Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** commodity crops in the USA are…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** commodity crops in the USA are industrial-scale systems finely tuned from decades to centuries of market and government influences that work to minimize risk and improve profit margins from producers, suppliers, and financial institutions. As envisioned by congress in its 2014 and 2018 farm bills, we ascribe to the potential for hemp. Unlike any other commodity, hemp can serve as the foundational material to the manufacture of multitude of high-performance biobased products to meet the demands of a 21ST century economy. Using an interdisciplinary systems approach, this project will work to identify and link elements of a globally competitive hemp-based supply chain from border-to-border across the pacific states, equally integrating american indian tribes and other rural communities. We focus on five key objectives: (I) improve hemp genetics for enhanced agricultural production, handling, processing, and materials utilization; (II) identify key production ecoregions for these materials and estimate how they can complement existing production systems and their markets; (III) determine those effects on the capacity to sustainably supply materials for manufacturing; (IV) parameterize existing and needed transportation and infrastructure to determine if, where, and how much hemp materials can be produced and where processing facilities could be located to support the regional manufacture of biobased products; and (V) implement workforce development education to support this new hemp-based sector. We will provide farmers, tribes and rural economic developers, financiers, policy makers, agency service providers, and regulators the science-based information they need to make decisions when evaluating the technical, economic, environmental, and social sustainability of incorporating a hemp-based economy into the region.