September 08, 2021

While the legal hemp industry is relatively young, overproduction and a CBD market saturated with hundreds of brands have made for fierce competition. In addition to satisfying the legal requirements that come with running a hemp business, numerous entrepreneurs in the sector are looking to traceability solutions to differentiate their products and prevent counterfeiting, among other goals.

In this article, Hemp Benchmarks provides an overview of cannabis traceability as it relates to hemp, as well as some examples of how industry stakeholders and businesses from other sectors are utilizing new technologies and protocols to track their products from the field to the consumer.

Why Traceability?
Since the beginning of adult-use cannabis legalization in Colorado and Washington State in 2014, a variety of “seed-to-sale” software tracking systems have been established and adopted by state governments and cannabis businesses. Those systems act as a state’s primary inventory tracking program of record, ensuring cannabis products are cultivated, processed, tested, transported, and sold according to state law.