The Department of Agriculture and Forestry began accepting applications for the four authorized Louisiana industrial hemp* licenses/activities on December 27, 2019, and began issuing permits to approved applications/applicants on February 20, 2020.

At April 7, 2020, there were sixty-two participants in the program.  The sixty-two hold eighty-two licenses divided among the four license types as follows:

• Fifty (50) grower licenses

• Twelve (12) seed producer licenses

• Nine (9) processor licenses

• Eleven (11) carrier/transporter licenses.

Some eleven participants hold more than one industrial hemp license, two of them holding all four, three holding three licenses each and six each holding two licenses.

Of the sixty-two participants, surprisingly twenty-five, forty percent, are individuals, with thirty-seven having chosen LLCs, affording themselves a shield to individual/personal liability for that aspect of their grower business activity.

The sixty-two participants are distributed geographically among thirty parishes extending from Caddo to Washington and Terrebonne, and Madison to Calcasieu Parish, with Growers in all thirty parishes.  Producer license holders are located in ten parishes, Processors in seven parishes and Carriers in ten.

The largest number of licensed growers in any single parish is four; three parishes having that number, the contiguous parishes of St. Landry and Lafayette in the south central part of the state, and Madison in the northeast with four growers.

Of the nine Processors:  Two are in the Florida Parishes area, and two in nearby Ascension.  Rounding out the remainder of Processors: Caddo has two, with Pointe Coupee, St. Landry and Terrebonne each having one.

While there are some applications still pending, it is not thought to be more than ten or fifteen, and those growers and producers wanting to cultivate a crop this inaugural year for industrial hemp in Louisiana would need to plant now if not in a greenhouse facility.

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“Industrial hemp” is defined by the 2019 Louisiana law as Cannabis sativa L. and any part of that plant, including its seeds, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis; as such, industrial hemp is not marijuana, and it is only the thusly defined industrial hemp agricultural commodity that may be grown in Louisiana.

More information and further reading on Louisiana’s Industrial Hemp Program

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Disclaimer: This blog does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, please contact an attorney directly.