Do You Know Where Your CBD Comes From? Take A Look

In other words, Charlotte’s Web has over five years’ worth of scientific experience in cultivating hemp from the ground up (quite literally!). Read on for a closer look at what it takes to go from seed to shelf organically, sustainably, and healthfully—right now and into the future.

Yes, to us our plants are the start of everything! Plant breeding is a natural way to improve our plants' health without having to rely on harsh synthetic pesticides or herbicides. We hand-select our plants to be better: healthier, vigorous, pest resistant, and adapted to different growing regions around the globe. We also breed plants for specific phytochemical profiles or for specific products. These advancements happen very gradually over time and improve our products, ensuring we have the best products on the market now and in the future.

There are many things we focus on with these genetics, but one of the things we look at is making sure the plants have a rich, natural phytochemical profile. We also look into agronomic characteristics such as vigor, plant structure, uniformity, and consistency. Further down the supply chain are extraction characteristics that we monitor as well as the final formulations that become products. All of those traits are important to us.  

We work with small family-owned farms—some of the best in the nation in my opinion. As partners, we’re able to come to the table with our amazing genetics and an understanding of growing hemp while our farmers bring many years of knowledge of their land, the soil and water, and an unparalleled wisdom of growing in those specific regions. All areas we grow in have slightly different climates, but are great for growing hemp when you have these expert farmers to work with. Growing in different regions also helps us mitigate the risk of bad weather, making sure we’ll always have the best material from which to make our products.

We’re out in our fields a lot. We’re assessing quality parameters the entire way through the process, from planting to harvest to manufacturing. There’s a lot of scientific effort that goes into every field as far as observing the crops, maintaining them, collecting data, and making sure that they’re performing well and everything’s as it’s supposed to be. Our weed control is still done by hand—it’s a total labor of love.

Our farmers are like one big extended family. They bring to the table all the generational family knowledge they have of their land, and we come to the table with our knowledge of hemp. Together, we’re out there every single day, making sure that these plants are healthy and vigorous. 

Say a company is buying material on the open market or from another country: You have no idea what’s happened to that plant, what its story is, where it came from, or if anything was put into it that you don’t want. We’re literally right there, so we have a very intimate history of where that plant has come from, what it’s been through, and can say with confidence that it’s going to make an amazing, clean product in the end.

Much of that is the actual agronomic testing. Not only do we feel like we need to monitor our plants in the field, which a lot of companies don’t do—but we also test the soil and water our plants are grown in. This is important to us because hemp has been shown to pull heavy metals from the soil, which we wouldn’t want in our final products.

The thing about testing that the average consumer doesn’t know is that a product doesn’t get sent to a lab to be checked for everything—you have to tell the lab what to test for. There are hundreds of molecules and a company needs to know the right panels to test for. So yes, you could only test your product three or four times at the end of the process, but you might not be catching a problem you didn’t know happened at the beginning. In our quality systems, we like to know if we’re seeing any issues right away.

In general, I’ve seen hemp turn farms around, and I’ve seen it devastate farms. When we partner with farmers, we share the risk with them. One of our farmers just bought one of his neighbors’ farms—when we met him, he had been thinking about selling everything. To see him be incredibly successful and be able to pass this on to his family is so rewarding. When we can learn together, share the risk together, and share the reward together, it’s a beautiful thing.

We have to use the lessons we learn every year to grow better crops, and it’s learning these lessons that make us better farmers, cultivators, and breeders. In five to ten years, I’m really excited to see what we’ll be able to produce—I think it’s going to be breathtaking. Not only are we going to have this wealth of knowledge that we’ve gained from farming, but we’re going to have great genetics—it’s going to be the perfect marriage.