Is hemp the answer to combating climate change? The Hemp Blockchain thinks so.

• Author: Nalewicki, Jennifer

WHEN MANY PEOPLE HEAR THE WORD HEMP, they automatically assume it's the same thing as marijuana-spoiler alert: it's not--and one company in Utah is ready to set the record straight while harnessing the plant to help combat climate change.

Since early 2020, The Hemp Blockchain has been working tirelessly to create "a blockchain-native supply chain management solution for the industrial hemp industry." In the two years since its founding, The Hemp Blockchain has partnered with commercial hemp farmers around the globe to leverage the plant as a viable and sustainable resource that can be utilized across multiple industries, including construction and manufacturing, with the potential to help decrease material waste and pollution and help protect the future of our planet.

But before we get into saving the world, it's important to understand the difference between hemp and marijuana.

While industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is of the same genus as the psychoactive plant widely known as marijuana, hemp contains extremely low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the chemical compound responsible for marijuana's psychoactive effects. The amount of THC found in hemp is less than 0.3 percent, according to the US Department of Agriculture, one of the organizations responsible for regulating and providing guidance to the commercial hemp industry in the United States.

In other words, hemp doesn't yield nearly enough THC to get you high. Hemp does, however, contain Cannabidiol (CBD), a pain-relieving chemical often used by the medical community to help patients with epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

For Steve Prosniewski, COO of The Hemp Blockchain, getting people to understand these key differences has been one of the biggest challenges in getting the company off the ground two years ago.

"Many are unsure about hemp and its similarities and differences from marijuana," Prosniewski says. "This has been a major point of confusion for people."

That confusion came to a head in 2018 with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the regulated production of hemp in the United States. That bill also helped remove hemp and hemp seeds from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s list of controlled substances. In the time since, legal hemp farms continue to crop up across the United States, including right here in Utah.

"When the US hemp industry got its start four years ago thanks to the Farm Bill, it came out of the gates and fell flat on its...