A Letter from WAFBA Headquarters

Hello from the WAFBA headquarters here in Fort Collins, Colorado, remote, virtual, quasi-quarantined and in front of a screen like all of you.We were fully geared up heading into the 7th annual NoCo Hemp Expo originally scheduled for March 26-28 up until two weeks ago when the cascading effect of the Coronavirus started to hit the United States. It began for us at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, California on March 2nd when the show got postponed right as we were standing in the hotel lobby as the event was about to begin.

Then SXSW canceled on Friday March 6th after holding out against the coming wave of pressure to call it off. Those two events in particular, along with a growing list of other factors, pushed us into a reorganizational and frenzied weekend followed by a late Monday morning announcement that we were rescheduling NoCo Hemp Expo and moving the date to August 6-8, 2020.

Since that announcement it has been nothing but more announcements of event cancellations, school closures, concert tours and festivals postponed, bars and restaurants shutting down, or only offering pick up and delivery, and life as we knew it, is rapidly changing for our entire society. Oh, and the economy is tanking faster than anything we’ve seen in our recent history. It has been a lot for all of us to believe and digest the last several weeks here in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Where will we go from here? That’s a good question and one that has a variety of answers based on a multitude of variables. Without getting long and drawn out on all the possibilities, we plan on fighting through this with like-minded friends, colleagues and partners, knowing that life and society will go on after the dust settles from this global pandemic.

For the hemp industry, which we’ll focus on here, still in its infancy, barely legal, with infrastructure and supply chain issues, over supply and pricing issues, regulatory and legislative issues, and on and on…it is important that we all still communicate, collaborate, and work towards the common goal of building a legitimate and functioning hemp industry. This legitimate and functioning hemp industry needs to be based on the principles of the amazing benefits this plant provides and that all of the advocates and activists have preached for years.  That hemp can feed us, clothe us, house us, fuel us, heal us and help restore some balance to the planet.

More, now than ever, with the state we’re in today, it is proof that we all need local resources if our world shuts down. No other agricultural crop on earth can provide the amount of beneficial ingredients for food and supplements and high quality eco-friendly materials for industrial applications. For society today, there is no better time than now to look at correcting our deficiencies in relationship with the earth and we can start with this plant we call hemp.

Here at WAFBA, we are for better alternatives, and one of those is choosing optimism over pessimism. We hope you will do the same.

Thanks,
Morris Beegle, Elizzy Knight, Lori Buderus

We Are for Better Alternatives – WAFBA – is the parent company of the NoCo Hemp Expo, Let’s Talk Hemp Media and more. Cofounders Morris Beegle and Elizabeth Knight and CFO Lori Buderus, along with the entire WAFBA team, are excited to continue to inform and unite the hemp community. They’re also working hard on upcoming innovations including a Virtual Conference & Trade Show during Earth Week (beginning April 22); the Let’s Talk Hemp @ NoCo Hemp Expo Spring 2020 Digital Magazine, powered by Honeysuckle Magazine (due out on March 26); a new Let’s Talk Hemp Podcast premiering next week; a redesigned website; e-newsletter and more. In addition, the 7th annual NoCo Hemp Expo has been rescheduled to August 6-8, 2020, at the National Western Complex in Denver, CO.
@morrisbeegle @LetsTalkHemp @NoCoHempExpo @WAFBAofficial