Fixing Problems In Imaginative Ways: Jim Higdon, Co-Founder Of Cornbread Hemp

Warren Bobrow=WB: Please inform me about where you are from?

Jim Higdon=JH: I matured in Lebanon, Kentucky– about an hour south of Louisville.

WB: How would you describe it to someone who is not from Kentucky, or the closest they got remained in a glass of bourbon!

My grandmother was born in the home on the Maker’s Mark distillery residential or commercial property that is now the welcome center for visitors on the Bourbon Path.

WB: What brought you to the hemp organisation?

JH: My home town, in addition to being at the heart of Kentucky bourbon culture, also happened to be the headquarters for an criminal band of marijuana growers called the Cornbread Mafia. In Between 1985 and 1989, seventy guys from main Kentucky were arrested on 30 farms in 10 specifies with what the authorities stated was 200 tons of cannabis. I went away to school to end up being a writer, initially to Brown and then to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I then returned house to write the conclusive story on the Cornbread Mafia as a narrative nonfiction book. From the book’s success, I ended up being a journalist covering cannabis policy for POLITICO, the Washington Post, and other outlets. That work led me to the chance to introduce Cornbread Hemp.

WB: Why a Cannabis product?

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JH: My career course led me straight to this minute. Since of my book-writing background and my track record as a cannabis reporter, I was perfectly placed to make the leap into business side with the passage of the 2018 Farm Costs.

WB: What was your course to the plant?

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JH: I avoided the plant in high school.

WB: Do you have a mentor? Who is it?

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JH: In 2018, I profiled Trey Zoeller of Jefferson’s Bourbon for Entrepreneur Magazine He’s the mad researcher behind Jefferson’s Ocean, which is bourbon aged at sea. In the course of interviewing him, I found out how he disrupted the bourbon industry with a new way of thinking that gotten in touch with the market in unexpected ways. He’s a role model who taught me how to participate in company by resolving issues in innovative ways.

WB: Why Cornbread Hemp? Cornbread Hemp brings the Kentucky marijuana customs of the Cornbread Mafia into the light of day by dropping the “mafia” and adding Kentucky-grown hemp items made to the requirements of the USDA certified organic program. Through the Cornbread story, we produced a brand name narrative that extends back to the very first Kentucky hemp crop in1775 In this way, we have access to a brand story that more closely resembles a legacy bourbon brand name than a fly-by-night CBD company.

WB: How do you make your cornbread? Do you use Anson Mills grains?

JH: If we’re talking cornbread, I always begin with a corn-only, gluten-free batter. For dessert cornbread, I dollop in spoonfuls of blackberry preserves.

( Ohhhh, creamed corn …)

WB: What is your six and twelve-month strategy?

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JH: We are presently in a fundraising round on Wefunder, almost halfway to our goal of raising $400 K. In the next couple of months, we will deploy this capital through digital marketing channels to continue our national reach, as well as presenting new items into our lineup like USDA natural complete spectrum vegan CBD gummies.

WB: What markets do you want to permeate?

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JH: Cornbread Hemp is completely positioned to be the marketplace leader from Chicago to Atlanta. As we grow this year, our area is the lower Midwest and upper South that stretches from Chicago to Atlanta, including Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Nashville. To our understanding, we are the only brand to use USDA certified natural CBD items within 300 miles of Chicago. So, the Second City is a high priority for us.

WB: What obstacles do you face?

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JH: Like all CBD brand names, our main challenge is the saturated environment we discover ourselves in that is an outcome of a lack of FDA policies, which keeps significant retailers on the sidelines. This lack of guidelines likewise creates an aggravating mosaic of compliance as specific states step up to fill the void, but not in any unified method.

WB: How do you anticipate removing those obstacles?

JH: The FDA will release policies when it does.

WB: Preconceptions about weed?

JH: All the items at Cornbread Hemp are full spectrum, which indicates they contain a legal dose of not more than 0.3%THC. While that’s not quite, research studies reveal that it plays an extremely important role in the entourage result. Our company believe the included THC assists the CBD products act more effectively in the body. One obstacle we continue to face is that a number of our potential clients are blocked from trying complete spectrum hemp products since of workplace drug testing, even though full spectrum CBD items are perfectly legal. This is simply among the staying stigmas about cannabis that we need to overcome together.

WB: Do you have a preferred food memory from youth?

JH: I must have still been in very first grade when my mother baked a cake for our Catholic parish turkey social in November.

WB: Do you prepare? If so, have you ever prepared your grandparents‘ dishes?

JH: I barbecue steaks like my grandfather taught me: don’t turn a steak until the juice begins to poke out of the top.

WB: Do you have a preferred restaurant (pre-covid-19) where is it? Kind of food?

JH: When visitors come to Louisville, I take them to Hammerheads. Located inside the basement of a home on a domestic block of Germantown, it was a speakeasy throughout Restriction and then an area bar for years till it ended up being Hammerheads about 10 years back.

WB: What is your enthusiasm?

JH: I am a storyteller who is committed to advising all Americans, but especially ladies over 45, that hemp has actually always belonged of American culture, which the 50 years of the Drug War was a distortion of our true relationship with the plant. Until completion of World War II, hemp had been a part of American dominant culture, but the politics surrounding the Vietnam War pushed hemp into the counter-culture. My passion is to help people understand that hemp has actually constantly been with us. With this knowledge, people can understand that utilizing hemp-derived full spectrum CBD items isn’t dangerous or deviant or naughty, however rather as American as cornbread.