Indigenous Product Trade Alliance Joins U.S. Hemp Roundtable Advocacy Partners

The Indigenous Production Trade Alliance and U.S. Hemp Roundtable Advocacy Partnership Aims to Support Hemp Advancement on Native and Tribal Lands

The Indigenous Production Trade Alliance (“IPTA”), an American-Indian owned start-up organization and a subcommittee of the Native Health Matters Foundation, has established an advocacy partnership with U.S. Hemp Roundtable (“USHR”), the nation’s leading hemp business advocacy association working toward enhancing, advancing, and improving economic and business conditions for the hemp industry. The advocacy partnership between the IPTA and the USHR aims to support the advancement of hemp industries on Native and Tribal lands.

“Indigenous people have long suffered the consequences of industrial pollution. Remediation efforts led by government and land grant institutions have proven inadequate and have failed to build the knowledge and expertise necessary for underserved Indigenous farmers to learn how to clean up their lands independently. Studies on biochar applications and hemp have been proven repeatedly to remediate soils, and the Indigenous Production Trade Alliance is leading the way to gather the data needed to cut through the bureaucracy to get these proven methods into the fields restoring Native and Tribal lands.” said Tim Houseberg, Director of the Indigenous Product Trade Alliance.

Tim Houseberg co-founded the Native Health Matters Foundation, an Indigenous community organization, through which he served on an advanced university research team gathering feral hemp left by the Hemp for Victory program from native land in the Oklahoma territory. In January 2019, the Native Health Matters Foundation and the board of trustees at University of Arkansas partnered on the first university backed agronomic hemp study in the United States.

The Indigenous Production Trade Alliance was formed as a subcommittee of the Native Health Matters Foundation in 2020 with the goal of deploying biochar at scale with sustainable hemp crop production for in situ remediation on Brownfields and Superfund sites, effectively raising social equity standards using conservation stewardship incentives in the energy and environment guide to action while reinforcing social infrastructure and creating Indigenous-led reclamation efforts on tribal lands.

“We look forward to working with the IPTA to help expand opportunities for hemp production within the Indigenous communities. The efforts of IPTA strongly align with the initiatives of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable Minority Empowerment Committee (MEC) and furthers our mission to promote economic empowerment for communities of color and minority-owned enterprises. The IPTA will be a strong ally as an advocacy partner and we are glad to have them join us,” said Jonathan Miller, U.S. Hemp Roundtable General Counsel.