Industrial Hemp Podcast

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. Earli...

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...

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, especia...

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...

"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 tal...

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. Sp...

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 w...

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 cove...

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 peo...

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 kno...

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 yo...

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 sur...

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'...

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 Ca...

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 cha...

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 l...

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...

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 H...

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 F...

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...

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 Hempst...

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...

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 h...

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...