universities and state departments of agriculture to initiate research programs on hemp cultivation. Farmers in Kentucky, many of whom once grew tobacco, were encouraged by state leaders to start planting hemp to revive their flagging agricultural industry.

Other states followed, and many soon had pilot programs that allowed the commercial growth of hemp. California, Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming, all permit license growers to produce industrial hemp for commercial purposes. The federal government is catching up to these states with the recently passed 2018 Farm Bill. It included a provision that removes hemp as a Schedule 1 controlled substance and allows hemp cultivation on a broader scale, not just for pilot programs.

At GoodCBD, the cannabidiol used in our products comes from Kentucky, Oregon, and Colorado. Because these states had pilot programs in place so early, they are ahead of the game concerning cultivation and production. We extract our CBD using CO2, which results in a safe and very refined final product. And everything we sell is independently tested by a third-party lab, identifiable by batch numbers on every GoodCBD product.

Hemp is an extremely versatile plant with thousands of applications across a wide variety of industries. From food and nutritional applications to textiles, plastic replacement, and fuels, the possibilities seem endless. Here at GoodCBD, we are obviously most interested in the cannabidiol extract, but we’re also excited about the expanded cultivation of such a useful crop. Hopefully, CBD is just the beginning of the renaissance of American hemp!