Eric Crawford compares being in the hemp business to Disney’s Space Mountain.

“You’re always in the dark and there’s a lot of ups and downs,” he said.

And right now this industry is staring down a dark abyss.

A new federal government measure that takes effect on Dec. 11 could knock almost all hemp-derived products out of the market nationwide – and with it the farmers who grow hemp for its cannabidiol, or CBD.

Almost all hemp growers in Oregon grow floral hemp that’s then processed for its CBD. In Oregon, some farmers are considering pulling out of the industry entirely while others might just plant fewer acres.

But they’re all in a gray area while they wait for Congress to act.

Eric Crawford and his brother Seth Crawford are the co-owners of Oregon CBD, an Independence-based company that, by their own estimates, supplies 75% of the hemp seeds grown on farms all over the country. The company also doubles as a cannabis research lab.

This time of year the brothers are getting the greenhouses on their 50-acre farm ready to grow the hemp plants they’ll eventually harvest seeds from to ship across the nation. The brothers don’t know if there will even be much of a market for their seeds.

Late last year, language on a Congressional appropriations bill that ended the country’s longest government shutdown included a provision that closes a legal loophole that inadvertently allowed manufactures to make hemp-derived tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC products with very little oversight.

But the Crawfords are still producing some hemp seeds anyway.

“We don’t know what else to do with ourselves. So we’re plowing ahead,” Seth Crawford said. “We’re relying on the excess seed that we produced last season.”

Hemp and marijuana are the same plant species. What separates them are their legal definitions. Congress legalized hemp through the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill and defined hemp as cannabis that contains 0.3% or less THC – the psychoactive chemical in cannabis – by dry weight.

CBD from hemp does not cause a high, and is often used as a natural therapeutic for chronic pain, inflammation, anxiety and even seizures. Hemp does naturally contain small amounts of THC, though not enough to get someone high.

But some CBD producers took advantage of the loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill by chemically converting CBD into delta-9 THC or delta-8 THC – chemicals that can lead to a high.

“Because the CBD came from hemp, and then is being chemically converted into delta-8 THC, the claim is, ‘Oh, it’s derived from hemp, so therefore it’s legal, even though it’s intoxicating,’” said Jeffrey Steiner, the director of Oregon State University’s Global Hemp Innovation Center.

That opened the door for hemp-derived THC products like soft drinks, gummies and other unregulated edibles to land on the shelves of gas stations, smoke shops and convenience stores. In states like Oregon, where recreational cannabis is legal, these products can undercut regulated cannabis businesses. In states where it’s not regulated, they can bypass laws banning recreational weed.

So in an attempt to fix this loophole, Congress included a provision in its 2025 budget bill that caps the total THC in hemp-derived products at 0.4 milligrams per container.

The cap is meant to target unregulated intoxicating hemp products.

But that change will also sweep up almost all other hemp CBD products in the market, essentially disrupting the farmers, processors and manufacturers in the hemp industry. That’s because even non intoxicating hemp products have more than 0.4 milligrams of THC in them.

If they don’t meet the new threshold, these companies could risk violating the federal Controlled Substances Act.

It will still be legal to grow hemp, but if manufactures can’t produce CBD products, that leaves growers with nowhere to sell their crop.

“It’s a drastic reduction. I feel like it wasn’t based on science, it was just a number someone threw out there,” Eric Crawford said, referring to the 0.4 milligram per container cap. “Regulations in general are really important to protect consumers. But…it’s way too far in one direction.”

Steiner with Global Hemp Innovation Center said the effects of the change are already visible.

In 2025, total hemp acreage in Oregon was 2,808 — a figure growers thought would be stable before Congress acted.

But in 2026, Oregon’s hemp acreage dropped 40.6% to 1,668 acres, according to data from the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Still, the crop remains one of the top agriculture commodities of Oregon, according to ODA data.

Steiner believes that acreage could fall even more by 2027 if nothing changes.

“Now with all this regulatory uncertainty … the folks that are growing hemp flower for CBD, there’s no assurance anybody’s going to buy it,” Steiner said. “So there’s really a big cutback on acres and the processing going on right now.”

Alan Cleaver in Hermiston is one of the few farmers that still grows hemp in Oregon.

He is also the founder of Columbia Basin Bioscience — a hemp processing facility that isolates CBD and other non-intoxicating chemicals from hemp. Cleaver is one of only a few wholesalers that sell CBD isolate to manufacturers.

He himself is trying to decide whether to plant hemp in the coming months, but hasn’t made up his mind yet.

“I’m trying to figure out what my customers are doing,” Cleaver said.

Because he sells CBD isolate that’s nearly 100% pure, manufacturers could technically use that to produce CBD products with no THC. But he can’t produce enough product to meet the demands of an entire industry.

“On the surface, it appears that it puts me in the driver’s seat because I’m one of the few that can do this. But on the bigger picture, I think it destroys the business,” Cleaver said.

With not enough CBD supply available, Cleaver believes companies that rely on it for their products will leave the business altogether.

“If I’m in their shoes, am I gonna continue a business that only has one supplier or very few suppliers?” he said.

Steiner said he’s not against regulation, and argues there should be more oversight on products produced using hemp. But he wishes Congress would close the loophole without closing off legitimate markets for farmers and manufacturers who never exploited it.

He said Congress could distinguish between industrial hemp grown for fiber or grain, hemp grown for its naturally occurring non-intoxicating chemicals such as CBD, and cannabis chemically converted to cause a high.

“Let’s separate the intoxicating from the non-intoxicating and from the industrial [hemp],” Steiner said. “[Congress] is trying to catch everything under one regulation, based on what the end product is, rather than saying what was the crop grown for.”

Seth Crawford said he does see one positive outcome from the last few years, despite the politically uncertain nature of hemp: More people see the benefits of CBD and think about it in a positive way.

“That was not the case when we first started this journey and people didn’t even know that that was a particular compound that you could access,” he said. “It’s a household name and people that you wouldn’t expect to be using a cannabis product are concerned that they are not going to have access to their CBD product for themselves.”

The brothers are hoping Congress acts and allows CBD manufacturers to stay in business before the change goes into effect on Dec. 11. But for now, they’re not counting on it.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/11/09/oregon-hemp-farmers-brace-uncertain-future-federal-changes-loom/