On this week’s hemp podcast, we listen to a panel discussion from the NoCo Hemp Expo that took place in Colorado earlier this month. The panelists were Rachel Berry, a farmer and founder of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association; Terry Moran, a sales rep from Kanda Hemp, an importer of Asian hemp varieties; Corbett Miteff from KonopiUS, an importer …

On this 420 Bonus show, we share an episode of one of our favorite podcasts, Rumble Strip. It’s made by Erica Heilman who tells stories of rural Vermont. On this episode she interviews Vermonter John Rodgers, a stonemason the Northeast Kingdom, where he also runs a construction business, plows driveways and rents properties, and for sixteen years h…

This week’s hemp podcast is a recap of the 10th annual NoCo Hemp Expo in Estes Park, Colorado, April 11-13, where industry stakeholders gathered to collaborate, commiserate and celebrate the state of hemp in 2024. The episode features voices from many attendees, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. “We’re really all hands on deck to make sure Color…

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Steve Groff from Cedar Meadow Farm in Holtwood, Lancaster County, where he is getting ready to plant 70 acres of industrial hemp. “This year it’s all fiber. And we’ll probably plant about 10 varieties,” Groff said. Of those 10, about a third will be what he calls his “core varieties“ that have…

On this bonus episode we talk to Andrew Bish and Morgan Tweet from the Hemp Feed Coalition, the advocacy group that has been working for four years to get hemp grain approved as a livestock feed. Opening up the feed markets is the one of the most important issues in the hemp industry today. Hemp grain was given tentative approval by AAFCO in Januar…

In this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming speaks with Ken Meyer, beekeeper and hemp processor from South Dakota. Meyer and his family run a fourth-generation beekeeping business as well as the state’s first industrial hemp processing facility. As a young man, Meyer enjoyed beekeeping but was encouraged by his elders to get an education instead…

On this bonus episode of the Hemp Podcast, we talk to Mike Mercadante from Right Coast Hemp in Manahawkin, New Jersey, where the company is holding the first of a series of hands-on hempcrete work shops, May 10-12. The workshops are intended to give local builders and contractors a chance to get to know hemp as a material and see how the hempcrete …

This week’s podcast guest Mattie Mead competed in a 2013 pitch competition at Hobart College in Geneva, New York. He had just shared his vision for a company that made building materials out of hemp. “One of the judges for the contest said, ‘So let me get this straight, you’re looking to build houses out of a Schedule 1 substance?’ “And I said, wel…

Hemp Podcast guest James “Jimmy” Cottrell II is a fourth-generation paper maker at family-owned Cottrell Paper in Saratoga County, New York. He started cutting the grass in high school and began working at the mill after graduation, and has worked his way up. Today he is director of maintenance for the mill and vice president of Mill26, Cottrell Pa…

This is a special weekend edition of the Hemp Podcast. Lancaster Farming speaks with Geoff Whaling, chair of the National Hemp Association. I will update the details of this episode soon. For now, enjoy the audio. Learn more: National Hemp Association https://nationalhempassociation.org/ Thanks to our sponsors! IND HEMP https://indhemp.com/ Americh…

Jean Lotus is an award-winning investigative journalist and publisher of HempBuild Magazine. She is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she has been covering the hemp industry since 2017, and is our guest on this week’s hemp podcast. While she has written about various sectors of the hemp industry, her main area of interest is the hemp building …

This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Maciej Kowalski, founder and CEO of Kombinat Konopny, a hemp company based in Elbląg, a Polish city on the Baltic Sea. Kombinat Konopny is a vertically integrated hemp operator working both in the herbal and fiber division. Kowalski said the company takes a no-nonsense approach to floral p…

This week’s hemp podcast is divided into two parts. Lancaster Farming talks with Shannon Powers from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture about some major changes to the hemp program in the Keystone State. “The first is that Pennsylvania is moving to a performance-based testing system for growers who are growing either for fiber or grain,” Po…

This week’s podcast guest is Robert Hoban, a cannabis attorney and industry leader. Hoban recently published a five-part series at Forbes.com in which he takes a deep dive on some of the most controversial issues in the hemp industry today. Hoban has had a full-spectrum cannabis career, having worked extensively on both sides of the marijuana/hemp …

This week’s hemp podcast guest is Patrick Atagi, president and CEO of the National Industrial Hemp Council of America (NIHC), a DC-based organization that advocates for and lobbies on behalf of the hemp industry. ON this episode, Atagi discusses industry priorities for the next Farm Bill and the work the NIHC is doing to put hemp on a level playing…

This week on the industrial hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Scott Evans, executive vice president of Panda Biotech, a Dallas-based company whose High Plains Hemp Gin in Wichita Falls will be one of the largest hemp processing facilities in the world when it opens this year. Evans said the processing technology comes from Europe and has a…

The Industrial Hemp Podcast is back after a short break. Episode one of Season Four is available now. The theme of this episode is Good News, because there seems to be a fair amount of it these days in the hemp space. One such piece of positivity comes to us from podcast guest Morgan Tweet, executive director of the Hemp Feed Coalition, a nonprofit…

Season 4 of the Industrial Hemp Podcast will be starting up soon, and this brief message is sort of like a teaser for the new season. Have questions, comments or concerns? I'd love to hear from you: podcast@lancasterfarming.com. Thanks!Oleh Eric Hurlock

We’re taking the show on the road again. This week we’ll hear interviews from my recent trip to Massachusetts, where I visited the Cape Cod Hemp House in Harwich, and the Hillside Center for Sustainable Living in Newburyport. Michael Monteiro gave me a tour of his newly built 6,000-square-foot house. “It may look like any other house here on the ca…

This weeks' show is sort of mixed bag. I've got a few nuggets of hemp news, a few updates, a trailer for a new Lancaster Farming podcast called The Farm House, and an in-person interview with hempcrete builder Cameron McIntosh. Sorry for the lack of details on this episode, but I'm trying to get everything done before i hit the road a mini hemp tou…

On this week’s show, we talk with Morris Beegle, founder of the Noco Hemp Expo, the largest industrial hemp convention in North America. The tenth annual expo will be held April 11-13 in Estes Park, Colorado. “It’s really a beautiful mountain resort location where we can get 2,000-3,000 people up there and basically take over the town,” Beegle said…

This week on the hemp podcast we talk with Erica Stark, chair of the Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council, a nonprofit seeking to accelerate the return of hemp to Pennsylvania’s agriculture landscape. Earlier this year, PAHIC received over $200,000 in grant money from the state ag department to attract capital investment with a program called Invest …

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks with Cole Gibbs and Adam Dietrich from Colorado-based Dama BioPlastics. The company specializes in biomaterials and bioplastics made from upcycled agricultural plant waste, including industrial hemp which is abundant in Colorado’s flourishing hemp and cannabis industries. Dietrich, Dama’s directo…

Hemp has played a role in the lives of humans for a very long time, according to this week’s podcast guest, Jeremy Klettke, cannabis breeder and owner of Davis Farms, based in Oregon and Massachusetts. “It’s clearly culturally assimilated with us. It’s clearly evolved with us,” he said, “when you talk about it from an endogenous cannabinoid perspec…

This week on the podcast we talk to Robin Destiche and Corbett Miteff, two founding partners of KonopiUS, a company that sells seeds and consulting services. KonopiUS specializes in seeds from Europe, importing genetics that work best for North America. Miteff said the company is a conglomerate of three other businesses that were exporting European…

After making this weekly podcast for over 5 years, it feels like I’ve earned a bachelor's degree in hemp. Unfortunately, the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast is not an accredited, degree-conferring institution. Perhaps in the Land of Oz, the Wizard would give me a diploma just for showing up, but here in the real world, what if I actually …

The fledgling U.S. hemp industry is decades behind countries like Canada, France and China, but according to impact investor and this week’s podcast guest, Pierre Berard, it could flourish into a $2.2 billion industry by 2030 and create thousands of jobs. To reach its potential, what the hemp industry needs most right now, Berard said, is capital i…

Inflammation occurs naturally in horses and is often part an animal’s healing response, but chronic, low-grade inflammation is a contributing factor in diseases that affect the health of horses, according to this week’s podcast guest, Kristine Ely. Last month, Ely defended her doctoral thesis at Virginia Tech, where she conducted a study to determi…

On this episode we talk to David Suchoff, alternative crops professor and Extension specialist at North Carolina State University, about hemp at NC State and the research he oversees as leader of the Alternative Crops program and as the director of the Hemp Research Consortium. We talk about hemp in the South and why hemp for textiles makes sense i…

This week on the podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Abner Johnson, chief operating officer at Pure Shenandoah, a Virginia-based, family-owned hemp company that has built a successful CBD brand while simultaneously going all in on fiber and hurd. Johnson and several of his siblings operate a full-spectrum hemp facility in the Shenandoah Valley. The…

On this week’s Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Saharah Moon Chapotin, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR). the Foundation was established in the 20124 Farm Bill “We were given the unique mandate by Congress to form public private partnerships to support food and agriculture research,” she said, “re…

On this week’s podcast we talk to Oregon-based hemp lobbyist and legal strategist Courtney Moran, who was in Washington, D.C., last week “lobbying for support for the Industrial Hemp Act.” The Industrial Hemp Act of 2023, also known as the Hemp Exemption, would create a new legal definition of hemp grown for fiber and grain, separating those sector…

On this week’s podcast, we talk to Andy Bennett, founder of Hart Hemp Co., the first commercial-scale industrial hemp producer in the Old Line State. “We're starting as a grassroots organization, putting some industrial hemp in the ground here in the state of Maryland,” Bennett said. “On a commercial scale, it's never been done.” He said the compan…

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to cover crop coach Steve Groff, who was hoping to get one of those multilevel pull-behind sickle bar mowers to cut his hemp this year. But those machines are in demand and he wasn’t able to get one in time, so he did the best he could. “What we did this year,” he said, “is just farmer innovation…

This week on the Hemp Podcast we shift gears a little bit and talk about flax. We go to Kneehigh Farm to meet Pennsylvania Flax Project founders Heidi Barr and Emma de Long who hosted a flax harvest educational event last week in Chester County, Pa. Heidi Barr wants you to know that flax is linen and linen is flax. A fiber artist based in Philadelp…

This week’s podcast is a follow-up to a story we brought to you in April about the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Morton, Minnesota, where members of the tribe have been busy this summer building with hempcrete. With special permission, we share with you the first episode of the JD Experience, a podcast made by 12-year-old Jesse Desjarlais, who in…

This week we're on the road, from Ag Progress Days to Brush Mountain Bison, then to the Old Fiddler's Picnic and hemp field days at King's AgriSeeds and Penn State's research farm. This is a meandering episode. Buckle up and hold on tight. First we talk to Ag Progress Days attendee John Borders, an 83year old who just wanted to sit on a bench. Then…

This week on the podcast, we talk to Jay Burstein, a luthier in Vermont who makes guitars from industrial hemp. His company is called Hemptone Music and specializes in fine-crafted hemp instruments. On this episode, Burstein talks about his process of making the guitars and the journey he’s undertaken to improve his production methods. Burstein was…

This week on the Hemp Podcast, we talk to Sandra Marquardt, fiber crops manager at Textile Exchange, a global nonprofit that works with textile brands, manufacturers and farmers around the world to guide the industry toward purposeful production methods and sustainability goals. Marquardt is based outside of Washington, D.C., and said Textile Excha…

What was the Montana Hemp Summit all about? Depends on who you ask. This episode was made on location in Fort Benton and Great Falls, Montana, and a few airports along the way home back to Pennsylvania. I will update this page with a list of the people I interviewed, but now I'm home and happy to be here and grateful to have gone to Montana to witn…

This week on the Hemp Podcast, Lancaster Farming reconnects with Alyssa Collins, associate research professor at Penn State and the director of the university’s Southeast Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Manheim, Lancaster County, where she oversees hemp production and research trials. Penn State Extension’s mission is to deliver scien…

This week on the hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming catches up with recent Cornell grad Owen Deitcher, who is on the road this summer to visit hemp farmers and processors around the country. The reason he’s making this trip, he said, is to understand where the industry is at the moment, who the main players are and what challenges they face. Deitcher …

On this week’s hemp podcast, we talk to Dalton Wittmer, agronomist at IND Hemp, a hemp processing company based in Fort Benton, Montana. Growing up and working on a farm in southern Indiana and graduating from Purdue University's agronomy program, Wittmer has been chin deep in agriculture his whole life. “I worked on a farm since I was 12 and just …

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 f…

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 ef…

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.c…

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 lo…

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 sai…

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, “…

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…