Industrial Hemp Podcast

Joy Beckerman is an internationally renowned hemp law and policy expert involved in the hemp industries for over 30 years. She is the principal attorney at Hemp Ace International, a Seattle-based consulting, legal support, and expert witness firm serving the global community. She is also the co-founder and senior advisor to Colorado Hemp Works, America's first post-prohibition hemp grain processin...

In November of 2020, the state of New York released its regulations concerning hemp, and much to the surprise and chagrin of hemp farmers in the state, the new regulations outlawed the sale of industrial hemp flower. The hemp flower market is lucrative for farmers, and many small, independent operations in the state grow specifically for the flower market. And just as their harvest was coming in l...

On this week's podcast, we talk to Destiny Young and Will Tarleton, two of the founders of Canvast Supply Co. in Nashville, Tennessee, where they are helping new and existing farmers transition to growing hemp. "We call ourselves a hemp resource," says Young, "From seed to sale, we're trying to create pathways that make it easier for farmers to do what they do best, which is to farm." The company...

This week, Lancaster Farming talks to Ben Raymond, food scientist and director of research and development at Victory Hemp Foods in Kentucky, where they make highly functional hemp ingredients for super-nutritious, plant-based foods, such as hemp protein concentrates, hemp seed oils & shelled hemp seeds. Raymond talks about the unique properties of hemp grain that set it apart from other ingredien...

The hemp industry has been waiting patiently for the US Department of Agriculture to publish its Final Rule for Establishment of a Domestic Hemp Production Program. And now it's here. This week, USDA published the 300-page document that will guide states, tribes, and industry for years to come. What's in the Final Rule? How is it different from the Interim Final Rule? How will farmers be affected?...

On our first podcast of the 2021, Lancaster Farming talks to Hunter Buffington, the executive director at the Hemp Feed Coalition, a group that advocates for federal approval for hemp and its byproducts for use as animal feed. The coalition's vision is to give hemp producers and processors access to the billion dollar animal feed and supplements market. The pathway to federal approval is time cons...

The year is over. It's been a crazy year. We all need to chill out a little. With that in mind, this episode is all instrumental piano meditations, courtesy of Tin Bird Shadow. Enjoy. Happy New Year. See you in 2021.

This week we talk to Courtney Moran LL.M., chief legislative strategist at Agricultural Hemp Solutions, a group that is lobbying Congress to secure a science-based legal hemp concentration limit of 1% THC in the definition of hemp. Moran has been active in hemp policy for nearly a decade and was part of the team with Senator Mitch McConnell that drafted the original hemp language in the 2018 Farm...

On this week's hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Caleb Kauffman, owner of Lancashire Hemp in Lancaster County, where he has spent the past two years growing hemp and building a co-op with local farmers to grow CBD flower for the smokable hemp market. Kauffman talks about why he started the co-op and why he believes the hemp industry can usher in a new paradigm of good business practices tha...

On this week's Industrial Hemp Podcast, we talk to Fred Strathmeyer, Deputy Secretary for Plant Industry and Consumer Protection at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture where he oversees the state's industrial hemp program. We talk about some of the challenges that Pennsylvania farmers and the team at PDA faced this year in terms of sampling, testing, and COVID-19. He also unveils some detai...

This week's show is divided into two parts. First, we talk to Shawn Hauser, partner at Vicente Sederberg, a law firm in Denver, Colorado, where she chairs the firm's Hemp and Cannabinoids Department . Hauser recently penned an opinion piece in Hemp Industry Daily titled " After the Election, Let's Focus on Fixing the Arbitrary THC Standard in Hemp ." On this week's show, she gets into the history...

On this week's podcast, we talk to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman about his signature issue of cannabis reform in Pennsylvania and what kind of effect legal recreational marijuana would have on the hemp industry in the state. The hemp program is not without its challenges, most notably, the arbitrary THC limits that force farmers to skirt the edge of criminality through no fault of their own, something w...

On this week's hemp podcast, we talk to Brother Johannes Zinzendorf from the Hermitage, a Harmonist spiritual center and working farm in Schuylkill County, where life is lived as closely as possible to an 18th Century lifestyle of self-sufficiency, which includes growing fiber plants to make cloth. Flax had been the main fiber crop until the 2018 Farm Bill made it possible to grow hemp in the Unit...

Sick of hearing about politics and Election Day? Then do yourself a favor by taking a break and focusing on the non-partisan world of industrial hemp. We have two main interviews this week. The first is with Erica Stark from the National Hemp Association who weighs in on a few different hemp-related matters, including what next year's hemp program might look like. And then we talk to Lori Daytner...

On this week's hemp podcast, Connecticut Commissioner of Agriculture Bryan Hulburt explains the Connecticut hemp program in detail, describing the fee structure and testing requirements, and how he is proud of the farmers in his state for taking hemp and running with it. He says the job of his department is to create the space and opportunity for Connecticut farmers to succeed. Commissioner Hurlbu...

This week, our continuing effort to understand the national hempscape takes us to Arkansas where we are joined by Caleb Allen, the hemp program manager at the Arkansas Department of Agriculture. "All of the licensees are conducting research of some type for the betterment of the industry here in Arkansas," Allen said, because the state of Arkansas is still operating under the 2014 Farm Bill Rules....

On this week's show we talk to Benjamin Brimlow and Gregg Gnecco from IND HEMP in Fort Benton, Montana. IND HEMP is an industrial hemp processor and ingredient supplier that contracts with about 30 grain farmers across Montana (and a few in Washington and Oregon) to supply their oil see processing facility. The company has recently broken ground on what will become one of the largest fiber process...

On this week's podcast, we talk to Colorado hemp entrepreneur Morris Beegle, whose many hemp brands include the NoCo Hemp Expo, Colorado Hemp Company, Tree Free Paper and Silver Mountain Hemp Guitars. We hear how he got his start in the hemp industry and what it takes to build a successful hemp brand, plus how the federal hemp regulations are affecting farmers and why the DEA should get out of the...

On this week's show we talk to Don Breneman, the lab manager at Lancaster DHIA, which has become one of the go-to testing labs here in Pennsylvania. Don is also a sampling agent with the Department of Agriculture. On this week's show, Don tells us all about the process from taking the clippings at the farm to drying the samples and shipping them out for chemical analysis and compliance testing. Re...

The whole world weighs on my heart these days. The pandemic. The fires. The political uncertainty. The Interim Final Rule. The idea that hemp farmers could become criminals if their crops go hot. All of this stuff is heavy and I've started to feel disconnected and a little disillusioned. So for my one hundred and first Industrial Hemp Podcast episode, I decided to hit the road in effort to reconne...

On the 100th episode of the Industrial Hemp Podcast, we talk to Rachel Berry, a hemp farmer in rural Illinois, about 100 miles west of Chicago. She grew for CBD last year, but this year she's growing for seed and fiber. She also talks about what motivated her to start the Illinois Hemp Farmers Association, which now has over 600 members across the state and aims to educate producers and consumers...

On this week's show, we talked to a young and ambitious hemp consultant, Michael Edwards, who has been working for the past few years on several different hemp operations in Western Pennsylvania. This year he finds himself working in a very large greenhouse in Westmoreland County. Then we hear about an upcoming series of outdoor and socially distant hempcrete workshops to be hosted in Stroudsburg...

While many photo-period hemp growers are still a month or two away from harvest, autoflower crops in the state are already being cut and dried in Pennsylvania. On this week's show we talk to an autoflower grower and the owner of a drying facility. Together they share their story of collaboration in getting the crop out of the field and into the dryer. Dale Norley, a self-described old hippie who's...

Hemp farmer and author of the new book, "American Hemp Farmer: Adventures and Misadventures in the Cannabis Trade," Doug Fine is our guest this week. He talks about his new book, which offers a whole lot of practical advice to hemp farmers, told with humor and urgency, about climate change mitigation through regenerative farming practices and values. He talks about the arbitrary nature of the 0.3%...

On this week's show we talk to Adin Alai, CEO of 9Fiber, an early stage agri-tech company with a patented system to transform the waste streams of the hemp and cannabis industries into sustainable materials — fiber and cellulose — for applications in nine major markets, including textiles, paper, plastics and more. He explains the how they developed their recycling system, how the company works wi...