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The Hemp Industry (Still) Has an Image Problem

And It Starts With the Way We Talk About It

By Cameron ChapmanPublished 3 years ago 7 min read
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I volunteered at a hemp industry conference a couple of years ago and noticed a deep divide between some of the people there. In Vermont, there were are around 900 hemp farms registered in 2019 (that number went down in 2020). The industry was in the middle of its bubble and getting a lot of attention from people who viewed it as a possible way to make some quick cash.

Many of these people are not your typical crunchy-granola-eating-back-to-the-landers. They’re businesspeople. They’re more traditional farmers. They’re “regular” everyday people who are curious about hemp and all it has to offer (and the money they might be able to make from it).

And don’t get me wrong—hemp has a lot to offer.

But I watched one demonstrator talking about hemp as food alienate literally half of the people in the room with the answer to one simple question. The man asking the question was an older gentleman, probably in his 60s at least, there with who I presume was his wife.

He asked the presenter where he was getting all of his scientific information about the health and wellness benefits of hemp. And that’s where the presenter misstepped.

Instead of citing scientific journals or even half-baked websites that tout the benefits of hemp, he said, “The plants told me. They spoke to me and I listened.” He followed up by saying that he then verified what the plants told him through other sources, but the damage was done.

To most of the people in that particular presentation, his words were alienating. The plants spoke to him? These are not people who speak to plants, let alone have plants speak to them. And he lost not only their attention, but also all of the credibility he had built over the previous 45 minutes.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I was fact-checking the guy during his presentation (it’s a thing I do…I Google things any time I have a question), and 95% of what he said was dead on, with the other 5% being at least somewhat based in science. And he was a very charismatic speaker who easily held the audience’s attention.

But by not speaking their language — by not reading his audience — he put up a wall that most of them were not willing to even peer over, let alone scale.

This is a common problem I’ve seen in the hemp industry. The people who have been really into hemp (and cannabis in general) for years can relate at the level this guy was talking at. We understand what he means when he says the plants talk to him, even if some of us still think it’s a little far-out to phrase it like that.

But some people go so over-the-top in talking about the benefits of hemp that they don’t think about how nuts they can sound to those outside the industry.

Hemp is a miracle plant in many ways. It’s (unofficially) an adaptogenic herb. It takes fewer resources to grow than cotton or trees (and does less environmental damage than those often do). An acre of hemp produces more oxygen than an acre of trees and also sequesters more carbon. It’s fully renewable on a yearly basis. It’s an excellent source of balanced plant protein, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. It can be used to make virtually anything we currently make with plastic. It can be used to produce rope, cloth, and thousands of other products. (See how I cited sources for a lot of that…?)

But in order for hemp’s potential to be fully realized, it needs to be not only accepted by the mainstream, but embraced by it. And when people in the hemp industry talk about it like it’s magic, or say things like “the plants talk to me”…it only serves to push it further out of the mainstream.

This guy easily could have answered the question in a different way that would have brought people further into the conversation instead of pulling them out of it. How would I have answered in his shoes? Simple:

“Intuitively I could tell that eating hemp was having a remarkable impact on my physical and mental health. I knew there were benefits to what I was eating. So I did some research to confirm those benefits in XYZ publications (or by talking to people at ABC organization).”

It’s not covering up his story and how he became involved in the hemp-as-food movement. But it is reframing it in a way that your average person who isn’t experienced with hemp can relate to. We all understand intuition and many people have had experiences with how their diet affects their health. It’s still authentic, just in a different way.

The people advocating for the hemp industry—whether it’s for hemp as food, fiber, plastic replacements, CBD, or any other application—need to consider how their messaging is perceived by the public at large. While there are plenty of hemp-friendly places out there, there are still a lot of areas, and a lot of people, who have a hard time separating industrial hemp from high-THC cannabis.

Hemp Has an Image Problem

There are thousands of people across the US who are involved in the hemp industry. Many of them got their initial experience growing marijuana illegally. But now that hemp is fully legal at the federal level, the opportunity to take all of that illicit knowledge and turn it into a legitimate business exists.

But because so many people involved in the industry have been associated with various countercultures for so long, they don’t always think about how to talk to people from outside of that culture. They talk about it the same way they talk to other people who have been involved with cannabis and think that will work for anyone. Hint: it doesn’t.

If hemp is meant to stay a boutique industry that is only served by a few thousand farms across the US, then that’s fine. But opportunities for things like hemp fiber sales and the like will only exist once there’s enough demand from the mainstream to make it profitable.

Right now, there are very few processors in the United States that can turn raw hemp fiber into usable fabric. And because of the logistics and cost of shipping raw hemp stalks to fiber processors, most farmers can’t make any money from fiber unless they live within 100 miles of a processor (mobile processing units are being used in some states, but that’s only a small part of the solution).

Right now, with the exception of CBD, there are very few options for making anything out of hemp for a commercial market in the US. And that’s unlikely to change without a major shift in culture and acceptance.

Hemp Branding Needs to Be Less Hippie

If you look at a lot of the hemp products on the market today, they have some decidedly hippie branding. Bottles are emblazoned with cannabis leaves, signage is tie-dyed, and the overall feel is something you’d find at a Phish show rather than at anything resembling a high-end boutique (or even your local drug store). Some companies are moving away from that type of branding, but many retail establishments haven't yet. And that's going to turn off a lot of consumers.

While hemp’s original target market mostly embraced that type of branding, the average mainstream consumer does not. They don’t want to carry something around in their purse that’s emblazoned with a hemp leaf, since to a large demographic that just looks like a pot leaf.

Slowly, companies are starting to recognize this. The options for CBD and other hemp products with branding that caters to mainstream and upscale markets are expanding. But at the same time, many in the industry are still talking about and marketing hemp products in a way that doesn't appeal to your average soccer mom or executive.

Hemp farmers, processors, and end-product producers need to find creative ways to market their products to mainstream consumers. They need to think outside of the tie-dye box and create products for the masses.

(Updated from an article originally published on Medium in 2019.)

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Cameron Chapman

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