Industrial Hemp Podcast

This week's podcast is a special hempcrete double feature. Hempcrete is a building material made from three ingredients — hemp hurd, lime binder and water — which forms a lightweight cementicious material with insulating properties. First we talk to Monica Medina-McCurdy, executive director of All Together Now Pennsylvania, an organization focused on building resilient self-sufficient regional economies, with hemp playing a leading role. Earlier this year, the organization was awarded a $48,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to promote hemp building materials and textiles. Medina-McCurdy said a portion of those funds will be used to host a hands-on hempcrete workshop May 6-7 in Barto. The two-day workshop will be lead by hempcrete builder Cameron McIntosh of Americharnve, Pennsylvania's leading hempcrete installer. "We really want to attract people who are established already in the building trades because we think that there's a huge need for education," Medina-McCurdy said. Our second guest is Kim Croes, a contractor from Michigan who attended a hempcrete workshop with McIntosh last year and has since completed work on the first hempcrete house in Michigan. Croes has been running a painting business for the past eight years. Her interest in hemp for building comes from her health concerns about toxic materials used in construction. When she heard about hempcrete, she reached out to CBD hemp farmers who had extra hemp for sale. "I needed specific hemp, Croes said. "I needed hemp that was grown for fiber. I needed it to be building-grade quality. And so just getting hemp was not as easy as it initially seemed." Croes said there are efforts underway to bring processing capacity to Michigan. She said she hopes to source local hemp hurds within a few years, but she said there is need for investment in the local processing infrastructure, especially as the automobile industry eyes hemp as a sustainable material for cars. "One little processing facility is not going to do it," Croes said. "It's going to take a buildup of things to get to that point, so someone's got to step up to the plate. It can't it be someone like me. I'm in the building sector and that's where I belong." Learn more: FiberFort https://fiberfort.com/ Register for Hempcrete Workshop, May 6-7 LINK TKTKTKTKTKTKTKT All Together Now Pennsylvania https://alltogethernowpa.org/ Americhanvre https://americhanvre.com/ Farmer Jawn Philly https://www.farmerjawnphilly.com/ News Nuggets Bill Aims to Cut Red Tape for Industrial Hemphttps://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/hemp/bill-aims-to-cut-red-tape-for-industrial-hemp/article_8764d032-c9d5-11ed-91b7-4bd93bf02333.html Hempcrete ASTM C-518 Test Results https://www.hempbuildinginstitute.org/post/americhanvre-ereasy-spray-applied-hempcrete-astm-c-518-test-results Thanks to our Sponsors IND Hemp https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Farm https://www.farmland.fi/

This week's podcast guest is Gary Byrnes, founder and CEO of Tao Climate, an Irish technology company focused on addressing climate change by harnessing the carbon sequestration potential of large scale hemp production. Byrnes said the technology is primarily software-based and "will enable anybody involved in the hemp value chain — from the grower through to the maker to the builder with the hempcrete materials — to measure their inputs and measure their outputs." The company was selected to be part of Google's Startups for Sustainable Development program, which Byrnes said provides "one-on-one access to some of the brightest people at Google, as well as ongoing workshops and training." Tao Climate is working with hemp farmers around the world to develop large scale hemp growing operations and to quantify the carbon pulled from the atmosphere. "We want to make it really easy for people to see the carbon gains around the different activities," Byrnes said. "At the moment, the whole verification, validation and certification around carbon credits is very complex and cumbersome and expensive. So our technology will make it very easy to see the net carbon gains of all of the different activities around the hemp lifecycle. And it will also then make it easy to verify at scale," he said. The company has pilot programs around the world, including one in Kenya, where fiber hemp is being grown and measured for carbon. The hemp hurd — the inner core of the stalk — will be used for hempcrete blocks "to build sustainable housing locally where it's really, really needed," Byrnes said. "But also the bast fiber will go towards founding a female-led entrepreneurial business building hemp fabrics. So, you know, there are so many gains, so many benefits coming out of this," he said. In Ukraine, Tao Climate is "partnering with growers who are coming up to planting their hemp crop now, over the coming weeks, in minefields, having to dodge missiles and bombs on a daily basis," Byrnes said. "The reason they're so committed," he said, "is because they're using the hemp fiber from their crops to produce hempcrete to rebuild Ukraine in real time. They're building hempcrete apartment blocks, and they're housing internally displaced people from Ukraine and also war orphans." Byrnes believes that agriculture in general, and hemp in particular, are humanity's best way forward in addressing excess carbon in the atmosphere. "We have a Utopian vision, Byrnes said, "where industrial hemp is growing all over the world and it's being used to build resilience and sustainable infrastructure and housing." Tao Climate https://www.taoclimate.com Tao Climate LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/taoclimate/ Tao Climate Twitter https://www.twitter.com/taoclimate Hempoffset https://www.hempoffset.com Hempoffset Mindset newsletter https://www.hempoffset.com/subscribe/ Hempoffset Twitter https://twitter.com/hempoffset All Together Now PA's Hempcrete Workshop, May 6-7, 2023 https://alltogethernowpa.org/ Thanks to our Sponsors Americhanvre Hempcrete https://americhanvre.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

On this week's podcast we talk to Laura Sullivan, a fiber artist living and working in Vermont. She works at University of Vermont Extension, growing hemp fiber in the research trials at Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh. Through her work with textiles and hemp, she has come to a revelation that clothing is agriculture — or at least should be agriculture. She points to traditional ways of spinning and weaving. "Almost every culture around the world did this," Sullivan said. "So it's almost universal in that way. And those fibers were all derived from the soil. So in that sense, to me, clothing is originally agriculture and can also be agriculture again in the future." Her work at the Extension fiber trials gives her access to hemp fibers. But because there is no infrastructure in the Vermont to process hemp fiber, she does it all by hand. "I use all antique hand equipment to do my processing, and it's not ideal by any means," she said. From retting and breaking, to sketching and hackling, spinning and scouring, she takes us through the whole process. During the interview she talked about the importance of fibersheds. "A fibershed is a commitment to work within the geography of a land base," Sullivan said. "It's a way to belong to each other and the land." The fibershed movement asks: Where is fiber in our environment, and how can we work with it? Domestically produced textiles are at an all-time low, thanks to the now-replaced North American Free Trade Agreement, she said. "In 1990, 50% of clothes worn in the U.S. were made here," Sullivan said. "And now that figure stands at 2%. So in a very short amount of time, we have completely offshored the entire industry." And at what cost? "The textile industry was the biggest employer of people in rural America, and namely women and those without diplomas. So we've really lost a lot in that, especially in a state like Vermont, where we are largely rural and agrarian. It's just a huge missed opportunity," she said. Sullivan is hopeful that industrial hemp can revitalize the domestic textile industry. Laura Sullivan's Pipe Dream Hempworks https://pipedreamhempworks.com/ Northern New England Fibershed https://nnefibershed.com/ UVM Extension https://www.uvm.edu/extension New Nuggets WV House passes Industrial Hemp Development Act https://www.lootpress.com/house-passes-industrial-hemp-development-act/ Clouds darken over CBD as more states consider banning delta-8 https://hemptoday.net/dark-clouds-grow-over-cbd-as-more-states-consider-banning-delta-8/ Should Fashion Industry Switch To Sustainability To Fight Climate Change? https://www.thequint.com/news/environment/should-fashion-industry-switch-to-sustainability-to-fight-climate-change Thanks to our Sponsors! Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Sponsor Spotlight on FARM: a platform for investing in farmland regeneration https://www.farmland.fi/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week on the podcast we talk to the board of directors of the newly revamped Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council. Erica Stark, Lori Daytner, Cynthia Petrone-Hudock, Cameron McIntosh and Drew Oberholtzer are active business leaders and advocates for industrial hemp in Pennsylvania. The council received $150,000 in grant money from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture for Project Invest in PA Hemp, which aims to attract investment in the state's hemp sector. Petrone-Hudock, co-owner of Hemp-Alternative in Chester County, said the grant seeks to increase customer awareness of agricultural products. "We're going to shift our message away from investing in growing hemp, because we've sort of proven in the state that that can get done," she said, "to investing in sustainable product development through the use of hemp." Oberholtzer, co-founder of Coexist Build, a design firm with a line of hempcrete construction products, said the goal of the project is to develop and create a communication strategy that brings "investment into Pennsylvania for Pennsylvania hemp companies, creating partnerships with public and private entities." Daytner, vice president of program development at Don Services, the New Castle company that created the Project PA Hemp Home, said the scope of the new project involves education and outreach. "But," she said, "there's also the financial and commercial side of it where investors may say, 'Oh yeah, this piques my interest,' but investors want numbers. They want an understanding of what's behind the opportunities that are here." Petrone-Hudock said "build demand, build demand, build demand" is the key. From a grain perspective, she said, "we need food ingredient suppliers, we need chefs, we need restaurant owners, we need local food networks to be in it, really embracing hemp. We need fabric dependent businesses to start looking at hemp as an alternative. "We need builders and designers and architects, and we need homeowners to say, 'I want to live in an eco-friendly house that's going to be healthy for me.' Like the whole key here is what's healthy. And if you embed hemp in your lifestyle, you can't go wrong. And so I think it is sort of changing the message and the target, and continuing to build this demand at the consumer level." McIntosh, owner of hempcrete construction company Americhanvre, is confident in the project and points to the Ag Department's support as a major factor in its success. "Just the fact that our Department of Agriculture is putting up this kind of money specifically for promotion of hemp products grown, manufactured and produced in Pennsylvania — that's success right there," he said. Stark, PAHIC chair and executive director of the National Hemp Association, said the council is "the perfect vehicle to make sure that the positive impacts of all of the materials that are created through this grant continue to be implemented and used indefinitely, because our our mission and our goal is to have a robust and vital hemp industry here in PA." Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council https://www.pahic.org/ Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's Hemp Program https://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plants_Land_Water/hemp/Pages/default.aspx News Nuggets Farmers March on Washington to Demand Climate Legislation https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farmers-march-on-washington-to-demand-climate-legislation/article_b81d183e-bda9-11ed-9a2e-9f76ff7759af.html Pingree Introduces Bipartisan Bill to End Discriminatory Hemp Policy https://pingree.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4507 Why India is losing trillion-dollar hemp economy https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/why-india-is-losing-trillion-dollar-hemp-economy/ Thanks to our Sponsors! King's Agriseeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

8000 Kicks is a Portuguese hemp shoe company founded by Bernardo Carreira and his grandmother Otilia. This week on the hemp podcast we talk to Carreira about the company and why he wanted to make shoes from hemp. "Cannabis fiber happens to be one of the most sustainable, durable natural fibers in the world," he said. "And fashion is one of the biggest polluters in the world, so it seems like you have a pretty amazing, clear solution for a very big problem." Today's show offers a unique look at the global hemp supply chain and a reminder that China is still the dominant player in hemp for textiles. "The first hemp we were buying was from France. And then we were buying from Romania," Carriera said. "But then we realized that the best hemp in the world was in China." China is far ahead of the rest of the world on hemp textiles, he said, because the Chinese never banned hemp the way the rest of the world did in the 20th Century. While the world lost 80 years of hemp production and development, China never skipped a beat. Carreira said he is hopeful that one day he will be able to source his raw materials from European or American producers, thereby cutting down on manufacturing time and shipping cost. Carreira's grandmother Otilia, co-founder of the company, has a lifetime of experience working in the textile industry in Portugal, but Carreira said she was not at all on board with his original idea of making shoes from hemp because of the marijuana stigma around hemp. But examining hemp fabric first hand she saw that hemp had nothing to do with drugs and was a very interesting material, full of possibilities, Carreira said. 8000 Kicks makes several lines of men's and women's shoes and boots, as well as various accessories like backpacks, hats, wallets and socks. Carreira has offered to giveaway a pair of hemp boots to one lucky listener of the podcast. Get the details by listening to the whole show at lancasterfarming.com or by phone at 857-385-7946 or wherever you get your podcasts. 8000Kicks https://www.8000kicks.com/ 8000 Kicks Chelsea Boot Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dopekicks/8000kicks-the-waterproof-vegan-boots Industrial Hemp Podcast Instagram Page https://www.instagram.com/industrialhemppodcast/ News Nuggets NoCo Hemp Expohttps://www.nocohempexpo.com/ March 8 is National Bio-based Products Dayhttps://www.biopreferred.gov/BioPreferred/faces/pages/NBPD.xhtml USDA's Value-Added Producer grant Programhttps://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/business-programs/value-added-producer-grants More Grant's from USDA's Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP)https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/grants/lamp Thanks to Our Sponsors: Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ INDHEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week on the hemp podcast, we talk to Herb Grove, hemp farmer and bison rancher from Centre County, Pennsylvania. Grove's family has been farming the land around Brush Mountain for generations, but Grove didn't get into raising bison until 2011. "We started out with two cows, two yearlings and two calves," Grove said. "That was our first six animals and we had no clue what we were getting into." After getting into it without any information whatsoever, Grove said, he joined the EBA — the Eastern Bison Association, and started networking with a lot of local bison farmers. He "fell in love with the people and what the purpose was, and from that point on it's just kind of history," he said. Grove now has one the larger bison herds east of the Mississippi with over 220 head, he said. Grove got his start growing hemp in 2019 when he contracted with Groff North America in Red Lion, York County, to grow about 150 acres of fiber hemp. He also tried his hand at growing hemp for grain, which he took to Susquehanna Mills in Muncy to press for oil. "At that point we had the byproduct of the seeds after the oil's out of it, and what better opportunity to do then start feeding it to your animals," he said. The bison didn't like the seed cake on it's own, so Grove grinds it up and puts in the ration. He teamed up with Penn State to do feeding trials to study the effects of hemp on the herd. "Unfortunately, because it's not legal to sell a finished animal for protein being fed on hemp, we can continue to feed hemp up until the last three months. And then we have to pull the hemp out of the feed rations at this point and supplement a different protein," Grove said. The first time he took hemp-fed animals to his local processor, "the state got wind of it, you know, they showed up, locked their carcass up in the cooler." Grove said the differences in the hemp-fed bison are noticeable. Their coats look shinier, the animals look healthier. And he said he can even tell the difference in the taste of the meat. Grove is now working with the Hemp Fed Coalition to change the policies around using hemp as a livestock feed. More information on Brush Mountain Bison https://www.facebook.com/brushmountainbison Buck Wild Bison https://buckwildbison.com/ Hemp Feed Coalition https://hempfeedcoalition.org/ Eastern Bison Association https://www.ebabison.org/ Susquehanna Millshttps://susquehannamills.com/ Healthy Oil Seeds https://healthyoilseeds.com/ News Nuggets Hempitecture opens first industrial hemp manufacturing plant in U.S. https://www.kivitv.com/ksaw/hempitecture-opens-first-industrial-hemp-manufacturing-plant-in-u-s Hemp growers say industry 'stymied' in Nebraska https://www.ketv.com/amp/article/nebraska-hemp-growers-say-industry-stymied/43016425 Zimbabwe strikes hemp from drugs list, sets THC limit at 1.0% https://hemptoday.net/zimbabwe-strikes-hemp-from-drugs-list-sets-thc-limit-at-1-0/ In Search for Sustainable Materials, Developers Turn to Hemp https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/business/hemp-construction-buildings.html Illinois Hemp Growers Association https://www.illinoishga.com/ Thanks to our Sponsors National Hemp Association https://nationalhempassociation.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week on the Lancaster Farming Hemp Podcast, we talk with James Forbes and Rich Selby from Tiber Fiber, a hemp processor near St. Louis with one facility in Fenton, Missouri, and another just across the Mississippi River in Sauget, Illinois. "We have a unique symbiotic relationship with our farmers in which we extend grower contracts and agreements along with feedstock and agronomy support to ensure that our farmers here in the Midwest are successful in growing the crop that we need to feed our hemp fiber processing plant," said Forbes, co-founder and chief operations officer at Tiger Fiber. Selby is a co-founder of the company, the de facto chief financial officer, and he manages the agronomy program with Forbes. The partners met at the University of Missouri and founded Tiger Fiber with Jerred Killoren in 2018. In this episode, Selby and Forbes tell the story of the company, describe the processing facilities, explain how they contract with farmers, and share how they handle the challenge of building a company in a new industry. Selby said one of the options their farmers can choose is price per pound. He said they're contracting with a farm in Illinois that knocked it out of the park. "They showed me and all the rest of us how to farm it," he said. "And they did 50 acres and they chose the price per pound option. And they made more money than they could make with corn and soybeans." Tiger Fiber https://tigerfiberhemp.com/ Tiger Fiber on the Socials LI: tiger-fiber-hemp-company FB: tigerfiberhemp IG: @tigerfiber Thanks to our sponsors: Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week on the hemp podcast we talk to Seth Boone, vice president of business development at PanXchange, a Colorado-based market structures solutions company and a leading benchmark price provider and analyst in the hemp industry. PanXchange also facilitates a trade platform, which Boone sees becoming "a central marketplace for the main products in hemp — fiber and grain, as well as cannabinoids," he said. Boone is the lead author of an in-depth report titled US Industrial Hemp Fiber: Processor Capacity and Margins, which provides an overview of the domestic market, including supply and demand figures, anticipated trends, and a competitive landscape with price comparisons of incumbent materials. Published in December 2022, the report showcases the significant growth of hemp fiber industry in the few short years since the 2018 Farm Bill brought hemp back into the fold of industrial crops. Boone said there is tremendous opportunity on fiber side, which "lead us into doing that report, as well as just what we are seeing emerging in the U.S. in the fiber industry," he said. "It seems like there's so many people really waiting on green lights to come in and tackle this industry." What are those green lights? "Everyone's waiting on a supply chain to be built, Boone said. "And this year would be the first year that we had significant decortication capacity." Processing capacity in the U.S. has been scant, with only a handful of facilities in operation. "Maybe five processors that have been working on proof of concept," he said, but this year those five processors are ready for scale production and have plans to plant the acreage necessary. And right at their heels are another "twenty or so processors that are scaling into that right now and over the next five years," he said. But what's missing, he said, are second and third tier processing levels, like spinning, roving, carding and cottonization, a process that adapts hemp fibers so they can be blended with cotton and wool fibers. Boone sees 2023 as a pivotal time for the industry as processing capacity starts to scale. "This will be the first year that there's really an opportunity to have supply to work with in the U.S.," he said. For Boone, that's one of the reasons PanXchange published the report in the first place: "Honestly, we really kind of need to show them that the green light is there," said Boone. PanXchange https://panxchange.com/ US Industrial Hemp Fiber: Processor Capacity and Margins The following link will give you 5% off purchase price simply for being a loyal listener to our podcast: https://panxchange.com/purchase-us-industrial-hemp-fiber-processor-capacity-and-margins-lancaster/ News Nuggets or Calendar Items, You Decide Wisconsin Cannabis Industry and Policy Summit February 15, 2023 https://www.indigenouscannabis.org/wisconsin-cannabis-summit Virtual 2023 Vermont Industrial Hemp Conference February 23, 2023 https://www.uvm.edu/sites/default/files/Northwest-Crops-and-Soils-Program/2023%20Events/Industrial%20Hemp%20Conf/2023_HempConf_Brochure.pdf Illinois Department of Ag Hemp Summit March 15, 2023 Save the date. Fingers crossed, more info to come. Illinois Dept of Ag https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/agr/Plants/Pages/Industrial-Hemp.aspx Send the Illinois Department of Agriculture an email asking about the event. Seriously it's like 5 weeks away and there's absolutely no information online about it. And if no one shows up, they'll scratch their government heads as to why it was so poorly attended. Sorry, Illinois, I don't mean to be so passive aggressive towards your Department of Ag. It's just that there are actual and concrete things they can do as a department to show they support the industry and are taking hemp seriously, one of which is promoting their own event. https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/agr/About/Pages/ContactUs.aspx For More information about growing hemp in the Land of Lincoln, contact: Illinois Hemp Growers Association https://www.illinoishga.com/ Virtual Nebraska Hemp Conference and Trade ShowSorry, I forgot to mention this one on the show, but it's coming up soon too. March 25-26, 2023 https://www.bionebraska.org/nebraska-hemp-conference-and-trade-show/ Noco Hemp Expo March 29-21, 2023 Colorado Springs, CO https://www.nocohempexpo.com/ Thanks to our sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ King's Agriseeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/

In the second episode of season three we talk with Pennsylvania state Sen. Tim Kearney of Delaware County, who recently introduced a bill that would rewrite Pennsylvania's definition of hemp so it matches the federal definition and would remove hemp from the state's list of controlled substances. The 2018 Farm Bill removed industrial hemp from the federal list of controlled substances, but industrial hemp is still considered a controlled substance at the state level in Pennsylvania, creating a potentially precarious legal situation for hemp growers in the state. "That's important," Kearney said, "because we don't want anybody to fear prosecution in interactions with the police over a legal product." "Hemp entrepreneurs should not have to fear whether they're going to get tangled up in legal proceedings over their farms or their businesses," he said. PA Senate Memorandum: Removing Industrial Hemp from PA's Schedule of Controlled Substances https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?chamber=S&SPick=20230&cosponId=39116 How to contact your state representatives in Pennsylvania https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/index.cfm News Nuggets USDA Issues First National Hemp Report Announcement https://www.ams.usda.gov/press-release/usda-issues-first-national-hemp-report USDA's First National Hemp Report https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvhemp.pdf Shapiro Administration Awards $200,000 to Grow Hemp Industry; Invites Proposals for $392,000 in Grants https://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Agriculture_details.aspx?newsid=1298 FDA Concludes that Existing Regulatory Frameworks for Foods and Supplements are Not Appropriate for Cannabidiol, Will Work with Congress on a New Way Forward https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-concludes-existing-regulatory-frameworks-foods-and-supplements-are-not-appropriate-cannabidiol?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery Mariposa Investment Opportunity https://wefunder.com/mariposa.technology.inc/ Special Thanks to our Sponsors: Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This is the first episode of season three of the Industrial Hemp Podcast, in which we zoom out a bit and talk about the basics: what industrial hemp is, how it's used, and why it's important. In this episode you will hear podcast host Eric Hurlock explain from his unique perspective the following things and more: • What hemp is • How it differs from marijuana • The history of hemp • The importance of hemp in ancient times • How cannabis prohibition came about • The legal definition of hemp • The parts of the cannabis plant • Various uses of the plant, specifically the fiber, hurd and grain • Nutritional value of hemp • How hemp can help mitigate climate change • How much carbon hemp can sequester • Industry challenges • Much, much more More information about topics covered in this episode: Greg Wilson, HempWood Bruce Dietzen, Renew Hemp Sports Car IND HEMP in Montana Nutritional Value of Hemp History of Hemp Thanks to our sponsor: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

Here's part two of our 2022 Year in Review, in which we listen back to episodes 26 through 49.

On part one of our year in review, we listen back to the first 25 hemp podcast episodes of 2022.

This week on the Hemp Podcast, we check back in with hempcrete builder Cameron McIntosh, who has had a busy year building projects around the country, hosting workshops, and lecturing for universities and organizations like the American Institute of Architects. He gives an overview of the building projects he completed this year, including several in Pennsylvania and a few on the West Coast. Earlier in this year, hempcrete construction was added to the International Residential Code index, which he says is a great first step toward gaining approval for hempcrete for commercial building. "It's a good step in that direction, saying that we've got good, prescriptive guidance on how to do this properly," he said. His company, Americhanvre Cast-Hemp, imports hemp hurd from France because the domestic market is not fully developed, but McInstosh said American producers are getting close. His company is the North American distributor of the Ereasy Spay Applied Hempcrete System. McIntosh also addresses concern brought up by a previous podcast guest who had an issue with the lack of R-value testing on hempcrete. Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ Video: Cameron Explains the Ereasy Spray Applied Hempcrete System https://www.lancasterfarming.com/community/videos/cameron-mcintosh-explains-the-ereasy-spray-applied-hempcrete-system/video_e8114c8c-03d8-11eb-821e-e7627e6e69c7.html News Nuggets Sen. Hinchey's bill to expand use of industrial hemp signed into law https://westchester.news12.com/sen-hincheys-bill-to-expand-use-of-industrial-hemp-signed-into-law Hemp: Growing A Made-In-USA Industry https://www.textileworld.com/textile-world/features/2022/12/hemp-growing-a-made-in-usa-industry/ Texas researchers say they'll have new hemp varieties ready by 2024 https://hemptoday.net/texas-researchers-say-theyll-have-new-hemp-varieties-ready-by-2024/ Thanks to our Sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Venture https://www.mpactfulventures.org/

Last week, in Bangkok, Thailand, a delegation from the American hemp industry took part in the 2022 Asia International Hemp Expo. On this special edition of the podcast, we hear from three members of that delegation about why they went, what was accomplished, and what the overall experience was like. We talk to Morris Beegle, the founder of the NoCo Hemp Expo; Gregg Gnecco, marketing director at IND HEMP in Montana; and Mandi Kerri, CEO of the Global Hemp Association.

On this week's hemp podcast, we talk to Sarah Stephens, CEO of Midwest Hemp Technology, a hemp processing company in Augusta, Kansas, that contracts local farmers to grow hemp grain and fiber to produce hemp seed food and oil, as well as long-strand fiber. Stephens' journey into hemp started with CBD, but she realized that the potential for long-term growth was on the fiber and grain side, especially in Kansas with it's ample farmland and existing agriculture infrastructure. "I grew for CBD the first two seasons, like 95% of all licenses in Kansas were designated for," she said. "And I was going to some of these events and farmers were talking about walking their fields and pulling out males and drip tape. And it just did not equate to what I see as traditional production farming." While overall fiber and grain acreage in the Sunflower State is still relatively low, there is increasing interest among farmers. Midwest Hemp Technology is one of several hemp processors in Kansas, including South Bend Industrial Hemp and Prairie Band Ag. Stephens said the Kansas Department of Agriculture is supportive of the hemp program and she gets the sense that the state wants it to succeed, but the department's hands are sometimes tied when it comes to regulations. "But I see them advocating for rural changes and easing of restrictions and more commonsense approaches," she said. Midwest Hemp Technology https://www.midwesthemptech.com/ "Harvest & Hemp on the Horizon" 4th Annual Kansas Hemp Conference Q4 Webinar Register here: https://secure.touchnet.com/C21797_ustores/web/store_cat.jsp?STOREID=34&CATID=519&SINGLESTORE=true News Nuggets UN report on hemp marks path to an $18 billion global industry https://hemptoday.net/un-report-on-hemp-marks-path-to-an-18-billion-global-industry/ UN Report on Hemp https://unctad.org/webflyer/commodities-glance-special-issue-industrial-hemp Update: SD Hemp Industry Is On The Grow https://www.yankton.net/community/article_6630eaf8-751c-11ed-923e-8b7e55627eb9.html Newly formed global hemp body names Australian on inaugural board https://www.cannabiz.com.au/newly-formed-global-hemp-body-names-australian-to-inaugural-board/ Thanks to our Sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ New Holland Ag https://agriculture.newholland.com/nar/en-us

On this week's hemp podcast, we talk to Morgan Tweet, executive director of the Hemp Feed Coalition, who recently participated in a two-day hemp feed workshop co-hosted by the coalition, Oregon State University and the Hemp Innovation Center. There was a strong showing of university researchers at the event, along with representatives of FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine and the Association of American Feed Control Officials. "We felt like the best way to have a productive dialog between research, regulators and industry," Tweet said, "was to bring everyone into one room to review what current research there was, have the discussion about what was needed, and then identify steps forward." Hemp grain was given GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status for human consumption by the FDA many years ago, but it is not federally legal to feed hemp grain to livestock. Some states, like Montana, have written laws to allow hemp grain to be used in feed for companion animals, but the process to gain widespread approval for hemp as a livestock feed for production animals involves time-consuming and expensive testing, Tweet said. Hemp grain has an attractive nutritional profile — high in protein and amino acids — and is often referred to as a superfood, but without opening up the livestock feed markets, hemp grain producers have nowhere to go with their seed cake byproducts after crushing the grain for oil, hampering the growth of the industry. Tweet said there is reason to be optimistic and pointed to Pennsylvania, where Wenger Feeds was given special permission to market its Chiques Creek Hemp-Fed Eggs within the borders of the state. Hemp Feed Coalition https://hempfeedcoalition.org/ Kansas State Study on Hemp Feed https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/hemp/short-term-feeding-of-industrial-hemp-with-a-high-cannabidiolic-acid-cbda-content-increases-lying/pdf_4a0c6adc-70df-11ed-855c-a3c50f8c0b4c.html News Nuggets Hemp Can Be Crucial To Control Climate Change And It's Destined To Be Wildly Profitable, Win-Win? https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hemp-crucial-control-climate-change-191728600.html Could hemp be a key tool in fight against climate change? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/24/could-hemp-be-a-key-tool-in-fight-against-climate-change Home Office hampering potential of Scotland's hemp farmers https://www.thenational.scot/news/23152035.home-office-hampering-potential-scotlands-hemp-farmers/ CBD for Arthritis in Seniors https://www.greenstate.com/explained/cbd-for-arthritis-in-seniors/ Hemp Innovations Foundation Funds Hemp Recycles Research Study https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/hemp-innovations-foundation-awards-grant-hemp-recycles-research-project/ Where Does All the Cardboard Come From? I Had to Know. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/magazine/cardboard-international-paper.html Hempitecture awarded $500,000 in Grow-NY Food and Agriculture Competition https://www.localsyr.com/news/local-news/grow-ny-announces-winners-from-global-competition/ Thanks to our Sponsor IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

"During the Civil War, there was a battle in Lexington, Missouri. It was occurring around the Masonic College, right on the Missouri River. Soldiers found some hemp bales that were about to be shipped downstream. They used these hemp bales as a movable breastwork and pushed them up the hill to win the battle that became known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales." That's just one of the interesting tales told by hemp historian John Dvorak on this week's hemp podcast. Dvorak has been researching the history of hemp for over thirty years and has archived his work at Hempology.org, where you can find a trove of historical documents and images from American and world history. Dvorak uses his research to educate and advocate for sensible hemp and cannabis reform. He gives talks at universities around the country, sharing what he calls his "Cannabis Curriculum" with students, encouraging them to dig deeper into the history of the hemp plant. "I've been all around all sorts of different colleges talking to the students, letting them know that no matter what class they're taking, they can apply it to cannabis, hemp, marijuana or the drug war," he said. Dvorak said his research contradicts the standard narrative of why hemp was prohibited in the 1930s, that it wasn't a diabolical conspiracy by industry tycoons who saw hemp as a threat to their fortunes. "Hemp was not a threat to anybody in the 1930s. It was an afterthought. So that was one of the biggest surprises that I found doing my research is that it just wasn't a conspiracy," he said. Dvorak got his start researching hemp in the 1990s and credits a handful of hemp pioneers with laying the groundwork for the modern hemp industry, folks like Jack Herer, Don Wirtshafter, and Eric Steenstra. John Dvorak's Hempology http://hempology.org/ Hemp Hemp Hooray! Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJagE1r4EpE Ellora Caves https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/243/ The Battle of the Hemp Bales https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/first-battle-lexington-or-battle-hemp-bales Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Ropewalk https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=139 A Day in the Ropewalk at Mystic Seaport https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LU_8-ILJRM News Nuggets Evacuation orders lifted after hemp plant fire in Grass Valley https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/hemp-plant-fire-in-grass-valley-oregon-burns-5-prompts-evacuations/ Cows That Ate Hemp Produced Milk With THC and CBD https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/cows-that-ate-hemp-produced-milk-with-thc-and-cbd-180981131/ Food sector is chance for Colorado hemp to rebound, U.S. group says https://hemptoday.net/food-sector-is-chance-for-colorado-hemp-to-rebound-u-s-group-says/ Thanks to our Sponsors! Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week's Hemp Podcast is a recap of the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit that took place at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pa., November 14 -15. We hear opening remarks from Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding, highlights from the keynote speech by Ken Elliott from IND HEMP, as well as selected audio from a fiber and grain panel discussion and a cannabinoid panel discussion. Speakers include: Dr. Raj Kasula from Wenger Feeds, David Cook from Tuscarora Mills, Cameron McIntosh from Americhanvre Cast-Hemp, Lori Daytner from DON Services, Dr. Allison Justice from The Hemp Mine, Erica Stark from the National Hemp Association, Tom Trite from PA Options for Wellness, Steve Groff from Cedar Meadow Farms, and Justin DeAngelis from Rhino BioTech Thanks to our Sponsor: IND HEMP

Since the the 2014 Farm Bill established the legal framework for industrial hemp to return to the farm fields of the America, the commonwealth of Kentucky has been on the forefront. For much of that time, Ag Commission Ryan Quarles has led the department in charge of the hemp program. Quarles was elected ag commissioner in 2016 and is currently serving his second and final term. He said Kentucky was an early leader on hemp, "because we were the hemp state historically." "A lot of farm families have hemp backgrounds," he said. "You don't have to look very far to see the fingerprints of what used to be a big cash crop." Quarles is a ninth-generation Kentuckian and grew up on the farm where his family grew hemp in the 1940s to support the wart effort. Having a history of hemp cultivation was helpful, but there were still challenges in bringing the crop back, he said. "I think the No. 1 issue with hemp in the early days was just the education of what hemp is and what hemp is not," he said. "And so for a lot of us in the agriculture sphere, we knew that it was an industrial crop primarily used for its fiber and grain production." Something else that set Kentucky apart was how the state program was structured. "We knew if we're going to bring this crop back from the dead, we needed to have a legal framework that was user friendly, that involved law enforcement, but also allowed people who want to grow it or process it an opportunity to take that risk," he said. That legal framework set an example for other states to follow. "We've been replicated to most across the country because I think we were really the first state, in my opinion, that really got a legal framework that passed through our General Assembly, that our agriculture community adopted," Quarles said. As the industry navigates the post-CBD craze market, Quarles would like to see some definitive language from the Food and Drug Administration. "The No. 1 impediment of hemp in America is the FDA. The FDA needs to do their job and give us guidelines on what their view is on the potential regulatory aspects of CBD and other cannabinoids," he said. He said interest in fiber and grain production is growing in Kentucky, and he referred to two companies that are making great strides: HempWood and EcoFiber. How does he feel about a possible exemption to lift the burdensome regulations from fiber and grain growers? Listen and find out. Kentucky's Hemp Program https://www.kyagr.com/marketing/hemp-pilot.html Hemp Policy Item Tabled Amid Concerns at Meeting of U.S. Ag Regulators https://cannabiswire.com/2022/09/29/hemp-policy-item-tabled-amid-concerns-at-meeting-of-u-s-ag-regulators/ News Nuggets Who's Driving Climate Change? New Data Catalogs 72,000 Polluters and Counting https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/climate/climate-change-emissions-satellites.html Heartland Completes First Industrial Hemp Fiber LCA For Carbon Negative Plastic Additives https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/599999283/heartland-completes-first-industrial-hemp-fiber-lca-for-carbon-negative-plastic-additives National Industrial Hemp Council Urges FDA to Approve Hemp Seed for Animal Feed https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/national-industrial-hemp-council-writes-letter-fda-urging-approval-hemp-seed-animal-feed/ Go to the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit, Nov. 14-15 https://pahempsummit.com/ Thanks to our Sponsors: Americhanvre Cast Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

Our guest on the podcast this week is Dr. Heather Grab, senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Integrative Plant Science, where she focuses on hemp cultivation and processing. On Nov. 15, Grab will be participating in a free online event, The National Hemp Industry Needs Workshop, co-hosted by The Global Hemp Innovation Center at Oregon State University and USDA. The workshop will cover all aspects of hemp from genetics, sustainable ag practices, harvesting and processing to manufacturing, supply chains, economics, regulations, compliance testing and more with interactive sessions led by experts in the hemp space (many of whom will be familiar to regular listeners of this podcast). The workshop is free but you must register at hempindustryresearchneeds.org by Nov. 11. The goal of the workshop is to bring together many voices "to contribute to the synthesis of knowledge and to understand what the needs are and how we can work together as public institutions with private partners in order to build our knowledge and put that to use," Grab said. Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Science's hemp program has been a leading source of research in hemp genetics, pest and diseases, supply chain development and processing. Contact Dr. Heather Grab Cornell University profile page: https://cals.cornell.edu/heather-grab email: [email protected] insta: @heather.grab LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-grab/ Cornell's Hemp Program https://hemp.cals.cornell.edu/ Hemp Industry Research Needs Workshop https://hempindustryresearchneeds.org/ Dr. Grab's article about Retting for Lancaster Farming newspaper, April 25, 2025 https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/retting-hemp-fiber-from-the-stalk/article_d40a884d-83f4-53c8-a196-81b8ef346611.html News Nuggets Company commits $17.5 million to make Virginia hemp manufacturing center https://www.wavy.com/news/virginia/company-commits-17-5-million-to-make-virginia-hemp-manufacturing-center/ Hemp grain and fiber processing facility opening in Augusta, KS https://www.kwch.com/2022/11/02/hemp-grain-fiber-processing-facility-opens-augusta/ Pennsylvania Hemp Summit, November 14-15 https://pahempsummit.com/ Thanks to our Sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ King's AgriSeeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/

This week on the hemp podcast, we talk to Shane Pritchard and Bill Brill from Hemp Processing Partners, a Colorado-based company focused on providing processing solutions for fiber, grain and floral hemp production around the world. Pritchard, chief engineer and co-founder of Hemp Processing Partners, said he sees how passionate people are about farming and genetics on one hand, and how other people are focused on what the hemp plant can be used for. "But," he said, "there's kind of a void in the equipment space there in the middle to get you from the great farming practices to the great uses of hemp." Hemp Processing Partners, he said, was created to fill that void and provide industrial knowledge. The company started out providing processing solutions for the floral side of the industry, but has expanded into fiber and grain processing. A vice president of business development at HPP, Brill said he sees the momentum building and soon the hemp industry will reach critical mass. "People around the world, entities around the world, governments around the world — both domestically and internationally — are inquiring about large scale solutions," he said. "Lately, there's been so much smoke, we know fire's coming." In this interview we talk about the company's goals and values, how it got started and where it's headed. The conversation also veers into interesting territory of ESG investing, carbon sequestration, changing the stigma around industrial hemp and much more. After the interview with Hemp Processing Partners, we check in with Deputy Ag Secretary Fred Strathmeyer from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to hear what's in store this year at the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit in Harrisburg Nov. 14-15. Hemp Processing Partnershttps://hempprocessingpartners.com/ Bill Brill's LinkedIn Page https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-brill-24143314/ Hemp Industry Research Needs Work Shop https://hempindustryresearchneeds.org/ Register for the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit https://pahempsummit.com/register Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's Hemp Programhttps://www.agriculture.pa.gov/Plants_Land_Water/hemp/Pages/default.aspx Thanks to our Sponsors! New Holland Agriculturehttps://agriculture.newholland.com/nar/en-us IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

On this week's hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Kevin Schultz, co-founder and president of 357 Hemp Logistics, a company that specializes in transportation and supply chain management solutions for companies in the hemp industry. According to Schultz, there's a whole lot more to logistics and supply chain management than most people realize. "Logistics is sometimes a thankless job, you know, because everyone assumes it should go perfect," Schultz said. "And when it does, a lot of times behind the scenes, there was a lot going on to make that go smooth." He compared logistics to a referee in sports. "If you don't know the ref is there, they probably did a pretty good job. But if all you're talking about is the referee the next day, they probably blew a call." Since the founding of the company in 2019, one of the challenges with the logistics of shipping hemp, Schultz said, has been unreliable paperwork and a lack of transparency. Hemp companies are required to provide certificates of analysis, commonly called COAs, when shipping hemp products. "We do a lot of work trying to make sure that the COAs we're getting are not tampered with," Schultz said. "There's a lot of COAs I feel that when we see them have been edited, so we have to verify with the labs that that product is what the lab says it is." Schultz said he has seen fewer of these doctored certificates as the industry has matured, but it still happens. A solution to this problem, he said, would be a tracking and tracing system similar to the cannabis industry with full seed-to-sale transparency. "And boy, that would make our life so much easier," he said. 357 Hemp Logistics was also recently named as a partner in a USDA-funded Climate Smart Commodities project, spearheaded by Iconoclast Industries, that will receive a $15 million grant to provide open-access industrial fiber and grain supply chain data in a digital marketplace. 357 Hemp Logistics https://357company.com/ News Nuggets Hemp Feed Workshop, October 26-27 https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/hempfeedworkshop/registration/ Rodale Institute Celebrates 75th Anniversary https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/news/rodale-institute-celebrates-75-years-of-organic-education-and-research/article_7404139c-442c-11ed-8c63-f3df53c016df.html Register for the PA Hemp Summithttps://pahempsummit.com/register Apply for a Hemp Summit Scholarship https://pasa.tfaforms.net/1173 Thanks to our generous sponsors Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

Image if you had a device to scan your hemp to determine not only the sex of your plants, but CBD and THC content too. If this sounds like a game changer to you, then be prepared for the game to change. New Orleans-based Mariposa Technology's PAMAP does just that. It will not only sex your plants, but can give you accurate information on your cannabinoid levels, as well as other useful data for your growing operation. PAMAP is short for "predictive analytical modeling application for plants" and was designed by Mariposa Technology to help with some of the common pain points in floral hemp production: sexing and testing. This week on the Hemp Podcast, we talk to Mariposa Technology co-founder and CEO John Roberts and COO Michael Dalle Molle, who explain the new technology. PAMAP is a handheld device that uses an agilent resolve spectrometer that shoots a laser to excite the molecules in a hemp plant, creating a molecular fingerprint. "And when you have that structural knowledge of the living plant," Roberts said, "then you can make all types of determinations about its health and other characteristics and chemical makeup." The device has implications for other ag sectors beyond the cannabis plant, but hemp was a logical place for the company to start. "We really wanted to focus on hemp because we see the pain points in the hemp industry as being the most significant and, to be quite honest, the most easily fixed by our device," Dalle Molle said. Mariposa Technology https://mariposatechnology.com/ Molecules article referenced in interview: Non-Invasive and Confirmatory Differentiation of Hermaphrodite from Both Male and Female Cannabis Plants Using a Hand-Held Raman Spectrometer https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/15/4978 News Nuggets Blue-Ribbon Day for Hemp at Unionville Fair https://www.lancasterfarming.com/country-life/fairs-and-shows/blue-ribbon-day-for-hemp-at-unionville-fair/article_17bfc954-0b1b-54f4-957e-a83f6fc9e4d8.html Hemp-Alternative https://hemp-alternative.com/ Man claims Lexington store sold him delta-8 instead of CBD causing him to crash into bus https://www.wkyt.com/2022/10/05/man-claims-lexington-store-sold-him-delta-8-instead-cbd-causing-him-crash-into-bus/ Investigators believe they know cause of metro-east industrial park fire, chief sayshttps://www.bnd.com/news/local/article266422626.html Pennsylvania Hemp Summit https://pahempsummit.com/ Thanks to our sponsor: https://indhemp.com/

Could industrial hemp be a useful feedstock for anaerobic digesters to produce renewable natural gas? According to Nick Walters, managing partner at National Hemp Growers Cooperative, the answer is a resounding yes. Walters shared with Lancaster Farming the executive summary of a white paper to be released next week that shows that hemp not only can compete with other energy crops, but that it surpasses other crops in its input-output ratio. That means hemp requires fewer inputs than traditional biofuel crops like corn and beets but produces a higher-energy fuel than them. Walters said hemp has the potential to produce 208 million Btu per acre, which is the equivalent of 60,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to run a clothes dryer 24 hours a day for 27 months, based on research by his team, which is led by agronomist David Cornett and Eberhard Lucke, CEO of Lucke Consulting Technology Services. Apart from its energy potential, hemp grown regeneratively (with no-till, cover crops etc.) can pull carbon from the atmosphere and lock that carbon into the soil, thereby being a method for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation. Hemp is also an attractive energy source, Walters said, because it doesn't "enter the food versus fuel conversation. You are squarely in the food versus fuel conversation as it relates to fodder beets, because those are getting fed primarily to livestock." As to why the co-op is publishing this study, Walters says it's part of its "very unique business model that enables our members and our investors to be involved in multiple value-added processing facilities for the various uses of hemp all throughout the country. And we are focused on building wealth for our members through regenerative agriculture and sustainable development." Plus, we talk to Lori Daytner from DON Services in New Castle, Pennsylvania, where work has been completed on the Project PA Hemp Home. She gives us an update on the project, including how they turned locally hemp grown into HempWood flooring. National Hemp Growers Coop https://nationalhempcoop.us/ DON Services https://www.doninc.org/ DON Processing https://processing.doninc.net/ Project PA Hemp Home https://healthymaterialslab.org/projects/pa-hemp-home Register for the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit https://pahempsummit.com/ Thanks to our Sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ King's Agriseeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/

What do HempWood in Murray, Kentucky, and Cedar Meadow Farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, have in common? Both are hemp businesses involved in projects selected by USDA to receive funding in the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program. Does this mean that Cedar Meadow Farm and HempWood each get a big bag of money from the government? Nope, that's not how it works, but on this week's podcast we dig in and try to find out what it all means. First, Greg Wilson, founder of HempWood, talks about his connection to the Lincoln University project that was awarded $5 million in the program to scale the hemp supply chain as a carbon negative feedstock for fiber and fuel. Wilson said he is especially enthusiastic about the educational aspects of the project. "If more people know how to grow hemp and it de-risks the situation, it will help our supply chain for making building materials," he said. HempWood produces flooring made from hemp stalks held together by a soy-based glue in a carbon-negative facility in Murray, Kentucky. "It's the only carbon negative flooring that's made in America that is certified by the USDA as well as three nonpartisan certifying bodies for our lifecycle analysis and environmental product declaration that have just been formally published by ASTM last month," Wilson said. Then, we check in with Lancaster County hemp farmer and cover crop expert Steve Groff, whose Cedar Meadow Farm is a partner in a project awarded $15 million to develop the fiber and grain sectors of the industry. Groff said he is excited about the project because its goals match what he's doing on his farm. "Growing all kinds of hemp — CBD, fiber and grain — and to do that in a way that's, well, climate-smart," he said. HempWood https://hempwood.com/ Cedar Meadow Farm https://cedarmeadow.farm/ Check out Lancaster Farming's Hemp Special Section https://lancasterfarming-pa.newsmemory.com/?special=Hemp Lancaster Farming Visits HempWood in Murray, KY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uua964Y6BbA What is HempWood in 60 Seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqIZZqZx43Q Thanks to our Sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/

Carrfields, one of the leading agricultural companies in New Zealand, has operations spanning Kiwi agriculture, from machinery to seed production and distribution, irrigation, precision ag technology and everything in between. Craig Carr, group managing director and guest on this week's Hemp Podcast, said his father started the business over 40 years ago with a handful of straw contracts in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand. Moving into machinery service and seed production in the 1990s, the business really took off in the 2000s when the Kiwi dairy industry went through a period of growth. "It was a big time in New Zealand of change, of farming. Dairy was really starting to grow," he said. "And with that our business grew also." This growth enabled Carrfields to acquire several other ag businesses, making them a major player in New Zealand agriculture. Carrfields has been working in the hemp sector for over 20 years, with an early focus on oil seed production and combine harvesters, and has since been working with fiber hemp for industrial uses. Carr attended the Montana Hemp Summit in August and was impressed with the level of cooperation and collaboration among the U.S. hemp industry in the grain and fiber sectors. "What probably stood out to me the most was the willingness of IND HEMP and others to actually work together for the benefit of the industry," he said. "Even though we're way down here in New Zealand, there's a huge opportunity for us to share learnings and to actually share information around what has worked and what hasn't worked, because when you're dealing with a product like hemp — and particularly hemp fiber — you know, you're very reliant, as most people will note, on Mother Nature." Carr said the biggest challenge the industry faces, in New Zealand and abroad, is making it profitable for producers. "Because if the crop is not sustainably profitable, then we are not going to have that supply base in the future," he said. "We need to ensure that all of the financial metrics go back and start with the farmer." Carrfields https://www.carrfields.co.nz/ New Zealand Natural Fibers https://nznaturalfibres.co.nz/ Connect with Carrfields on Social Media Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarrfieldsNZ & https://www.facebook.com/contactNZNF Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carrfieldsnz/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/carrfields-nz/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/nz-natural-fibres Hemp News Nuggets Police Raid German Hemp Farm https://businesscann.com/european-round-up-police-raid-german-hemp-farm-tilray-in-talks-with-cannabis-czar-new-european-thc-levels-approved-et-al/ Regulations for the Production of Industrial Hemp are Established in Costa Rica https://thecostaricanews.com/regulations-for-the-production-of-industrial-hemp-are-established-in-costa-rica/ Why Hemp Is Entering the Mainstream and Adding Value to Business https://www.rollingstone.com/culture-council/articles/why-hemp-is-entering-mainstream-and-adding-value-to-business-1234588120/ National Hemp Growers Coop partners with Troy University Manufacturing Sciences https://www.wtvy.com/2022/09/08/national-hemp-growers-partner-with-troy-university-manufacturing-sciences/ National Hemp Growers Cooperative https://nationalhempcoop.us/ Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html Climate Projects Tied to Pennsylvania Get $900 Million https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/conservation/climate-projects-tied-to-pennsylvania-get-900-million/article_dd2cf622-3473-11ed-a221-179b31d68ee2.html Climate-Smart Commodities Grant Recipients https://www.usda.gov/climate-solutions/climate-smart-commodities/projects Thanks to our Sponsors Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ All Walks Hemp Pet Products https://allwalkspet.com/

This week we talk to the new executive team at the U.S. Hemp Building Association, President Henry Gage Jr. and Vice President Ryan Doherty. Gage had previously been the director of certification for the association. He has a background in engineering, problem solving and green building, and he constructed the first hempcrete retro-fit house in New York. Doherty had been the director of supply chains, and will continue working in supply chain development as vice president. The association has aimed a lot of resources at gaining approval for hempcrete as a building material from the International Code Council. ICC accepted a proposal in April and will be making a final recommendation later this month. Once added to the building codes, hempcrete will give contractors another option for building energy efficient homes while further developing the market for domestically grown hemp. US Hemp Building Association https://ushba.org/ Liberate Hemp https://www.buildgreennow.net/liberate-hemp.html Have You Hurd Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGyyRO1kRxs Hemp Ventures https://hempventures.org/ News Nuggets Estonia Now Allowing Farmers to Grow Hemp With Higher THC https://cannatechtoday.com/estonia-now-allowing-farmers-to-grow-hemp-with-higher-thc/ Hemp was supposed to save Texas farmers during a drought. It hasn't yet. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/07/texas-hemp-drought-agriculture/ Thanks to our Sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ All Walks Hemp Bedding https://allwalkspet.com/ Americhanvre https://americhanvre.com/

Hi all, we're taking a break from the show his week, but we'll be back next week. Hope you have a great weekend. -eric

This week, we talk to Freya Bartles from Hemp Cooperative Ireland, a group that is helping to facilitates the growth of the Irish hemp industry, which has many of the same challenges and opportunities that we see here in the U.S. There is great interest in the crop among Irish farmers and entrepreneurs who see it as a way to bring prosperity and healing to the land and the rural communities that live off that land. According to Freya Bartels, board member of Hemp Cooperative Ireland, hope is high for hemp in Ireland despite the lack of processing capacity and viable markets. Part of the challenge of building the hemp industry is cutting through the hype and stigma, she said. On one hand, you've got the marijuana association. On the other, you've got the hype about how hemp can save the world with the 50 million things hemp can do. To cut though the noise, Hemp Cooperative Ireland has developed an educational framework they call the Seven Pillars of Hemp, which Bartels described as a way of "dividing the overwhelming benefits of hemp down into chapters on what hemp can do for you." Learn more about Hemp Cooperative Ireland and the Seven Pillars of Hemp https://hempcooperativeireland.com/ IG, FB, TW: @hemp_cooperative_ireland Please support One Plant, a documentary film series https://www.oneplant.film/ Join PA Farmers Union, Win Deluxe Farm Aid Concert Package Thanks to our sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ King's Agriseeds https://kingsagriseeds.com/hemp

This week on the hemp podcast, we talk to best-selling food writer and James Beard Award recipient, Sandor Katz, author of the modern food classic "Wild Fermentation." After making his first crock of sauerkraut from homegrown cabbages, Katz embarked on a fermentation journey that has taken him all over the world, learning about fermented foods and the cultures that produce them. "That first batch of sauerkraut? I mean, first of all, I couldn't believe how simple the process was. You know, I couldn't believe how delicious the lightly fermented sauerkraut was after just a couple of weeks. And then, you know, I just started experimenting," Katz said. Katz has a become a world-renowned expert on fermentation and has educated tens of thousands of people about the simple joys and health benefits of fermented foods. From the history of agriculture to the philosophical definition of cultures, this interview has a lot to offer. But what does it have to do with hemp? Listen to the episode to find out. Learn more about Sandor Katz and the Art Fermentation https://www.wildfermentation.com/ Here's my story about King's AgriSeeds' hemp Field Day https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming/industrial_hemp/industrial-hemp-has-a-field-day-to-discuss-farming-techniques/article_ffc977c8-1eed-11ed-bdc7-2fa84573dd7a.html Thanks to our sponsors: IND HEMP https://allwalkspet.com/ All Walks Small Pet Bedding https://indhemp.com/ New Holland Agriculture https://agriculture.newholland.com/nar/en-us

On this week's show, Eric Hurlock reports from Fort Benton, Montana, home of IND HEMP, the host and coordinator of the Summer Summit. IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Sunflower Film's One Plant https://sunflower.film/work Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ National Hemp Association https://nationalhempassociation.org/ Support the Hemp Exemption https://www.hempexemption.com/ Global Hemp Association https://globalhempassociation.org/

Last week, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Biotechnology, Horticulture, and Research held a hearing to examine the USDA Hemp Production Program. The subcommittee heard from a panel of producers, researchers, tribal members, and state ag commissioners that gave an overview of the hemp industry and offered insight toward the 2023 Farm Bill. Noting the absence of representatives from USDA and FDA, ranking member Jim Baird from Indiana said, "I do believe it is a missed opportunity that we don't hear from the federal agencies tasked with implementing provisions on hemp today." On this week's podcast, we will listen to highlights from the hearing, including testimony from Colorado Ag Commissioner Kate Greenberg, who offers five recommendations for how Congress can provide support to federal agencies to allow for greater flexibility and improve state-run hemp programs. First on her list is removal of DEA requirements for testing labs. "Our state-of-the-art laboratory began the process of obtaining DEA certification in 2019. However, as of this hearing we still await their approval," Greenberg said. All panel experts expressed the need for clarification from the FDA concerning the regulation and use of CBD. Also on this week's show, we check in with Lancaster County hemp farmer and cover crop coach Steve Groff, who this week used a sickle bar mower to cut 5 acres of hemp on his farm in Holtwood, Pennsylvania. Groff's hemp was direct-seeded in 15-inch rows, roughly 50 pounds per acre, into a cover crop of black oats and hairy vetch on May 18. The crop reached a height of 12 feet in 75 days and had not started to flower before being cut. He will rake the cut hemp into narrow swaths and turn it a few times, allowing the stalks to ret before baling with a New Holland wet baler. Lancaster Farming also talks to Morris Beegle, organizer of the fourth annual Southern Hemp Expo, taking place in Nashville Aug. 18-20. Learn More: Watch the Congressional Hearing https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming/industrial_hemp/an-examination-of-the-usda-hemp-production-program/video_24fe545c-14d8-11ed-8f65-b7c948bba48f.html Watch Steve Groff Cutting Fiber at Cedar Meadow Farm https://www.lancasterfarming.com/community/videos/cutting-hemp-fiber-at-cedar-meadow-farm/video_b16f1980-14ce-11ed-acf3-fbdebeb1cdb1.html Southern Hemp Expo, Nashville, Tennessee, August 18-20, 2022 https://www.southernhempexpo.com/ Kings Agriseed's Field Day, August 16-17, 2022 https://kingsagriseeds.com/ Penn State's Twilight Hemp Walk August 16, 2022 https://extension.psu.edu/hemp-research-field-walk Thanks to our Sponsors All Walks Hemp Bedding https://allwalkspet.com/ IND HEMP https://www.indhemp.com/

This week on the podcast, Tim Fritz and Sarah Mitchell from King's Agriseeds talk about the upcoming hemp field day August 16-17 at the research farm in Christiana, Pennsylvania, where they are trialing varieties of fiber and grain hemp, as well as experimenting with different growing techniques such are fore-cropping and nurse-cropping. Then we talk to Segue Fischlin, a builder in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, where she is hosting a hempcrete workshop in early September. We talk about the workshop, but the main thrust of the conversation is about the language we use when we talk about hemp, and how certain language might be undermining the industry. Links King's Agriseeds' Field Day, August 16-17, 2022 https://kingsagriseeds.com/ Penn State's Twilight Hemp Walk August 16, 2022 https://web.cvent.com/event/3b269a07-6c81-4d08-bc89-d3a22cba8785/summary Segue Fischlin's Hempcrete Workshop https://svarajasthan.net/hempcrete News Nuggets Congressional Hearing: "An Examination of the USDA Hemp Production Program" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09VlD40Nt2k AAFCO details new webinar on the usage of hemp https://www.petfoodprocessing.net/articles/16023-aafco-details-new-webinar-on-the-usage-of-hemp State ag secretary, senator visit hemp house https://www.ncnewsonline.com/news/local_news/state-ag-secretary-senator-visit-hemp-house/article_4515f682-0eb6-11ed-8648-2beb70e7769a.html Thanks to our sponsor IND HEMP! https://indhemp.com/

After thirty plus years in the industry, Chris Boucher knows a thing or two about hemp. These days he's the CEO of Farmtiva, a California-based hemp company that specializes in consulting, seed sales, and a hemp juice powder called JuiceTiva, but his journey with hemp started long before the Farm Bill created the pathway for the modern hemp industry. He started a business in 1990 called the Hempstead Co. that made hemp wallets, hats, bags and such. "Back then the only place you could get hemp was either in China, Hungary, Romania or Poland. And so I went over to China in '92, and we sourced the hemp there," he said during this week's episode. Boucher wanted to source his hemp in the U.S., and so in 1994 he secured permission from the USDA and became the first person to grow hemp in the U.S. in decades. But before the crop was harvested, local narcotics agents in California destroyed it by plowing it under, and the dream of U.S.-grown hemp had to wait. Along the way he also co-founded the Hemp Industries Association, wrote an influential legal opinion about CBD, and imported the first CBD oil into the U.S. He traces his career in hemp back to a chance encounter in 1990 when he was asked to sign a petition to legalize hemp by a man who had just published a book that explained the history and potential of hemp. That man was Jack Herer, author of the seminal hemp book "The Emperor Wears No Clothes." The two became lifelong friends. As the current director of the California Hemp Growers Guild, an advocacy group for hemp farmers, Boucher sees first hand the detrimental effect recent state legislation is having on California's hemp farmers. He said it's a big win for the marijuana industry and a big loss for the hemp industry. Hemp now falls under the jurisdiction of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control instead of the California Department of Agriculture. Boucher said that the agency's fee structure and regulations make it nearly impossible for hemp farmers to compete, and many have stopped growing hemp altogether. "We've lost 90% of hemp farmers in California. We went from 800 farmers down to 120," he said. He said these new regulations will also make it very expensive for any out-of-state hemp companies wishing to do business in California. Also in this episode, host Eric Hurlock reads a summary of the new definition of hemp set forth in the recently introduced Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, Chuck Schumer's bill to federally legalize cannabis. All this and more. Be sure to check out all of these links. Farmtiva https://www.farmtiva.com/ JuiceTiva https://www.farmtiva.com/juicetiva-hemp-juice-powder Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act Summary https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/caoa_overview_summary1.pdf Thanks to our generous sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Music by Tin Bird Shadow https://tinbirdshadow.bandcamp.com/releases For news nuggets links and more information, go to LancasterFarming.com

The theme of this week's hemp podcast is education. First we talk to economist Beau Whitney, who says the deliberate miseducation of lawmakers is causing a big and expensive headache in the fiber and grain sector. He said a concerted effort by Big Cannabis (aka the marijuana industry) is distorting the narrative around industrial hemp, confusing lawmakers, stifling competition, and is costing the fiber and grain sectors nearly $20 billion a year. "Well-funded cannabis companies have access to legislators and policymakers, and as a result they have leveraged their connections and influence in order to narrowly define hemp as a drug, rather than looking at it as a commodity crop with industrial applications," Whitney said. Then we talk to Eric Kleffner, a hemp grower and game developer who is working on a "play-to-earn" video game called Hemptopia. Players can earn cryptocurrency. Inspired by his own experience as a hemp grower, Kleffner said, "I wanted to create a game to educate people about all the ins and outs and how hard it is to farm hemp, and all the uses of hemp as well." And finally, we check in with Rachel Berry, hemp farmer, founder of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association, and the director of regional leaders for the U.S. Hemp Building Association. Berry talks about her farm in Princeton, Illinois, her work with USHBA, and the various opportunities she has to educate the public on the uses of industrial hemp. "I have been invited to join the Illinois Department of Agriculture in the Ag Tent at the State Fair this year," Berry said. "That's the second and third week of August and I am absolutely thrilled to be involved in that work." Pennsylvania Hemp Summit https://pahempsummit.com/ Duped By Big Dope: How Big Cannabis' Attack On Hemp Has Cost The Fiber And Grain Industry $20 Billion A Year https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/22/07/27991342/duped-by-big-dope-how-big-cannabis-attack-on-hemp-has-cost-the-fiber-and-grain-industry-20-billi Whitney Economics https://whitneyeconomics.com/ Hemptopia Play-to-Earn Video Game https://hempt.org/ Learn more about Hemptopia Crypto Farming Game https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Ggts6CerteKU1tAeqpC_Q Illinois Hemp Growers Association https://www.illinoishga.com/ U.S. Hemp Building Association https://ushba.org/ Hemp Education Events with Rachel Berry Illinois Cannabis Training Center 7/21: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cannabiz-resource-networking-night-tickets-327645465407 IL State Fair IDOA tent 8/ 15 - 21: https://www2.illinois.gov/statefair/ridesattractions/Pages/AgricultureTent.aspx Thank you to our sponsors IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Americhanvre Cast Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ Check out the Hempcrete Workshop in Washington State on the Beautiful Kitsap Peninsula https://www.svarajasthan.net/hempcrete New Holland Agriculture https://agriculture.newholland.com/nar/en-us Lancaster Farming's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRbHPEPB5Av1xUS-L3ecT1Q Dan Juleff's Comment about the Music: hi mate sorry for the criticism but do you need to have the music on all the time even when you are talking it is so annoying when i just want to hear what you are saying i just want to hear you...you don't need extra..when you start the show cool have your music but when you start talking kill the music your show will be 100% better... please do one show for me without the music thank you Support the Tin Bird Shadow https://tinbirdshadow.bandcamp.com/releases

Bill Althouse believes hemp has great potential to change the world, but he cautions against the common rhetoric — that hemp can magically fix all the world's problems. Instead, he said, the industry must focus on legitimization. "This means meeting all the rules, regulations, material specifications and testing standards of the non-hemp materials we're trying to replace with hemp," he said. For hemp to succeed, it must be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people outside of the hemp space — builders, engineers, textile manufacturers, etc. "After legitimization, we must compete, delivering higher performance at a lower price," he added. On the Hemp Podcast this week, Althouse talks about the issues involved with bringing hemp into the mainstream and shares opinions that will make many people in the hemp industry uncomfortable. For example, he talks about why the American hempcrete industry can't definitively say what the R-Value of hemp is, and how making claims about hempcrete's insulating properties violates FTC rules. He describes the value chain of hemp as a textile and makes his case for why, in its current state, it will never be able to compete with cotton. He calls the hemp industry an "echo chamber," saying that repeating the same unsubstantiated claims about hemp only damages the future of hemp. His experience in engineering, green building and hemp farming gives him credibility, and he uses that perspective to inject a shot of realism into the conversation. He's not all doom and gloom, though. He sees great promise in hemp, especially in emerging "lignin first" technology that he says has the potential to eliminate the need for decortication and degumming, the two steps in the process currently keeping hemp from competing with cotton. A voice in the wilderness or a cranky old man with an ax to grind? Decide for yourself. Learn More about What Bill is up to: Fat Pig Society https://fatpigsociety.com/ Industry group aims to develop high-CBD varieties that won't go hot https://hempindustrydaily.com/industry-group-aims-to-develop-high-cbd-varieties-that-wont-go-hot/ Cutting out the middleman to help small organic farmers https://hemptoday.net/cutting-out-the-middleman-to-help-small-organic-farmers/ Thanks to our sponsors! IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ WEST TOWN BANK https://www.westtownbank.com//hemp Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ Sign up for the Hemp Newsletter https://www.lancasterfarming.com/newsletters/

This week on the hemp podcast we learn about the Global Hemp Association's variety trials that span eight states in six geographical regions. Our first guest is Mandi Kerr, founder and CEO of the Global Hemp Association, which, according to Kerr is "a platform of entrepreneurs, manufacturers, farmers, distributors that have come together to support and build the industrial hemp industry." One way GHA is building the hemp industry is by conducting variety trials. In conjunction with Kansas-based Performance Crop Research, GHA is growing 10 varieties of fiber hemp in various geographical regions across the country with the intent of providing its members with solid data about which varieties do best in each region. Our second guest is Melissa Nelson-Baldwin — field scientist, hemp farmer and owner of Performance Crop Research — who has assembled a team of crop specialists specifically for these trials. "We're working with research scientists within the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants," Nelson-Baldwin said. "This is what everyone does full time. And so we chose crop research scientists that either had hemp experience or a lot of experience within the research space." This is the first year for the trials, but they will be conducted over many years to provide as much data as possible for farmers and processors. Learn More About the National Variety Trials: Global Hemp Association https://globalhempassociation.org/ Become a Member: https://globalhempassociation.org/become-a-member/ Friends of Hemp https://friendsofhemp.org/ Hemp Hallway https://hemphallway.com/ South Bend Industrial Hemp https://www.southbendindustrialhemp.com/ News Nuggets National Hemp Association Partners with Hemp Feed Coalition https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/06/21/2466338/0/en/National-Hemp-Association-and-Hemp-Feed-Coalition-Join-Forces.html Hemp, CBD set to get permanent legal status after 11th-hour rescue by NC legislature https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article263021958.html Thanks to our Sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ West Town Bank https://www.westtownbank.com/hemp/

This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Wendy Mosher, president and CEO of New West Genetics, a Colorado-based hemp seed company focused on genomics, seed breeding and agribusiness. Mosher discusses an initiative the company is working on with several other stakeholders, including International Hemp and King's AgriSeeds, called "Value the Seed" that promotes certified seed as a way to unburden farmers and assure regulators of compliance. This policy reform initiative is centered around the fiber and grain sectors of the hemp industry, and Mosher is hopeful it will be adopted in the 2023 Farm Bill. If the initiative is successful, American hemp farmers who plant certified seed that meets standards set by the Association of Official Seed Certifying Agencies will be exempt from burdensome regulations, excessive fees and THC testing. New West Genetics https://newwestgenetics.com/ Learn more about Value the Seed Watch Eric's interview on Moving Hemp Forward with Mandi Kerr from the Global Hemp Association: Sign up for the Hemp Newsletter: https://www.lancasterfarming.com/newsletters/ News Nuggets Homeland Hempcrete plans to buy North Dakota hemp fiber https://www.agupdate.com/farmandranchguide/news/crop/homeland-hempcrete-plans-to-buy-north-dakota-hemp-fiber/article_14f328f4-e84a-11ec-900f-4fe26113ab3a.html Hemp farmer builds own house out of hemp fiber https://www.agupdate.com/theprairiestar/news/state-and-regional/hemp-farmer-builds-own-house-out-of-hemp-fiber/article_d347777e-e836-11ec-96e6-8b2cc87d6cd6.html Unregulated hemp derivative delta-8 thrives in Pa.'s thorny marijuana landscape https://www.wesa.fm/economy-business/2022-06-19/delta-8-pennsylvania-law Scientists predict future ketchup shortage as climate change damages crops https://katu.com/news/nation-world/scientists-predict-future-ketchup-shortage-as-climate-change-damages-crops-tomatoes-farmers-farming-agriculture-harvest-nature-food-weather-science-study-condiments-italy-denmark-united-states-china-world-supply-paste-sauce-woolf-farms-2050-prediction Thanks to our sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ West Town Bank https://www.westtownbank.com/hemp

On this week's hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming continues checking in with hemp producers around the country. Ray DePriest, from SunRay Hemp, tells us about growing hemp at 62 degrees north latitude in Palmer, Alaska — 60 miles north of Anchorage — where his family's been farming since the 1930s, first as potato farmers, then dairy. Now they focus primarily on hay. This is Ray's third year of growing hemp in Alaska. We hear from Theo Wahquahboshkuk, operations manager at Prairie Band Ag, a hemp company owned and operated by the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in northeast Kansas, where the business is growing fiber, grain and flower. Closer to home, we talk with Caleb Kauffman of Lancashire Hemp Farms in Narvon, Pennsylvania. Kauffman prefers to plant his CBD crop later in July. Because Lancashire Farms focuses on "top-shelf smokable flower," planting later in the season keeps the plants smaller and more manageable. Katharine Dubansky, co-owner of Back Bone Hemp, checks in from the mountains of Garrett County, Maryland, where she has planted triploid varieties of cannabinoid flower and a small test plot of a fiber variety. And finally, we hear from Ben Brimlow, lead agronomist at IND HEMP in Montana, where they contract with farmers across the Northwest to grow grain and fiber varieties of hemp. Links Backbone Hemp https://backbonehemp.com/ Prairie Band Ag https://prairiebandllc.com/ SunRay Hemp https://www.linkedin.com/in/ray-depriest-0b7947108/ Lancashire Hemp Farms https://www.lancashirehemp.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Something to Think About: What a Dying Lake Says About the Future, by Paul Krugman "If you aren't terrified by the threat posed by rising levels of greenhouse gases, you aren't paying attention — which, sadly, many people aren't. And those who are or should be aware of that threat but stand in the way of action for the sake of short-term profits or political expediency are, in a real sense, betraying humanity." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/opinion/great-salt-lake.html Thanks to our sponsors: West Town Bank https://www.westtownbank.com/hemp Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to farmers around the country and the world about spring planting — what they've got in the ground, how much hemp they're growing this year, what conditions are like in the field, and more. We talk to several Pennsylvania farmers, as well as folks in Missouri, Kansas, North Carolina, Michigan and more, including an exclusive interview with Roman Fedorowycz, an American farmer who's been living and farming in Ukraine for over 30 years. He runs a 5,000-acre farm in the western part of the country, where he usually grows various grains and vegetables, and, of course, hemp. But things are a little different this year. Fedorowycz talks about the atrocities committed by the Russian army and how that's affecting agriculture in Ukraine, considered to be one of the breadbaskets of the world. "This year, we have a number of issues," he said. "Number one, since the ports are blocked and Ukraine is one of the biggest exporters...of corn, soybeans, sunflower oil and things like that, we can't get our products to go out of the main ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov because of the Russian blockade. "The other issue is that where the fighting is going on in the south, the east and the northeast, obviously there's no spring planting going on and there'll be no harvest going on. "And on top of that, many regions west of Kiev and north of Kiev and east of Kiev were mined by the Russians when they were pushed out. I have many friends who have thousands and thousands of acres that they have to be de-mined or remove unexploded artillery and other things out of their fields. So many of those farmers are not planting this year," Fedorowycz said. This week's guests include: Eric Trajtenberg from Paradise Hemp Farm in West Grove Pennsylvania where he's a growing small batch CBD. https://www.paradisehempfarm.com/ & https://pahemplawyer.com/ Mike Murray from Moka Hemp in Burlington, Pennsylvania, where they focus on smokable CBD flower. https://www.mokahemp.com/ Rusty Peterson with Essen Atlas and Align Agro in Michigan, where they're growing fiber varieties. https://www.alignagro.com/ Victor-Alan Weeks from 404 Twenty in Caswell County, North Carolina, where he and his business Partner Jalen Madden are focused on CBD production. Jeff Limbaugh from Midwest Natural Fiber in Sikeston, Missouri, where they're growing hundreds of acres of fiber hemp and other crops. https://www.midwestnaturalfiber.com/ Aaron Baldwin from South Bend Industrial Hemp in South Bend Kansas, where they're working with a network of farmers to grow several thousand acres of dual crop fiber & grain. https://www.southbendindustrialhemp.com/ Roman Fedorowycz from Ukr Hemp Seeds in Ukraine who tells us about the atrocities of Russia's war on Ukraine and how that's affecting spring planting there. http://ukrhempseed.online/ Raphael Cutrufello from Hezekiah Jones in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. http://www.hezekiahjones.com/ Steve Groff from Cedar Meadow Farm in Holtwood, PA, where's got fiber, grain and CBD varieties. https://cedarmeadow.farm/ Dale Norely from Tasunka Farm Organics in Birchrunville, PA, where this year she grew smokable flower in the greenhouse over winter and wholesale seedlings this spring. Right now they are doing maintenance on their fields and will be planting outdoors again next year. Special Thanks to our sponsors: IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ West Town Bank https://www.westtownbank.com/hemp/

This week on the podcast we talk to Mike Leago, founder and CEO of iHempx in Colorado. Formally known as the International Hemp Exchange, iHempx has become one of the industry's go-to sources for genetics, processing equipment, farmer resources and more, serving all sectors of the industry, from cannabinoid flower to fiber and grain and everything in between. Leago tells the tale of how he started the company in 2016 after seeing the lack of connectivity in the various hemp supply chains. Originally connecting retails to consumers, iHempx has since moved into the wholesale markets and has become an industry leader, at home and abroad. Leago also talks about a partnership with a new company with an emerging technology focused on industrial hemp decortication and micronization. "What's really interesting about this technology is that rather than using mechanical forces like most processing technology and size reduction technology, this uses resonance frequency to break things down," says Leago. "So it's actually resonance forces and shearing forces that are created inside of a relatively small processing mill that can both decorticate and micronize the plant in a single pass." Sounds like this could be a game changer. Give a listen and learn more. iHempx https://ihempx.com/ Calendar items iHemp Michigan's Midwest Hemp Expo, May 20 & 21 https://ihempmichigan.com/midwest-ihemp-expo/ National Hemp Growers Coop Field Day, June 6 & 7 https://nationalhempcoop.us/2022-spring-field-day/ Thanks to our sponsors! Mpactful Ventures https://www.mpactfulventures.org/ Steward https://gosteward.com/ Check Out IND HEMP's new and improved website https://indhemp.com/ Reality TV? Learn more about the reality television opportunity from Cornwell Casting that was mentioned on this episode: https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farmer-reality-tv-casting-call/pdf_adc54de0-d7a2-11ec-a68a-df85d17285ca.html Nominate a farmer: https://farmernomination.castingcrane.com/ Nominate yourself: https://farmercasting.castingcrane.com/age-gate Be sure to mention that you heard about this on the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week's podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Jordan Berger, a filmmaker and hemp farmer from Tennessee. His work with the crop has inspired him to embark on a seven-part documentary series to bring the story of hemp to a wider audience. In 2019, Berger grew his first hemp crop, about an acre of CBD plants at his small farm outside of Chattanooga. He said he learned a lot from growing the crop and talking to other farmers. "It became clear to me that I needed to make something," he said. "You know, I'm always asking what could I do? What kind of impact could I make, either as a farmer or a filmmaker? To me, it's really clear that I could make a bigger impact making a film about (hemp) that the masses could digest and understand and get excited about." Apparently, this documentary is the first of its kind. "It's just surprising to me that we're in 2022 and there's not anything out there like this," he said. "Most of the cannabis documentaries are all kind of caught up in pot culture or, you know, are only scratching the surface. And there's so much more to tell." This summer, Berger is embarking on a cross-country road trip to document the burgeoning industry, visiting hemp farms and processing facilities to interview the people who are building this industry. Watch the teaser video for Jordan Berger's documentary, "One Plant." https://vimeo.com/570658603/22715ab1c5 Sunflower https://sunflower.film/ Head River Farms https://headriverfarms.com/ Sign up for the Industrial Hemp Newsletter https://www.lancasterfarming.com/newsletters/ Thank to our Sponsors: iHemp Michigan Midwest Hemp Expo https://ihempmichigan.com/midwest-ihemp-expo/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Music by Tin Bird Shadow https://tinbirdshadow.bandcamp.com/releases

"You can't just run around saying hemp is going to save the planet. You can't just say it. You have to have some definitive numbers and some science behind it. And that can be shown to the people that are in power. They still may not listen, but when you have hard numbers, it makes your argument a whole lot better." That's what Bruce Dietzen, guest on this week's Industrial Hemp Podcast, says. Deitzen is known as the guy who built the body of a sports car out of hemp, but he's put the hemp car on hold and has embarked on what he considers to be a far more important endeavor — quantifying the potential of hemp. That's the idea behind Drawdown Hemp — put hard numbers behind the oft-quoted claims that hemp has the potential to sequester vast amounts of carbon. "Drawdown Hemp is a think tank that is on a mission to quantify the amount of CO2 that hemp products can either sequester or avoid, Dietzen said. "And the reason for wanting to quantify those hemp products goes back to this idea that hemp can be made into 50,000 different products." In the face of a climate crisis, Deitzen said it's important to determine which of the 50,000 products will have the greatest ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere. He also talks about his entry into the X Prize Carbon Removal Contest funded by billionaire Elon Musk to identify ways that CO2 can be sequestered at a large scale, at least a gigaton per year on an ongoing basis. The first place winner will receive $50 million. Drawdown Hemp https://drawdownhemp.org/ Watch Bruce's Drawdown Hemp Presentation from NoCo Hemp Expo, March 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4d65nNPbM8&t=927s News Nuggets May 5, 2022 FDA Issues Warning Letters to Companies Illegally Selling CBD and Delta-8 THC Products https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-issues-warning-letters-companies-illegally-selling-cbd-and-delta-8-thc-products The EIHA: Working to Achieve 'a True Single Hemp Market for Europe' https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/european-industrial-hemp-association-lorenza-romanese-git-skoglund-rob-clarke/ Central Oregon hemp farmers pivot to other crops as market prices tank https://www.bendbulletin.com/business/central-oregon-hemp-farmers-pivot-to-other-crops-as-market-prices-tank/article_9eb752bc-c5be-11ec-b361-cb313cb7e729.html Pennsylvania is feeling the pressure of neighboring states' passage of adult-use marijuana https://www.cityandstatepa.com/policy/2022/05/pennsylvania-feeling-pressure-neighboring-states-passage-adult-use-marijuana/366409/ Thanks to our Sponsors: Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/

This week we give a recap of the 2022 Pennsylvania Hemp Summit Expo that took place in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, April 26 and 27 at the Lancaster County Convention Center. First we talk to Lancaster Farming's digital content editor Dan Sullivan who covered the event for the newspaper and also emceed the Shark Tank competition. After the conversation with Dan, we hear Pennsylvania Ag Secretary Russell Redding's opening remarks from the Hemp Summit. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has been very supportive of the hemp industry in Pennsylvania, knowing that the potential for Pennsylvania's farmers and entrepreneurs is huge, but of course it's not without it's challenges. "We know based on what we have seen around the world, that there is potential in hemp and all of its components," Redding told the crowd. "We said at the very first summit that the Pennsylvania hemp industry is defined by the use of all of the plant. It is the fiber, it is the seed, it is the oil, it's the feed, it's the CBD. It is not a single component of the industry. It is all of the plant. And therein lies our challenge." The two day hemp expo was a precursor to the full summit to be held in November 2022. Read Dan Sullivan's Hemp Summit story: Hemp Summit Offers Hope Amid Challenges Check out the stories from our recent Industrial Hemp Special Section of Lancaster Farming Newspaper: Hemp Is a Strong Option for Sequestering Carbon Most Traditional Farm Machinery Fine for Harvesting Hemp High Schooler Has Hopes for Hemp Retting Hemp Fiber From the Stalk Resources for Hemp Growers and Marketers Why We Need an Industrial Hemp Exemption [Opinion] What is the Future of Industrial Hemp? Hemp in Pennsylvania — Don't Fence Me In Pennsylvania's Family Farmers Shouldn't Miss Out on Cannabis Opportunities [Opinion] Cooking With Hemp News Nuggets Hemp structure revealed at Alvernia University's EcoHouse https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/berks/hemp-structure-revealed-at-alvernia-universitys-ecohouse/article_f84d0072-c4d0-11ec-aa47-b3e7f2b41c32.html FDACS Celebrates Two Years of Florida's Hemp Program https://www.fdacs.gov/News-Events/Press-Releases/2022-Press-Releases/FDACS-Celebrates-Two-Years-of-Florida-s-Hemp-Program Nation's First Independent Cannabis And Hemp Certification Recognized By Attorneys General Alliance (AGA) https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nations-first-independent-cannabis-and-hemp-certification-recognized-by-attorneys-general-alliance-aga-301531796.html

When it comes to hemp there are two distinct sectors — industrial and floral hemp. Industrial hemp involves the industrial application for the grain, fiber and hurd of the crop. Floral hemp focuses on harvesting the flowers of the plant for medicinal uses like CBD. These different arenas of hemp require different farming practices, different genetics, and different equipment. The problem is that there is only one set of rules governing these two very different sectors of the hemp industry. Our three podcast guests this week would like to change that. Courtney Moran from Agricultural Hemp Solutions, Morgan Elliott Tweet from IND HEMP, and Erica Stark from the National Hemp Coalition have teamed up to create an exemption for industrial hemp, separating it from floral hemp. The permit costs and testing fees are a barrier for entry to farmers who want to grow hemp grain and fiber. Our guests argue that industrial hemp needs to start being treated as the commodity crop that it's destined to be. To learn more about how this exemption would work, read "Why We Need an Industrial Hemp Exemption." Help Support the Hemp Exemption https://www.hempexemption.com/ National Hemp Association https://nationalhempassociation.org/ Agricultural Hemp Solutions https://www.agriculturalhempsolutions.com/ Hemp Feed Coalition https://hempfeedcoalition.org/ PA Hemp Summit https://pahempsummit.com/ News Nuggets Cone Denim Debuts US Hemp Denim with BastCore https://sourcingjournal.com/denim/denim-mills/cone-denim-bastcore-hemp-denim-collection-alabama-tennessee-indigo-339207/ 40,000 expected at PA Cannabis Festival in Kutztown https://www.mcall.com/entertainment/mc-ent-pa-cannabis-festival-20220421-g3ybtn4wnffppo2txjueh5exzq-story.html Bedmaker becomes the UK's largest hemp grower https://www.furniturenews.net/news/articles/2022/04/823161547-bedmaker-becomes-uk%E2%80%99s-largest-hemp-grower PA's first home made out of 'hempcrete' to be unveiled Friday https://phl17.com/pennsylvania-news/pas-first-home-made-out-of-hempcrete-to-be-unveiled-friday/ Thanks to our Sponsors iHemp Michigan's Midwest Hemp Expo, May 20 & 21 https://ihempmichigan.com/midwest-ihemp-expo/ IND HEMP https://www.indhemp.com/

This week on the podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Blake Alexandre from Alexandre Family Farm in northern California, America's first certified regenerative dairy. "We've got a phenomenal growing season out here, that is our winter temperatures and our summer temperatures are only 11 degrees apart," Alexandre said. "So we literally have grass growing all year long and, you know, just very productive soil." "We milk about a total of 5,000 cows, including the drys, and get another 4,000 young stock of heifers that are growing up to become milk cows," he said. He started off with a Holstein herd but has been introducing other breeds and crossbreeding with Jerseys. Several years ago, the farm introduced a breed called Fleckvieh, a dual-purpose milk and meat breed from Europe. Alexandre said the Fleckviehs "just literally take care of themselves better out there on forage, and we lean on grass just as much as any dairy in the country in terms of how many days we graze and what percentage of the diet our cows eat." Alexandre is also a proponent of A2 milk and explains what that is and why it's important. Much of the interview focuses on soil health and regenerative ag practices, and there is very little discussion of hemp, but Alexandre is active in local government and was on the team that wrote the policy for hemp in the county. Alexandre Family Farm https://alexandrefamilyfarm.com/ Savory Institute https://savory.global/ Regenerative Organic Alliance https://regenorganic.org/ The Pennsylvania Hemp Summit, April 26 & 27 https://pahempsummit.com/ The Midwest iHemp Expo https://ihempmichigan.com/midwest-ihemp-expo/ Thanks to our Sponsors New Holland Agriculture https://agriculture.newholland.com/nar/en-us IND HEMP https://www.indhemp.com/

One of the barriers to building residential homes with hempcrete is that there's no mention of hempcrete in any of the building codes that set the standards for health and safety in the construction industry. Most municipalities in the U.S. look to the International Code Council for direction. Hempcrete's absence from these codes leaves local building inspectors scratching their heads when it comes to building with this natural material. But that's all about to change. At an April 2 hearing in New York, the ICC approved the proposal for hempcrete construction to be added to the International Residential Code. This is the first step toward the ICC's formal adoption of hemp as an officially recognized building material, according to Jacob Waddell, executive director of the U.S. Hemp Building Association. The proposal must now go through a public comment period. A final vote by the ICC will take place in September, after which the specs for hempcrete building should be adopted. Waddell is a guest on the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast this week. He talks about the process his group went through to build the case for hempcrete and what IRC approval would mean for the hemp and construction industries. Hempcrete — or hemp-lime, which more accurately describes the material — has three basic components. Hemp hurd, which is the inner woody core of the hemp stalk, is mixed with a lime binder and water. Once the material is cured and dried, it forms a long-lasting building material offering resistance to fire, mold and fungus, and provides high-rated insulating properties and an opportunity to sequester carbon, a strategy for mitigating climate change. Also, we take a trip to a hempcrete training session hosted by Cameron McIntosh at Americhanvre Cast Hemp. US Hemp Builders Association https://ushba.org/ Americhanvre Cast-Hemp https://americhanvre.com/ News Nuggets Veterinary research finds 'de-stressing benefit' from feeding cattle industrial hemp https://www.beefcentral.com/lotfeeding/nutrition/veterinary-research-finds-destressing-benefit-from-feeding-cattle-industrial-hemp/ PA Senate Delta-8 Memo https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?Chamber=S&SPick=20210&cosponId=37166 Thanks to our Sponsor IND HEMP in Montana https://www.indhemp.com/

This is the final installment of a four-part series consisting of conversations recorded at the NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver, CO, on March 24-25, 2022. On this episode we talk to Joe Hickey, a Kentucky businessman who has been in the hemp industry for over 30 years. He is the founder of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative and currently works with Halcyon Technology Holding. He also worked with actor Woody Harrelson to test the limits of Kentucky's laws against industrial hemp in the 1990s. Their collaboration can be seen in the documentary film Hempsters: Plant the Seed. Hickey tells numerous enlightening from those early days in the industry and offers advice to today's industry on how to develop markets through strategic purchase agreements with large manufactures. Halcyon Technology Holdings https://halcyon420.com/ Hempsters: Plant the Seed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HBFkXIS0wE Noco Hemp Expo https://www.nocohempexpo.com/

This is the third installment of a four-part series consisting of conversations recorded at the NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver, CO, on March 25, 2022. On this episode we talk to author and photographer Maren Krings, a German storyteller whose most recent book is called H is for Hemp, which documents her travels around the world, visiting 4 continents and conducting hundreds of interviews documenting how various peoples and cultures are using hemp to combat the effects of climate change. The books is part hemp encyclopedia, part anthropological study, and part personal diary. This engaging book is over 600 pages in length and was printed on specially designed tree-free hemp paper. Kring shares stories of her travels and her unique perspective on the global hemp industry. Buy the book H is for Hemp https://marenkrings.com/ Noco Hemp Expo https://www.nocohempexpo.com/

This is the second episode in a series of four special episodes of the podcast consisting of conversations recorded at the NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver, Colorado, on March 25, 2022. We talk to James J.J. Johnson about his work educating the public about industrial hemp. Johnson retired from the US Air Force after 21 years and returned home with debilitating PTSD. Through his work in the hemp space, he was able to find new purpose through hemp education and healing from PTSD through cannabinoids. His story is inspiring and his positive attitude is contagious. Learn more about JJ Johnson's work, including his Hemp 101 classes: http://jjgro.com/ Noco Hemp Expo https://www.nocohempexpo.com/