Industrial Hemp Podcast

This week on the hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Hector "Freedom" Gerardo, the first farmer to grow fiber and grain hemp in Connecticut for a very long time. Hemp was outlawed in the U.S. for most of the 20th century, but was made a legal commodity crop by the 2018 Farm Bill. "I started in 2021 growing for CBD, and last year again I grew for CBD, but I lost money," he said. He became intr...

On this week's Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Tom Trite, Sairam Rudrabhatla, Kenneth Okrepkie and David Minnig, who make up part of the leadership team of the Pennsylvania Hemp Engine. Funded by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Pennsylvania Industrial Hemp Engine Development Project is a strategic planning effort aimed at creating an innovative and inclusive...

On this week's show we talk to Duane Shugars from Hemp Katalyst and the digital platform Metaihemp, which aims to bring together various parts of the industrial hemp supply chain making it easier for farmers to grow exactly what manufacturers are looking for. Learn more: Hemp Katalyst https://www.hempkatalyst.com/ Meta iHemp https://www.metaihemp.com/pages/index.html Hemp News Nuggets Contact your...

This special bonus episode was recorded at Cedar Meadow Farm in Holtwood, Pennsylvania, where Steve Groff has been practicing no-till farming for over 30 years, and this year he has planted 50 acres of fiber hemp into his no-till system. Andrew Bish from Hemp Harvest Works and the Hemp Feed Coalition was on his way from Nebraska to Washington to lobby for hemp as an animal feed when he stopped by...

It's that time of year again — time to get your hemp seeds in the ground. On this week's podcast, we check in with a handful of farmers (and one processor) to hear how things are going. What varieties are they planting, how much acreage, how's the weather? First we talk to Herb Grove, farmer and bison rancher in Center County, Pennsylvania, who said he's looking to put in about 45 acres of grain h...

Half the people in the world menstruate, but nearly no one knows exactly what feminine hygiene products are made of and how those materials may be affecting the health outcomes of the people using the products, according to Claire Crunk, founder and CEO of Trace Femcare. "Part of why there is so little transparency in period products, Crunk said, "is because the supply chain is global, complex and...

This week on the hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Alejandra Diaz, a hemp entrepreneur, educator and activist from Los Angeles. Diaz does business development and sales for Hemp Fortex, a Chinese manufacturer of sustainable textiles with a specialization in hemp fabrics. "Most of our fiber comes from China, and currently sourcing some from France as well," Diaz said. "And (we are) now loo...

On this week's hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Hunter Buffington, a Colorado-based hemp policy expert with Agriculture Policy Solutions. She shares her concerns about legislation in the Colorado House of Representatives that she says threatens the hemp industry nationwide. SB23-271 attempts to address the the issue of intoxicating cannabinoids such as delta-8 THC, a synthetic compound d...

This week on the Hemp Podcast, U.S. Congressman David Trone, a Democrat from Maryland's sixth district, is our guest. Trone recently introduced The Free to Grow Act, which he says will end discriminatory policies that are keeping people from entering the job market in the hemp industry. The 2018 Farm Bill which legalized industrial hemp as a commodity crop prohibited anyone with a felony drug conv...

On this week's hemp podcast, we focus on the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, Minnesota. The Lower Sioux are part of the larger Dakota tribe, which once thrived in the Upper Midwest, following the bison herds across the Great Plains. The Lower Sioux Indian Community sits along the southern bank of the Minnesota River in southwestern Minnesota. The tribal land was greatly reduced after the D...

Can plants communicate with each other? Do they know when they're under attack from pests? Can they tell one type of insect pest from another—say, an aphid from a caterpillar? The answer may surprise you. According to this week's podcast guest, Aaron Appleby, the answer to all three of these questions is a resounding yes. Appleby, a Ph. D. candidate at Washington State University in the Crop Scien...

Geoff Whaling, chair of the National Hemp Association, joins us on the Industrial Hemp Podcast this week to talk about NHA's priorities for what they'd like to see in the 2023 Farm Bill. Topping that list is the bifurcation, or division, of the hemp industry, Whaling said, with legislation that would create a sub-definition of industrial hemp grown for fiber and grain, making it easier for row cro...

I took the podcast on the road again.  Sort of. I took a plane this time. Either way, I spent four days last week in Colorado at the ninth annual NoCo Hemp Expo in in Colorado Springs. This is the largest gathering of its kind in the U.S. Part expo, part educational experience, it was a celebration of all things hemp. One highlight for me was seeing Lancaster County's own Steve Groff on the main s...

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 ec...

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 hemp...

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 spinni...

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...

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 h...

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...

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...

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...

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 industr...

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...

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.