Southern California will soon be home to Mojave Desert-based organic hemp production through a newly created joint venture between natural resources company Cadiz Inc. and cannabis cultivator Glass House Farms. Scott Slater, president and CEO of Cadiz told Cheddar Tuesday the company is "bullish on the long-term prospects for organic, California-based CBD and hemp."
The two companies are creating SoCal Hemp, which will grow the industrial hemp in the desert, a location Slater said is beneficial as there are "not a lot of bugs in the desert," more hours of sunlight throughout the year, and "organic and pristine" soil.
"Our intention is to control our distribution chain so that we would raise hemp, process our CBD and then use it in forward retail distribution," Slater said of the new partnership.
With SoCal Hemp now entering its commercial phase after two test phases, it is expecting to cultivate 200 acres in the spring and 1,000 acres by the end of 2020.
"We do not expect to, or want to, compete with the super-large players who are going to be doing tens of thousands of acres of industrial hemp," he said. "Our intention would be to split up what we have, to maximize our value in the CBD space for our own products and distribution, and then to have arrangements with forward-thinking companies that are interested in substituting hemp for cotton fiber," Slater said.
SoCal Hemp intends to use some of the crops as a potential substitute for cotton and some for CBD, Slater said.
"There is a strong belief that the use of hemp from farm to fiber can be an important substitute for things like cotton," he said, noting that the cultivation of hemp uses a relatively low amount of water when compared to crops like hay.
"Ours is really a niche. We want to be associated with organic, sun-raised, California hemp," Slater said.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
