Hello, this is Paul Ulanch, Executive Director of the Crop Commercialization Program at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.  The program I lead is coordinating research that leads to increased profitability of crops in North Carolina and South Atlantic region.  The State of North Carolina has many reasons to be in favor of the production and processing of industrial hemp.
1)	Textiles heritage within the state: North Carolina State University has the #1 College of Textiles program in the nation and the state has a manufacturing sector with the tools and labor force to incorporate additional natural fibers, including hemp, into woven and non-woven textile products.  Thought leaders within this community are already laying the groundwork to include hemp fibers into their production and processing systems.
2)	Ag technology industry: the largest ag tech hub in the nation, if not the world, is in North Carolina, developing innovation to solve many problems impacting global agriculture.  The ag tech sector in the state is poised to add value to hemp and improve its performance, from genetics to processing.
3)	Biotech industry: North Carolina is a leading hub for the pharmaceutical and human therapeutics industry in drug development, clinical trials management, and biomanufacturing.  This industry is interested in identifying opportunities for cannabinoid compounds that result in improving human health and NC has the infrastructure to accomplish that.
4)	Specialty crop production expertise and infrastructure: North Carolina and neighboring states have farming communities that are experts at growing specialty crops from tobacco, peanuts, sweet potatoes, cotton, fresh produce vegetables, to Christmas trees.  Of relevance to hemp, tobacco growers utilize production practices similar to what’s optimal for growing hemp, so this crop naturally fits into our farm production systems.  However, even though hemp has historically been grown in the South Atlantic region, there’s been a significant loss of production knowledge and dramatic increase in technology since from a century ago.
Therefore, we would like to impress upon the USDA and other federal agencies that there are many knowledge gaps in the production of this crop, and the thrust of my comment is request funding to support these gaps in areas such as breeding, cropping systems optimization, organic production practices, market development for hemp products to solve problems and add value, and regulations that allow for proper yet less-constrained management of the crop and the resulting products.
Thank you for my allotted time.