Indigenous Archives - Ministry of Hemp America's leading advocate for hemp Wed, 27 Nov 2019 18:09:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://ministryofhemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Icon.png Indigenous Archives - Ministry of Hemp 32 32 Hemp Surfboards: Riding The Wave Of Hemp Hype With A New Kind Of Board https://ministryofhemp.com/hemp-surfboards/ https://ministryofhemp.com/hemp-surfboards/#comments Wed, 01 May 2019 16:16:42 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=56276 Chad Kaimanu Jackson, a Native Hawaiian, sustainability scientist, and pro surfer, creates the world's premiere hemp surfboards. He uses hemp fibers instead of fiberglass and wraps the boards in hemp foam.

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It took becoming versed in “The Emperor Wears No Clothes,” world travel, and going back to school to study earth sciences and anthropology for Chad Kaimanu Jackson to come up with hemp surfboards.

“I was learning of the great legacy of hemp in ancient China and up to the founding of the US. And in my study of human history and attempting to integrate the concepts of sustainability in my scientific and academic career I found myself in a bit of cognitive dissonance,” says Jackson.

Photo: A surfer in a wetsuit rides a hemp surfboard.
Despite being more sustainable, hemp surfboards cost about the same as conventional boards. (Photo: Bee Line Hemp Wick)

“I knew I had a mission to incorporate my life as a surfer, a Native Hawaiian, and a scientist into contributing to the sustainability/conservation movement in tandem with the cultural revival that was occurring with Indigenous Nations.”

Creating Hemp Surboards

Jackson, 39, has been building surfboards since a young age and started wearing hemp clothes in 2001. For the past 15 years the surfer, who has competed on the Big Wave Tour, has been the primary hemp surfboard builder in the surfing world.

He initially began using an alternative form of surfboard foam based from soybean oils, but became interested in using hemp in any way after becoming involved with the Hemp Museum, a nonprofit originally located in Santa Cruz, and its store.

Jackson briefly made boards for the store before starting to construct his own after gaining sponsorship through Hawaiian-based surf brand Da Hui. He also had a stint with Local Clothing.

In 2007, Jackson started HempSurf. Today he has support from brand Vissla who help him with the boards as well as his surfing and science work.

Photo: Chad Jackson laying on the ground surrounded by 7 of his hemp surfboards.
Jackson’s hemp surfboards are made from hemp along with other sustainable materials. (Photo: Chad Jackson)

Other alternative materials Jackson uses in his surfboards include recycled redwood, flax, agave wood core, and bio-based resins and epoxies.

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in hemp surfboards, says the surfer.

“(It) is a simple delayed response of the public and surf communities finally catching on to the sustainability movement, which in terms of hemp, has been fueled by the recent legalization of hemp agriculture, (the) CBD industry, and the prevalence of Instagram and other social media outlets,” says Jackson.

Compared to the price of conventional surfboards, Jackson says the cost of a hemp surfboard is virtually the same. Shortboards are priced between $500 – $600 while a longboard ranges from between $800 and $1,000 and agave boards start at $1,500.

Hemp Surfboards Enable An ‘Indigenous Cultural Revival’

It’s important that hemp is recognised as it has the ability to offset environmental impacts derived from corporate agriculture, big pharma, and the petro-chemical industry, stresses Jackson.

“The organic nature is superior to synthetic materials in the overall life energy the fibers carry, the strength-to-weight ratios are the strongest found in nature (along with flax), superior flexura,” he says.

“This carries over to sustainable agriculture, economics, indigenous cultural revival and empowerment, and celebrates our connection with our ancestors and the tools they have passed on to us.”

He is currently involved in a film project about the Hawaiians who brought surfing to Santa Cruz in 1885.

“The film will segue into how suffers can come together to solve environmental problems and mobilize as a very powerful and influential subculture,” says Jackson.

For Jackson, hemp surfboards are a way to promote sustainability and environmental responsibility. (Photo: Jensen Young-Sik)

Kea Eubank’s interest in hemp started over 15 years ago, when he was looking for better alternatives to smoking with butane lighters and matches. Hemp was the way forward. Eubank, born and bred in Maui, and his partner Miranda Campbell formulated “the hemp wick,” a term Eubank says is now used by over 70 different companies, and the first hemp wick company, Bee Line Hemp Wick. Bee Line combines hemp and beeswax, both ancient and renewable resources used in lighting medicinal herbs, pipes and fine cigars, and hand-rolled tobacco cigarettes.

“(We) came to realize how versatile hemp is, and have been looking for other uses ever since, which tends to keep us pretty busy, as there are thousands,” says Eubank.

Using Hemp In A Unique Way For Surfing

About three years ago Bee Line Hemp Wick partnered with Conway Bixby of Bixby Surfboards, a board shaper and river surfer in Bend, Oregon, and began making surfboards out of made out of recycled foam and organic hemp fiber in place of fiberglass.

“We were hoping we could trade out even more of the standard surfboard materials for hemp while maintaining the high performance,” says Eubank.

The hemp comes from Romania in eastern Europe, which Eubank, 38, says he’s found to have the best organic hemp in the world.

“They use a traditional process called retting where they let the hemp break down in the field and then finish with machine processing it into long strands which they spin/twist back together,” he says.

“A lot of other manufacturers use chemicals to break down their hemp to a pulp, and then bleach it.”

Jackson catches a massive wave on a hemp surfboard.
Jackson catches a massive wave in Oregon, reiding on a hemp surfboard. (Photo: Richard Hallman)

Bee Line Wick uses the hemp in a unique way to make the boards, using hemp fibers instead of fiberglass, wrapping the recycled foam in hemp.

“I’m not sure if anybody is doing it quite like us,” says Eubank.

‘Stoked To Have A Hemp Surfboard In Their Quiver’

The boards, which he says start at $650 but vary in price depending on size, are popular.

“Half the people love that they utilize hemp and the other half just love how they look,” says Eubank.

“(Customers are) mostly river surfers, and then there’s people just stoked on anything hemp and to have a hemp surfboard in their quiver.”

Eubank says traditional materials used to make surfboards are chemical-based.

“Surfers naturally want to keep the earth and ocean clean because they are immersed in the elements daily,” says Eubank.

“Hemp, if processed responsibly has a lot less impact on the earth, while (the board is) being made, and in the end when the board is no longer surfable.”

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My NoCo 2019 Diary: Visiting The Largest Hemp Expo In The World https://ministryofhemp.com/noco-2019-diary-podcast/ https://ministryofhemp.com/noco-2019-diary-podcast/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:25:47 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=55923 We were completely overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the 2019 Nothern Colorado Hemp Expo in Colorado. Here's some audio highlights from our recent visit to Denver.

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Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp podcast, recorded this time at NoCo 2019.

We were completely overwhelmed by the sheer scope of the 2019 Nothern Colorado Hemp Expo in Denver, Colorado. In this episode, Matt talks to so many amazing people doing things you would not believe with hemp. Our guests include:

The indigenous hemp growers panel at NoCo 2019.
The indigenous hemp growers panel at NoCo Hemp Expo.

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you really want to help out, we’d love for you to leave a short written review or even just a rating of our podcast.

More about NOCO 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtSUvKyBn_E&t=1s

Read more about our visit to NoCo 2019:

Episode Transcript

Matt Baum: Welcome back to another exciting episode of The Ministry of Hemp podcast, and I want to thank everybody that has been listening and giving feedback, it has been great. You can always tweet at us on Twitter, @MinistryofHemp.com. You can hit us up on Facebook\MinistryofHemp, or you can call us too, 402-819-6147. And you can leave us comments, questions, anything you want. I would love to play them on the show. Please, give me a call.

Matt Baum: And of course you can always find that number in the show notes as well. But enough of all that. On March 29th, I was in Colorado for the two day Northern Colorado Hemp Expo, the largest hemp expo in the United States. The NoCo Hemp Expo started about six years ago, this was NoCo6. And just like anything else, it started pretty small. NoCo was put on by the Colorado Hemp Company, which is a division of WAFBA which stands for We Are Better For Alternatives, which I’m assuming means alternatives to wood, alternatives to plastic.

Matt Baum: The basic idea was to get people that are excited about hemp and what you can do with it under one roof. To show it off, not just for industry people, but for people that want to know where this is going. It started very small, and now it has grown to huge size. 10,000 people plus attended NoCo6 this year. I was one of them, and today we’re going to explore my NoCo audio [inaudible 00:01:48]. Let me tell you, I was not prepared for what I walked into.

Matt Baum: This year’s NoCo Hemp Expo took place at the Crown Plaza Hotel, just next door to Denver International Airport. As we walked in, we had to check in to get our media badges and whatnot, and there was this really long hall we walked down with a ton of people.Okay we made it we’re in Colorado. Everyone seemed really nervous. I struck up this conversation with a very nice woman while I was walking down the hall.

Matt Baum: There is a ton of people here. Are we going the right way?

Speaker 1: The expo hall’s this way. I know it’s really confusing.

Matt Baum: Like what’s that huge line for? Do you know?

Speaker 3: To get registered for the conference passes.

Speaker 2: When I went to buy my conference pass they were sold out and I booked my arrangements at the end of February.

Matt Baum: Who you with?

Speaker 2: Black River Hemp Company.

Matt Baum: I’m Matt Baum, Ministry of Hemp. I’m recording for a podcast so I’m just getting some background audio right now. So what do you guys do?

Speaker 2: Seed to sell. So last year was our first year we could grow in Wisconsin, and my background is in natural therapies and holistic health. So I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this to bring this plant medicine forward.

Matt Baum: That’s what’s great. She showed me how to actually get to the expo and she wasn’t even set up there. She was just showing up to see what was going on. Now as you heard her say, she works for a CBD company that is seed to sell. That basically means she works for a CBD company that controls not only making the CBD, but actually growing the hemp from seed to plant, then extraction, then finally in the little glass bottles that you see CBD tinctures come in. I was there with Jessica St. Cyr, Ministry of Hemp’s videographer, who was obviously doing video stuff with help from her husband Spencer. Great guy, helped me a lot too. And when we walked in, needless to say, we got a little overwhelmed.

Matt Baum: As you enter into the hall it is complete chaos. There are so many people here it is out of control. [crosstalk 00:03:58]

Matt Baum: Apparently, last year, people said it was in a smaller space, and there were too many people. We’re in a much larger space this year, and there’s still way too many people. This is crazy. There is hemp everything: hemp clothes, hemp makeup, hemp hairspray, hemp food and drink, industrial hemp, like farmers and industrial equipment, and tumblers, curing machines, of course there’s aisles, and aisles, and aisles of CBD, and there is 100,000 people.

Matt Baum: Okay, to be fair there was a little over 10,000, but I was overwhelmed. All walks of life too. I was kind of shocked. I thought this would be more, I guess, marijuana themed. I thought there’d be a lot of people wearing pot leaves and whatnot, the glowing marijuana leaf necklaces, but it’s not at all. This is all walks of life. There’s suits here- This was seriously not what I expected at all, and the first day was just industry people. So basically you had to be working in the industry or the media, like me, to get in, but it was all walks of life, everyone you can possibly imagine. And not just a bunch of hippies. There were business people. There was a huge European contingent. There were investors. There were lawyers. There were pharmacists. Every one you can think of was here to check out what was going on with the hemp movement.

Kit O’Connel: Hey.

Matt Baum: Hey what’s happening?

Kit O’Connel: How’s it going? Just going around giving out T-shirts and stickers to all our brand partners.

Matt Baum: Nice. Look at this. Where’d you get that guy?

Kit O’Connel: This shirt?

Matt Baum: That’s me bumping into Ministry of Hemp’s editor-in-chief Kit O’Connell, who was actually moderating a hemp and media panel. We’ll get to that in a little bit, but first let’s talk about the show floor. Started on one end with industrial hemp. Outside there was a bunch of farm equipment. From there it moved into extraction equipment. Next up, you bumped into textile people, and then aisles and aisles, like I said, of CBD. After that, there were lawyers. There were real estate agents. There were backyard hemp farmers. Of course there was people selling all manner of hemp food and drink as well. Kit was with Drew De Los Santos, who also works for Ministry of Hemp. She’s in sells and sponsorship, and she had just been at a farming talk that sounded absolutely amazing, and they were gushing about all the stuff they had seen on the expo floor as well.

Drew De Los San: They were just talking about the standard of farming, and making sure that the farming is equitable, transparent, has integrity, is giving back to the land. Just like making sure that there’s cover crops. Somebody covered no-till organic farming.

Matt Baum: Very cool, Very cool. That is awesome.

Kit O’Connel: Yeah we really like, we were just over at the RE Botanicals booth, and they had this new roll on oil that smells and feels amazing.

Matt Baum: Oh yeah?

Kit O’Connel: Yeah I put it all over my neck, and Drew was putting it on her temples, and oh it feels so good [crosstalk 00:07:13] It’s like ginger lime scented, it’s really nice.

Matt Baum: Oh I’ll have to check that out. [crosstalk 00:07:20] I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record but you would not believe how many different vendors were at this convention doing everything that you could possibly think of with this plant. The first day that I was there I was bewildered. I literally wandered around like a lost child, wide eyed just marveled at all the different aspects of hemp that were represented.

Matt Baum: There’s a bunch of hemp pet treats, CBD for your pets, drinks, all manner of bath soaps, bath and body bombs, literally anything you can think of hemp is here. Maybe it’s just because I’m new to this, and of course I’m aware that hemp is a huge market that’s burgeoning, there’s a reason I’m doing a podcast about it, but I could not believe how many people were here, and how excited they all were for every aspect of hemp and what it can do for society. And not just that, but the responsibility behind that. It really was incredible.

Matt Baum: More than 200 different companies signed up to come and display here. Thank God there’s a cash bar cause this is a little overwhelming. Oh, pardon me. Sorry guys. Excuse me. It is very crowded. I have no idea. They told us to expect 10,000 people, and I would bet every bit of 10,000 people showed up. After finally gathering my wits, and getting my bearing for the show floor itself, it’s time to start talking to people, and oddly enough one of the first guys I talked to is from Nebraska just like me. Nebraska just like me.

Jeff Pascal: Jeff Pascal.

Matt Baum: P-A-S-C-A-L and you’re with Sand Hills Hemp?

Jeff Pascal: Correct.

Matt Baum: What does Sand Hills Hemp do?

Jeff Pascal: Coming soon, we essentially want to convert family farm to hemp production. It’s been corn forever. Been in the family for a hundred plus years.

Matt Baum: And you’re out in the panhandle of Nebraska basically?

Jeff Pascal: Atkinson, do you know where that is?

Matt Baum: Atkinson. Yeah, of course. I’m, Omaha.

Jeff Pascal: Oh okay. So Atkinson, and down near McCook, also. So there’s lots of lands. There’s expertise. So the question really becomes, legislation in Nebraska’s difficult.

Matt Baum: What’s the challenges you’re running into right now?

Jeff Pascal: They’re pretty much stonewalling applications, and/or the barriers to entry are really high. Last year was ridiculous. The barriers to entry were about $100,000 for five plants.

Matt Baum: Oh God.

Jeff Pascal: To the [inaudible 00:10:05] so they’ve got to really get off of that and then make the move, in my opinion, to sustainable agriculture, end of monocropping in Nebraska, and then regenerate that soil.

Matt Baum: Yeah cause it’s a desert out there right now.

Jeff Pascal: Exactly, a wet one.

Matt Baum: Corn. Well yeah. It’s bizarre. Corn and soy beans have like robbed all the nutrients from a lot the farm fields out there. Now, are you a farmer or are you an advocate? Or both?

Jeff Pascal: Both.

Matt Baum: Both. Okay.

Jeff Pascal: Essentially, I mean right now I’m not farming, but-

Matt Baum: How much land do you have that you want to plant hemp with, roughly?

Jeff Pascal: Probably just start like 120, 130 acres, and then up to 1100 acres potentially

Matt Baum: Is there any hope with legislation? What do you think?

Jeff Pascal: I think eventually. I mean the legislation’s there in the farm bill where [inaudible 00:10:56] Nebraska has to come up with their own program that is inclusive.

Matt Baum: And the farmers out there are seeing the money that’s coming out of Colorado, and they’ve got to say, “This is so much better than fighting with the Chinese and Trump over my soy beans.” You know?

Jeff Pascal: And corn.

Matt Baum: Yeah and corn.

Jeff Pascal: And, by the way, all the pesticides and fertilizers being sprayed. There’s soil- it is a desert to that point because of monocropping.

Matt Baum: Jeff I appreciate talking to you man. Jeff was one of a hundred different farmers, and not just farmers, but CBD companies that were there that grow their own hemp. Jeff’s a gung ho guy fighting the good fight, and yeah he’s doing it right here in Nebraska where we really need hemp, and it’s really just a matter of convincing not just the government, but the farmer, that they should be growing it too. But there were much more than just farmers at NoCo6.

Matt Baum: Okay so what do we have here?

Speaker 4: This right here is a full spectrum hard candy.

Matt Baum: Okay it’s a hard candy?

Speaker 4: Yeah that’s a lemon full [inaudible 00:11:59] How we did it is we took our suckers that we brought to the show-

Matt Baum: Melt them?

Speaker 4: Just smashed them into pieces.

Matt Baum: Fair enough.

Speaker 4: But yeah, it’s some potent stuff. I don’t know if-

Matt Baum: How are you getting the CBD into the candy itself?

Speaker 4: We have an emulsification process that prevents vaporization. That’s the thing that’s really hard to do. I’m not going to give away all our trade secrets, but I will tell you this, when we say 50, we mean 50. You know what I’m saying?

Matt Baum: Fair enough. You can taste it.

Speaker 4: Oh yeah if [crosstalk 00:12:30] you would be having a [crosstalk 00:12:31] Chill the [inaudible 00:12:31] out.

Matt Baum: Awesome, thanks man. I appreciate it. Let me tell you, if you want evidence that you cannot overdose on CBD, go to the NoCo convention. Everyone is giving out samples, samples of everything CBD, and I tried all of them. I had a pretty good day I got to say. Felt pretty loose. Felt pretty good all day long, and let me tell you right now, these people have figured out how to get hemp into anything. For example, Nick French from Colorado Hemp Honey… Tell me about Hemp Honey. How does this work?

Nick French: So I’ve been beekeeping for 12 years producing raw honey that entire time. The last four years I’ve been producing Colorado Hemp Honey, which is raw honey infused with a full spectrum hemp extract. So we take the whole plant extract which contains CBD, so CBD’s naturally occurring in hemp, but we use a full spectrum hemp extract. Meaning that we’re putting more in it than just CBD. You’re getting terpenes. You’re getting phytonutrients. You’re getting flavonoids. You’re getting the whole contents of the hemp.

Matt Baum: Now I’ll be real honest, I didn’t know what some of that meant, but I will learn about it in the next episode. And where does your extract come from? Where are you getting that from?

Nick French: We’re growing it.

Matt Baum: Oh no kidding?

Nick French: Yeah years ago, I mean when we started four years ago, everybody told us, “You got to buy from Europe. That’s the only way it can be legal,” and so we did. And then we realized that Colorado was producing a lot of really good

Nick French: Quality hemp, and so we go, okay, we’ll start to … We were buying from a guy out of Pueblo, and then last year, we said, we’re going to start growing … we’ve been sitting on 27 acres for, you know … all this time, so we grew half an acre. We only grow for our own products. We’re not growing and making oil and selling to other people.

Matt Baum: Okay. It’s strictly for the honey?

Nick French: Strictly for the honey.

Matt Baum: Wow.

Nick French: That way we can control what goes into the plants, and also because we’re beekeepers, we’re conscious about what we do with our hemp plants.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Nick French: You know, I love walking down my rows of hemp seeing crickets to grasshoppers and lady bugs, and there’s even a big snake that lives on the farm-

Matt Baum: Yeah, yeah.

Nick French: … that comes out there. I mean, that’s part of the environment. And then, our bees.-

Matt Baum: Right.

Nick French: … Right? The bees are out there as well.

Matt Baum: So, the bees actually pollinate the hemp? I mean … I don’t know if that’s a dumb question or not.

Nick French: It’s not a dumb question at all. Bees have evolved over millions of years to go from the male part of the plant to the female part of the plant-

Matt Baum: Right.

Nick French: … to transport pollen, which results in fruits and nuts and vegetables. The bees do it. I had 20 hives on 70 acres of industrial hemp in 2015, in North of Denver out in Lochbuie. The bees love the pollen but there’s no nectar in Cannabis and hemp.

Matt Baum: Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense.

Nick French: So, you can’t produce nectar or honey directly from hemp.

Matt Baum: Because there’s no … I mean, there’s a flower-

Nick French: There’s a flower.

Matt Baum: … but not the traditional flower that we’re thinking.

Nick French: You’re right. It’s not an alfalfa. It’s not a buckwheat or clover. They have a lot of nectar to produce lots of honey that we know. Right? But, there are benefits to the bees. The bees are collecting off of the hemp. They value that resin for some reason.

Matt Baum: Does that affect the flavor of the honey they produce at all?

Nick French: Well, the resins don’t go into the honey but-

Matt Baum: Right.

Nick French: … Yeah. Yeah, it’s more-

Matt Baum: But, I mean, just being there around it. Does that affect anything? Flavor?

Nick French: We didn’t notice it because they weren’t producing … there’s no nectar.

Matt Baum: This is basically just being polite and telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. And, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t, but I’m trying to learn.

Matt Baum: So, how do you get the CBD into the honey? Is it literally just mixed in or do you cook it in?

Nick French: Yeah, we got a unique process we’ve developed over the last four years to blend the two together. I mean, it’s a challenge blending oil and water-

Matt Baum: Sure. Sure.

Nick French: … based products. The hemp oil being oil-based and the honey is about 15 to 18% water. And so, it takes a unique process to do that.

Matt Baum: I know. Fair enough. Hey, I appreciate your time Nick. This is great.

Nick French: Yeah.

Matt Baum: This and the honey [inaudible 00:16:43]

Matt Baum: Nick’s honey was incredible and of course, I’ll have a link to his site in the notes, so you can pick some up too if you’d like to.

Matt Baum: But one of the more interesting hemp-infused products I saw was actually a Seltzer water. This is Lindsay Davidson from Queen City Hemp.

Matt Baum: So, tell what we got going on here then.

Lindsay: So, we have CBD-infused Seltzer water.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Lindsay: We got five milligrams of full spectrum CBD per can, four different flavors. Blood orange, passion fruit, guava and lemon lavender.

Matt Baum: How do we get the CBD into the Seltzer water? How does this work?

Lindsay: So, we make a submicron emulsion. We process that in-house ourselves, so … Yeah.

Matt Baum: And where does your CBD emulsion come from?

Lindsay: We make that in-house, however-

Matt Baum: Oh, you make it?

Lindsay: … Yeah, yeah.

Matt Baum: Oh, that’s great [crosstalk 00:17:29]

Lindsay: We’re out of Ohio, but the hemp comes mostly from farms from Kentucky, Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon. They don’t have a hemp program in Ohio currently, so …

Matt Baum: I’m from Nebraska. We don’t either.

Lindsay: Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So …

Matt Baum: Let’s do a tasting.

Lindsay: Awesome. We got no sugar, no calories, no carbs, no sodium.

Matt Baum: Fantastic. So, it’s like LaCroix with CBD in it.

Lindsay: Exactly. Yup. Zeros across the board, that’s really important to us.

Matt Baum: Am I going to taste anything CBD-related? Like some of the tinctures I’ve tasted have been … they kind of have that earthy, grassy flavor.-

Lindsay: Yeah.

Matt Baum: … Is that going to be in there?

Lindsay: So, at the end, you definitely get the slight bitterness from the hemp.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Lindsay: Flavor is very important to us. One of our co-founders, his background is in flavor chemistry from the food packaging world.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Lindsay: So he’s very … very important on that and we don’t want to add a bunch of sugars or artificial flavors-

Matt Baum: Right.

Lindsay: … to the product. It’s kind of right outside five milligrams-

Matt Baum: So, it’s unavoidable.

Lindsay: Yes.

Matt Baum: So, what am I starting with?

Lindsay: We’re going to start with the blood orange. This is our very first flavor.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Matt Baum: There’s no trace of smell, I notice.

Lindsay: The passion fruit, you’ll get a little more smell out of it.

Matt Baum: You do get a little hint in the end.

Lindsay: Right at the end.

Matt Baum: It’s definitely there.

Lindsay: Yes.

Matt Baum: It’s not like, offensive but-

Lindsay: Right.

Matt Baum: … it’s there.

Lindsay: Yup, yup.

Matt Baum: But that’s not bad.

Matt Baum: Okay, what’s next here?

Lindsay: Alright. I’m going in order release here so …

Matt Baum: I’ve talked about hemp cocktails before on this show. See episode two for more on that. But these Seltzers already had hemp infused in them, and would work really well for making cocktails with bubbles.

Matt Baum: I got to say the Queen City Hemp guava flavor was absolutely outstanding.

Lindsay: [inaudible 00:19:07] dried grape as a mixer. Also good between drinks. Also good-

Matt Baum: Oh, I like that.

Lindsay: … when you’re hungover.

Matt Baum: That one’s my favorite so far.

Lindsay: The guava?-

Matt Baum: That’s really good.

Lindsay: … That makes me so happy.-

Matt Baum: Yes. That one’s great.

Lindsay: … Guava love. Great. We got lemon lavender. This is our newest flavor-

Matt Baum: I love lavender.

Lindsay: … We launched this last year.

Matt Baum: Well, the Seltzer water was wonderful, and I definitely needed to be hydrated at the time.

Matt Baum: I think, one of the tastiest things that I happen to run into and … it’s not just because I’m a chocolate junkie, but it was in fact a chocolate.

Matt Baum: Jessica and I were all but too happy to talk to David Little from Incentive Gourmet. They’re a candy company that works with LifePatent CBD who is one of the more impressive CBD companies out there right now.

Jeff Pascal: We are a manufacturer of multiple edible items with CBD.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Jeff Pascal: And we’re located in the East Coast.

Matt Baum: East Coast? Where?

Jeff Pascal: New Jersey.

Matt Baum: New Jersey?

Jeff Pascal: Yes.

Matt Baum: Oh, there we go. Product placement.

Jeff Pascal: I understand. We work with LifePatent. It’s our side group. We probably have a very large breadth of edible items. We come from the chocolate and candy manufacturing industries, and it was drawn in to CBD.

Matt Baum: So, you started in chocolate and candy-

Jeff Pascal: We’ve been in it for 25 years.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Jeff Pascal: We work with corporations like Piaggio, Bacardi. We make chocolates for them, and then people have asked us to do private label chocolate-

Matt Baum: Okay.

Jeff Pascal: … for [inaudible 00:20:34] seed companies and others who wanted to separate from manufacturers.

Matt Baum: And that’s how you came into this?

Jeff Pascal: That’s how we came in, then we developed our lines, and we expanded to four or five different edibles. We have coffee pots. We have cookies. We have hard candy. And, we are an FDA-inspected facility, as we’ve been for many years.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Jeff Pascal: So, we know that side of the manufacturing process.

Matt Baum: How did you meet these guys. How did you find LifePatent? Why them?

Jeff Pascal: We met them in the show.

Matt Baum: Oh, yeah?

Jeff Pascal: And, they looked like they knew what they were doing and we teamed up, and we work pretty well. They make us the CBD because we don’t want to deal with that end.

Matt Baum: Right.

Jeff Pascal: It’s hard enough manufacturing a product [inaudible 00:21:16].

Matt Baum: Right.

Jeff Pascal: And, a lot of people in the industry are not food [inaudible 00:21:22]

Matt Baum: Sure.

Jeff Pascal: We have to be because we know the game. It’s very sort of simple.

Matt Baum: So, the nature of the extract itself; is it hard to get it to bind with the chocolate? Do you literally just mix in to the chocolate? How does that work?

Jeff Pascal: Chocolate … what you need to do is you need to get an oil that could be melted or mixed in [inaudible 00:21:40]-

Matt Baum: Sure.

Jeff Pascal: … it’s liquid in liquid. And, in order to correctly work, it has to mix for a long time. And, you have to have pretty good equipment. A lot of people make it by hand. We have chefs. They have part-time [inaudible 00:21:54]

Matt Baum: Sure.

Jeff Pascal: So … I mean, people do it in small batches [inaudible 00:21:58] but in order to test out, like we have to test out, we have to have the right machinery.

Matt Baum: Right.

Jeff Pascal: Just like we need the right machinery to make chocolate without CBD.

Matt Baum: Yeah. Sure. Of course.

Jeff Pascal: But CBD is an interesting element because it takes a while. Before you realize it, you’re making like, a cup of CBD into a hundred pounds of chocolate.

Matt Baum: Right.

Jeff Pascal: It needs to mix for a long time [inaudible 00:22:21] goes out …

Matt Baum: David went on to explain because of the nature of CBD, you can’t just introduce CBD oil into the chocolate. They will reject each other. You got to figure out a way to make them combine and come together, and do so without imparting that grassy flavor, that herbal kind of flavor that you get from CBD and tinctures and what not. And, you mask that, of course, with sugar. It works pretty well with their chocolate.

Jeff Pascal: [inaudible 00:22:50] 200 milligrams.

Matt Baum: 200 milligrams? Dude, that’s a dose.

Jeff Pascal: Yeah. We decided that we want to do full spectrum because our view is that, if you’re going to try our product, it’s got to work for you.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Jeff Pascal: If it doesn’t, you’ll never going to buy our product.

Matt Baum: Sure.

Jeff Pascal: We do get a lot of people asking us what the records make …

Matt Baum: We tried a milk chocolate and a dark chocolate version of David’s chocolates, and they were wonderful. And, I got to say, even at a 200-milligram dose, there was no trace of that flavor, that CBD herbal flavor that I was telling you about and the tinctures, which is important if you’re selling this to someone who is unfamiliar with, or looking for that flavor and just wants to enjoy the benefits of CBD without that kind of earthy, green thing.

Matt Baum: I know it’s sounds like it, but I didn’t just eat and drink the whole time. One of the more impressive things that I saw there was what everyone was doing with hemp on the industrial side; whether it was making concrete with hemp or composite woods or plastics with hemp. In fact, there was one guy I met that made a bike frame out of hemp.

Matt Baum: This is Patrick Flaherty and he’s doing amazing things with hemp.

Patrick: PF Design. PF Design Lab.

Matt Baum: And what do we do at PF Design Lab?

Patrick: PF Design Lab. We are an innovator in natural materials, and experts in the application of those materials in consumer products and building materials, and all kinds of other things that customers want that have a natural material component in them.

Patrick: So, we come from an engineering background. Also, experienced in processing of materials and developing specs and quality control of those materials to get them in formats that people could use in their end-use products.

Matt Baum: Patrick, you have a bike frame made of hemp.

Patrick: I do have a bike frame made of hemp.

Matt Baum: How the hell does that happen?

Patrick: That happens from a lot of hard work, a little ingenuity and some creativity.

Matt Baum: Fair enough.

Patrick: So, I was approached by some guys that made a carbon frame, and they said,

Patrick: “We want to make a hemp frame” or natural fiber frame really.

Patrick: I said, “Let’s do it on a flax fiber. It’s a pre-brake. It’s similar to the carbon that you’re already using.”

Patrick: They said, “Well, we want to do it on hemp.”

Patrick: And I said, “Well, that material doesn’t material doesn’t really exist.”

Patrick: So, they said, “Okay. Well, let’s do it anyway.” So … I … Yeah …

Matt Baum: That’s how the best ideas happen.

Patrick: Yeah, exactly. So, I told them, “Okay. Well, we have have to develop a material that not only will work for us and manufacture, but will work in your manufacturing system.” So, I spent some time working on getting some fabrics that I thought would work and some resin systems that I thought would work. Did some experimenting. Made some trials. Sent them a couple of pieces. The initial ones worked in their prototyping. We made a bunch more material. I went there and we did a layout, and then we end up with a bike frame made out of hemp. The first one that I know of.

Matt Baum: How does it hold up compared to like, carbon steel? Is it lighter? Heavier?

Patrick: It’s going to be … so, the advantage of natural materials versus synthetics or things like that … Light-weighting and damping properties. Now that one was designed purely, “can we do it.”

Matt Baum: Right.

Patrick: So, it’s only got about two layers of materials in there. It weighs about what a carbon frame would weigh.

Matt Baum: So, this is like a proof of concept basically.

Patrick: This is a proof of concept. Right. That’s why you see that it’s not completely finished, has some spots and whatnot, but hey, we did it. It works. It could be … with a little bit more engineering, we could actually make that so it was rideable frame. It would increase the weight a little bit, probably about 30% and that frame would end up being around probably 1400 grams or so, 1500 grams maybe.

Matt Baum: So, real similar. In ways.

Patrick: Similar. Similar. But, better damping properties and made from rapidly renewable materials, including a bioresin.

Matt Baum: Possibly stupid question.

Patrick: What?

Matt Baum: When I’m done with it, if I bury it, will it melt down to nothing?

Patrick: It does not.

Matt Baum: Okay.

Patrick: It does not. No. So, actually I want to talk about that actually a little bit. So, people talk about biodegradability or recyclability and biophase stuff. So, it’s only recyclable if you actually recycle it.

Matt Baum: Right.

Patrick: Right?

Matt Baum: Right.

Patrick: And, it’s only compostable if the microbes that actually can compost it, gets the oxygen and things that they need to actually compost it. If you go bury it in a landfill then, it’s not going to.

Patrick: So, the … really what you want to do is on the front end. You want to put as much bio-based materials on the front end of your stuff-

Matt Baum: Right.

Patrick: … that offsets your other traditional synthetic materials because … then, it doesn’t matter what you do with it. At the end of the day, if you don’t recycle, if you don’t, you know … if you just throw it away … like the same thing you did with the other stuff, but you have lower energy input at the beginning of it. So, you won upfront. You didn’t wait till the end of the day.

Matt Baum: Makes perfect sense.

Patrick: Yeah.

Matt Baum: Patrick, I appreciate your time, man.

Patrick: Alright. Thanks a lot, man.

Matt Baum: Let that just sink in for a second. Patrick who is admittedly an engineering genius and nerd, made a bike frame out of hemp.

Matt Baum: Not long after I talked to Patrick, I sat in on a panel that discussed hemp usage in construction and building, and they were talking about using hemp-infused lumber, using hemp-infused concrete; literally making concrete and building materials out of hemp. A plant that grows in a hundred days. It’s completely renewable.

Matt Baum: Instead of cutting down trees, you can grow this plant in a hundred days and make concrete out of it, make composite woods, strengthen plastics

Matt Baum: It was incredible what these people were doing. And, the one thing that everyone there had in common was a sense of responsibility, not just to the public and to the people that were buying the stuff, but to the earth. I mean, listen to the way that this guy that I talked to talks about the way that they’re fighting mites that attack hemp plants. He’s not doing it with poison. [crosstalk 00:28:24].

Speaker 5: So it’s all good, and we’ve run tests in Colorado on hemp on russet mites where the growers were having trouble. They had tried a number of different materials to control russet mites, they weren’t very effective, so we said, “Here’s another option.” So, our product was somewhat unique, so we ran the trials, multiple replications, we controlled russet mites about 99%, which, previously, they were hoping to get 50%.

Speaker 6: Right.

Speaker 5: So, it’s a huge opportunity for our company, and for growers to deal with a pest that’s a major issue.

Speaker 6: The russet mite, is that the biggest issue?

Speaker 5: It’s one of them. Hemp, actually, it’s a strange story. These mites are actually released by the state of Colorado as a bio-control for tumble weed, Canadian thistle, and some other issue.

Speaker 6: Oh, so they attack weeds?

Speaker 5: That’s correct.

Speaker 6: Therefore, hemp being a weed …

Speaker 5: Surprise.

Speaker 6: [crosstalk 00:29:25] russet mites come from.

Speaker 5: Yeah, guess what?

Speaker 6: That makes perfect sense.

Speaker 5: Right. But, there’s not any real controls out there that are effective until this came along. So.

Speaker 6: So, how is your chemicals different than, say, like, other pesticides that kill things?

Speaker 5: Yeah. It’s [inaudible 00:29:40] mode of action. These are botanical oils that suffocate pests, and, also …

Speaker 6: So, not poison at all?

Speaker 5: Totally not poisonous. There’s no residue left on the crop afterwards. These are actually not registered with the US EPA. They’re exempt, because they’re food grade materials.

Speaker 6: So, you could drink this if you wanted to?

Speaker 5: Well, you wouldn’t want to, but …

Speaker 6: But, you could.

Speaker 5: Theoretically, it wouldn’t kill you.

Speaker 6: Okay.

Speaker 5: And, it wouldn’t do any permanent damage.

Speaker 6: I see you don’t put anything in it to make it taste good.

Speaker 5: That’s correct.

Speaker 6: Okay.

Speaker 5: That’s right.

Speaker 6: We don’t want them enjoying it. [crosstalk 00:30:15].

Matt Baum: [crosstalk 00:30:15] lost his name in the shuffle, but even the people that were there pushing pesticides were coming from a very responsible place, and thinking about how these pesticides would affect the environment.

Matt Baum: Now, I admit, I don’t go to a lot of agricultural expos, but I’m assuming that most of the people that are at these other agricultural expos don’t talk like this. The [NoCo 00:30:41] expo wasn’t just full of vendors, there were several great panels, as well. One of which was Kit’s panel, Hemp in the Media, and I will definitely figure out a way to get that up for you to listen to, but one of the best panels that I went to was the Indigenous Peoples panel, and it was Native American tribes that were growing hemp on their reservations, and they had some really incredible things to say about the nature of the plant, and how we view big agricultural farming today.

Matt Baum: I’m going to leave you with some comments from [Marcus Grignon 00:31:20], and I apologize if I’m mispronouncing that, and Winona LaDuke. Marcus is from the Hemp Stead project, Heart, and Winona works for Winona’s Hemp, both of which grow hemp on Indian reservations, and they had a whole different idea of how we should even think about these plants. I’ll let them tell you about it.

Marcus: Yeah. So, back in 2016, we were down in Westminster at the HIA conference, and Alex and I were on a panel there, as well. Afterwards we had somebody come in, and, I think it might have been Doug Fine that was recording us. We were sitting in there in a room, and we were talking about patents and genetics, and doing patent genetic and whatnot, the question was posed like, “Do you patent your own genetics?”

Marcus: Because, Alex has his own seed. He thought about it for a while, and he’s like, “You know, make a lot of good money out of it.” But, then, he consulted his elders, and the elders said, “You patented genetics, you’re going to have those genetics in the afterlife, and that plant is going to be your slave.” And he didn’t want that.

Marcus: So, he didn’t patent his genetics. In my mind, when I look at what’s going on in the industry of certified seed, Europe has patented everything. It’s like, man, I just look at it and I’m like, “Really? I have to sign all this paperwork in order to get you a seed so I can plant it?” This came from [Coco Ma Sihiki 00:32:48], it didn’t come from some lab. We should be able to grow this no matter what, and be able to cross breed it and change it, and make it better than it is right now.

Marcus: In my mind, it’s been a real honor to learn from Alex, and also an honor to be on a stage with Rosebud. We shared a stage back in NoCo3, I think. You spoke first, I spoke second. So, it’s nice to have her back to sit and talk with us and conversate, so.

Marcus: But, I mean, yeah, if anything you take away today is, fight with the patents and the genetics, because, really, that’s what’s going to really hamper the industry, and it’s going to hamper jobs more than anything. Yeah.

Speaker 7: Anybody else on that at all?

Winona: [inaudible 00:33:34]. So, my tribe grew and I grow now for three years. So, originally they got some European varieties, and then they all went feral. So, I feel like they all came home to us. You know what I’m saying? We’ve got a little bit of this, and they’ve got some Nebraska hemp. We call it the [Tridell 00:33:56] hemp collection in honor of John.

Winona: So, I just feel that hemp really grew well in our territory. That’s why we have 11 hemp bails. We need those northern varieties, like we do best with those varieties that are northern European varieties, because we’re super far north.

Winona: I feel, like I said before, a plant’s not a slave. So, I feel confident growing that. We’re growing fiber hemp, so it’s not THC. I don’t got to worry about that stuff in it, but I really feel like those plants belong in that territory, and they do good in there. So, I’m in that same … I had thought about patenting them, and they just seem to, they all reseed. So, I feel like they’re happy.

Winona: They belonged to somebody once, but that was a long time ago.

Speaker 7: Exactly. Yes. You’ve all kind of touched on this [crosstalk 00:34:57].

Matt Baum: The last part was a little hard to hear, and, well, that’s my fault, but what Winona said was, “These plants may have belonged to somebody once, but that was a long time ago.” And at the end of the day, everyone at this conference had so much respect for the hemp plant itself, it was amazing. I’ve got to say, coming in as neophyte, I left as a believer.

Matt Baum: I didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, if you will, I saw the evidence. I talked to people that believed in this stuff. I met so many incredible people working in this industry, and working to not just educate the public in what hemp can do, but bring it to the public, force it on them and say, “Hey, we need to make a change. We need to do better, and there’s a way to do it, and we can do it with hemp.”

Matt Baum: I got to say, NoCo6 was incredible. I had an amazing time there. I met so many wonderful people that are working so hard to bring hemp to people in so many different ways. What you heard here doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what was at this convention.

Matt Baum: Ministry of Hemp’s videographer, Jessica, has a bunch of videos up on the website you should check out, as well. I had an amazing time, and I learned so much, and I cannot wait to go again next year. I just hope they can find a bigger space, because with this much interest and this many people showing up, there is no way they can do it in the same convention center.

Matt Baum: So, that was my NoCo6 diary. It was an amazing time. There was so much more I wish I could tell you about, but this would end up being a four to five hour show, and I’m not going to ask you to do that. But, if you find yourself in Denver in the last weekend of March next year, I highly, highly suggest you check it out. It was incredible.

Matt Baum: Next time on the show we are going to be talking about extraction. The science of how you get cannabinoids out of a hemp plant, specifically for CBD, and I’ve lined up a bunch of really smart people that are going to tell you about all the different ways that cannabinoids are extracted.

Matt Baum: In the meantime, I would love to hear from you guys. Again, you can hit us up on Twitter at Ministry of Hemp, or on Facebook, backslash Ministry of Hemp. You can call us at 402-819-6147. Leave us a voicemail with a question or a suggestion for the show, anything you want, and I will play it on here. I look forward to a day where I have enough questions that we can just have a whole show playing your questions with a professional answering, not someone like me. I’ll get somebody smarter, trust me.

Matt Baum: You can also send your questions or reviews to matt@wordpress-559906-1802377.cloudwaysapps.com. That’s M-A-T-T at Ministry of Hemp dot com. And don’t forget to subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

Matt Baum: By the way, if you liked this show, and you really want to help me out, leave a review on iTunes. It seriously helps in search results and it just takes a second of your time. As always there will be a full written transcript of this show in the notes including links to everybody that I talked to at the NoCo show. Like I said, I will be back in a couple of weeks here with a show about extraction. It’s going to be really cool, and I can’t wait to tell you guys about it, but for now, this is Matt Baum with the Ministry of Hemp reminding you to take care of yourself, take care of others, and make good decisions, will you?

As always, you can find download the complete show transcript here:

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NoCo Hemp Expo 2019: Patents For Hemp? Bodies & CBDA Decarboxylation https://ministryofhemp.com/noco-hemp-expo-2019/ https://ministryofhemp.com/noco-hemp-expo-2019/#respond Fri, 05 Apr 2019 19:48:30 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=55541 Ministry of Hemp visited NoCo Hemp Expo 2019. Jessica, Drew, Kit, and Matt from Ministry of Hemp headed to Denver for NoCo Hemp Expo 2019. This video has just a few of the many highlights from the trip. Marcus Grignon from Hempstead Project Heart talk about patents on hemp during the Indigenous Perspectives of Hemp […]

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https://youtu.be/NtSUvKyBn_E

Ministry of Hemp visited NoCo Hemp Expo 2019.

Jessica, Drew, Kit, and Matt from Ministry of Hemp headed to Denver for NoCo Hemp Expo 2019. This video has just a few of the many highlights from the trip. Marcus Grignon from Hempstead Project Heart talk about patents on hemp during the Indigenous Perspectives of Hemp panel, Kit O’Connell, our very own editor in chief, talks about language in the hemp industry, and Keith Butler from Life Patent tells us about how our bodies process CBDA!

Hemp fashion on display at the NoCo Hemp Expo 2019 fashion show, ranging from a tailored hemp suit to hemp hoodies, Hawaiian shirts and t-shirts.
Hemp fashion on display at NoCo 6’s fashion show, ranging from a tailored hemp suit to hemp hoodies, Hawaiian shirts and t-shirts. (Ministry of Hemp / Kit O’Connell)

NoCo 6 was a blast, we can’t wait for next year!

TOPICS FROM NOCO 6: FURTHER READING

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Farming The Fields Of Green: The challenges of the Hemp grower in America https://ministryofhemp.com/podcast-3-hemp-farming/ https://ministryofhemp.com/podcast-3-hemp-farming/#respond Thu, 04 Apr 2019 21:17:53 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=55489 In the third episode of Podcast, host Matt Baum looks at the promises and challenges of hemp farming in the United States. Plus our first coverage of the 2019 NoCo Hemp Expo.

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Welcome to episode 3 of the Ministry of Hemp Podcast! This time on the show we’re talking about what goes into hemp farming and the challenges facing today’s hemp farmer.

This episode’s guests include:

Our new Regulation Wrangler (cool title right?) Jenn Price from Golden State Govt. Relations where she serves as a consultant in the cannabis industry. Jenn opens the show talking about the challenges of USDA and FDA regulations that could slow down the industry.

Josh Hendrix, Director of U.S. Hemp Production for CV Sciences, Inc and Plus CBD Oil, talks about hemp farming and the challenges of growing a crop that’s been illegal for 75 years.

And finally, the show closes with an introduction to the Indigenous Perspectives of Hemp panel at this past NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver Colorado. Olowan Martinez of the Oglala Sioux Tribe spoke about a major issue facing tribes growing hemp on reservation lands that I hadn’t even considered.

We want to hear from you too. Send us your questions and you might hear them answered on future shows! Send us your written questions to us on Twitter, Facebook, email matt@ministryofhemp.com, or call us and leave a message at 402-819-6417.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

More about Hemp Farming

Read more about hemp farming in the U.S.:

Episode Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to the Ministry of Hemp Podcast.

Matt: Last time on the show we were talking about eating hemp and how to introduce it into your diet, but that hemp has got to come from somewhere. So today on the show we are going to look at hemp farming and the challenges that American hemp farmers face.

Matt: Now, I’m sure you’ve heard that recently the 2018 Farm Bill passed, and that Farm Bill allowed farmers to start growing industrial hemp. The Farm Bill defines hemp as cannabis that contains less than .3 per cent THC. I’d love to tell you that was it and farmers everywhere are rejoicing, but there’s not quite hemp gold in those fields yet, son.

Matt: Now that the government is involved, that means Uncle Sam has some rules and regulations that he’s going to need farmers in all 50 states to follow if they want to get in on growing hemp. Towards the end of last month, the FDA and the USDA made some announcements that they were going to open the floor to listen to representatives and their plans for how their states would like to grow hemp, sort of like the meeting of the committee to form a committee if you will.

Matt: Of course there’s going to be lots of rules and regulations coming down, now I am not a lawyer, I only pretend to be one on my comic book show every once in a while. Not here, this is serious stuff. So I found the next best thing.

Jen Price D.C.: Hi, I’m doctor Jen Price, D.C., I am the director of state compliance at Golden State Government Relations and I work with people on regulatory compliance for cannabis, and as hemp has become the big hot topic, we are transitioning towards helping folks with hemp as well.

Matt: Jen is great, she is a super passionate cannabis activist, she is a doctor of chiropractic, and she knows her way around these legal rules and regulations pretty good, so I have made her the official Ministry of Hemp legal consultant. Bad news Jen, I’m afraid it doesn’t pay well.

Jen Price D.C.: I just want to say, before I go into any of this, I am not a lawyer. I work in regulation and compliance so we are following all of this, I do work with all of this, but nothing I’m saying here is legal advice.

Matt: Okay, so unlike lawyers you’re not full of B.S. is what you’re saying?

Jen Price D.C.: Right, I’m just going to give it to you straight.

Matt: Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: There’s a couple things that have been going on since the 2018 farm bill passed so everybody’s been super excited that hemp has basically been legalized, but what a lot of people don’t realize is there’s still some more steps to go before this is actually going to be a real thing that’s operationally happening.

Matt: This is legalization on a federal level only, right?

Jen Price D.C.: Correct, and it is going to apply to all the states but it’s just a little more complex. You can pass a law but just because you passed a law doesn’t mean that you have the regulatory framework to put that law into place, so where we are right now is at that time where we need to put the regulatory framework into place. And what’s just happened this week is we’ve had some announcements from both the USDA and the FDA about their plans and timeframes that they’re looking at to actually implement these things that had just recently become legal because of the 2018 farm bill.

Matt: Legal in quotations, right? Because-

Jen Price D.C.: Legal in quotations.

Matt: – On a state level, like a red state like Nebraska can decide no we’re not legalizing it here yet.

Jen Price D.C.: There are still states’ rights and really what’s going on right now is, until the United States Department of Agriculture comes up with their regulatory framework, nobody can start to really utilize the benefits of the 2018 farm bill.

Matt: Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: They’re going to have to put into place what the process is going to have to be for regulation, and then there’s going to be two scenarios: either a state can adopt the USDA’s regulatory framework, or if a state wants to have their own regulatory framework, they need to apply to the USDA to have it approved before they can implement it. But they’ll accept applications from states or plans from states at this point, but they aren’t going to start reviewing them until after they’ve decided what they want to do at the federal level.

Matt: Okay.

Jen Price D.C.: So, the federal regulatory framework comes into place, then they’ll start looking at the individual states and what individual states want to do. And so there’s kind of two parts that I want to discuss because we’ve got what’s going on with growing hemp and the USDA, and then we’ve got what’s going on with hemp derived CBD products and the FDA.

Matt: Okay, so let’s get into the first one, the growing hemp and the USDA.

Jen Price D.C.: Yes, the 2014 Farm Bill allowed for states to choose to start pilot programs for growing hemp for the purposes of research, the three that have the strongest programs are Kentucky, Colorado and Oregon.

Matt: Let me ask you real quick, when you say growing for research what does that mean?

Jen Price D.C.: Well, it means that that’s all that the feds allowed for, so part of these pilot programs is they need to be collecting some kind of data for quote “research purposes” and some of the states have taken that to mean market research. And so that’s why we’re seeing hemp derived CBD products that are gray area legal coming out of Colorado, out of Oregon, out of Kentucky, stuff is coming in from outside of the US as well, and it’s really been this area that has technically always been illegal. If you look at the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act which is what the FDA goes by, none of this has ever actually been legal as far as they’re concerned for inter-state commerce, but they just really don’t have a lot of resources to enforce.

Jen Price D.C.: But with the Farm Bill coming out in 2018, which has taken hemp and all of its derivatives off of the CSA’s list of drugs, so it basically took it off the scheduling, so there’s now a different definition for hemp [crosstalk 00:06:11] than for marijuana-

Matt: Schedule 1 was basically illegal drugs, they said like marijuana, and heroin, and crack cocaine, obviously, are all schedule 1.

Jen Price D.C.: Right, so hemp used to just get lumped in ’cause it’s cannabis. It’s cannabis and what they’ve done is they’ve now made a distinction so hemp, which means that it has less than .3 per cent THC for the whole plant, is now considered different than all other cannabis which they call marijuana.

Matt: And since this is USDA related, we’re talking about hemp that will be grown for food, for tinctures, for stuff like that-

Jen Price D.C.: Exactly-

Matt: – Not necessarily hemp that’s used for paper or fabric.

Jen Price D.C.: Well, it is going to include the stuff used for paper and fabrics, it’s going to be all industrial hemp.

Matt: Oh is it? Okay, gotcha. So the floodgates aren’t open yet, but the floodgates are opening, if you will.

Jen Price D.C.: They are opening, and so it’s basically …

Matt: Jen is wonderful, and my conversation with her went on much longer than this. And yeah, there’s going to be a big scary regulation show coming, and I’m still trying to figure out a way to make it interesting, so pray for me.

Matt: So, now that we’ve talked about regulation and how scary that’s going to be, let’s get down in the dirt and let’s talk about farming. That’s where this guy comes in.

Josh Hendricks: So, I’m Josh Hendricks I’m the director of domestic hemp production for CV Sciences, makers of Plus CBD Oil. I also sit on the board of directors and serve as president of the US Hemp Roundtable, as well as the board of directors for Friends of Hemp.

Matt: Okay, so you might know what you’re talking about is what you’re saying.

Josh Hendricks: Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’ll give it a good guess.

Matt: Okay. So Josh we’re talking about where hemp comes from, and when I say where it comes from I mean literally how we grow hemp. Just recently the FDA has said we can start to grow hemp and they’re putting together a plan so that farmers can do so, there are some states where they’re already growing it. Tell me about hemp, is it hard to grow? Is it easy to grow? Is it different than say soybeans or corn? I’m a Nebraska guy so that’s what I know.

Josh Hendricks: Well, I also forgot to mention that I did grow hemp for 3 years on my farm, I took 2018 off ’cause I think I was on the road somewhere North of 200 days last year. So it would have been a little hard to farm, and quite frankly I’m not a farmer. I moved home to get involved in the hemp industry, I quit my job the day after the Farm Bill passed in 2014 and decided to move home and utilize my family’s farm, which is small, but also really just to get involved in the hemp industry. I started the Kentucky Hemp Industries Association, I started my podcast The Hemp Happy Hour, started working with CV Sciences, et cetera.

Josh Hendricks: I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not easy to grow hemp.

Matt: Really?

Josh Hendricks: Of course. It’s no different than what soybeans was like in the ’60s and that’s a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States now as an agricultural [commodity 00:09:07], not even just including the food products and things that-

Matt: Sure, sure.

Josh Hendricks: – are made from soy. So, we had a 75 year gap in growing that here, so the variety, the cultivars that have been developed in terms of hemp are either brand new to the US and being bred here in the US, or from cannabis, or they’re certified hemp seeds from around the world that haven’t been grown here and that are being trialed in different states, and regions, and geographical type areas within states even. So trying to figure out what seeds work best, what varieties work best for both CBD seed grain and/or fiber production.

Matt: So basically the biggest challenge right now is what grows the best where.

Josh Hendricks: I would say there’s some other challenges for sure, obviously you don’t have any pesticides or fungicides, and that doesn’t mean the bad ones, I’m very anti chemicals and things like that. But there are organic ways to do that kind of stuff, and we’re still playing with a lot of those going on.

Josh Hendricks: I mean it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that we’ve been given this 75 year break, I know it stinks to think we missed out on this opportunity for so long, but now we have an opportunity really to not [inaudible 00:10:15] with GMOs with particular plants, we can do it the right way, we can learn how to farm this organically, which we’re forced to do right now because there are no approved pesticides, [inaudible 00:10:25], or sprays or anything of that nature for hemp, and hopefully that’ll stay that way for a while so we can figure out how to grow this organically.

Josh Hendricks: At CV Sciences we’re working with the Rodale Institute along with the likes of Patagonia and Dr. Bronner to try to help them further, and really advance as fast as we can the organic research on this new crop because this can also hopefully transition farmers back to the organic way of farming.

Matt: Sure. Okay, now you’re in Kentucky, is that right?

Josh Hendricks: I have an apartment in Kentucky and a farm there I don’t see it very often.

Matt: Oh okay. When you say I moved home you

Matt: … home to Kentucky, but you travel all the damn time.

Josh Hendricks: I established residency there, yes.

Matt: Got you. Okay. So growing hemp, in and of itself, is it easier or harder in the sense that like compared to another crop as far as pests and challenges with the weather and soil and stuff like that? Or is it the kind of thing where it’ll really grow anywhere if you do it right?

Josh Hendricks: Again, it’s very variety dependent. So, if you lived in Florida, you’re not going to have the same type of hemp growing very well in Florida that you would in say, Minnesota, if you’re using soil. Now if you’re greenhouse, or indoor controlling it, which I just think is not the way things are going to be considering hemp is going to be a commodity no matter how good it is, or how high it is in CBD, it’s still going to be a commodity. And the race is to efficiency. But I think different varieties for different climates, different soil types, et cetera. It’s no different than any other. You don’t grow the same type of soy in Indiana as you do in Kentucky.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: Actually you do, they’re actually close.

Matt: Okay.

Josh Hendricks: But in certain parts of Kentucky, you grow different kinds of corn than you would literally in the same state. We have three very different farming regions between western, central, and eastern Kentucky. And so, there’s going to be different varieties for different areas because you’re trying to efficiently be able to produce that crop and get the most yield, obviously. I mean that seems like common sense.

Matt: Right. I mean that’s anything you’re growing, right?

Josh Hendricks: Right. Right. And given this new crop, we’re really still experimenting. You can look at the states every year and see how many acres are approved. And then you can see how many acres are planted. And then you can see how many acres are harvested. And a lot of that loss along the way is weed suppression, right?

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: The canopy doesn’t come up, they’re still trying to figure out what time of year to plan some of these crops. Maybe it’s later than they think. Maybe it’s easier than they think. Soil preparation is key, obviously, to try and get as many weeds out of there as possible, but also have good nutrients in the ground. So yeah, it’s very dependent on all those factors. And I think we’re still very much in the early stages. But as you’re seeing, there isn’t a lot of success being had too, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the people failing are doing a bad job. Some of it’s weather related.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Some of it’s information they’ve gotten from other folks, honestly. So, yeah I think it’s new and it’s exciting, but it’s very new.

Matt: So the hardest part is really due to the fact that we had a 75 year break while this was illegal. And people just kind of forgot how to grow it.

Josh Hendricks: Of course. I mean, we started sourcing in the Netherlands in 2012 before you could even get hemp here in the US. And trust me, they weren’t having any problem growing it. They’ve been growing it. Those seeds are bred for that climate, that weather.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: That soil. All we did was ask them to harvest in a different way. So, that’s the difference in what’s going on right now. Obviously CBD’s driving the train, but I think what you’re going to see is hemp seed oil becomes big in cosmetics and food and body care. And as the fiber, hopefully, takes over the composite materials industry and, you see it in dashboards and overhead compartments in airplanes. That’s when the rubber starts to meet the road and hemp really does become a commodity. Even the floral material that’s being used for CBD production, or hemp extracts, you’re going to start the see the price of that go way down. So it will be a race to simple efficiency and who can farm it the best and create the best quality, but also at the lowest cost.

Matt: Sure. Now, the hemp that you are growing, do you grow different hemp for something like hemp seed oil, than you would grow for CBD oil? Or you would grow for say, fabric or composite plastics? Is it all different hemp?

Josh Hendricks: Industry specific hemp, such as fiber hemp, is what we actually use for our CBD material. It’s not high in CBD, but there’s enough CBD in there and there’s enough nutrients and [inaudible 00:14:49] for us to produce, what is currently the top retail brand CBD in the world. I think there’s a misconception of, oh the more CBD, the more money because everybody is chasing after Ice woods which is a whole nother ball game that we’re not in. We don’t do Ice woods because we actually believe that that’s going to go the way of the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what GW Pharmaceutical uses, although their CBD is from marijuana. CBD ice wood from hemp is still a little bit more, gray I would say.

Matt: Okay.

Josh Hendricks: So hemp extract is really what we focus on. But that being said, people are producing hemp extracts with all female type grows growing, which you would refer to as maybe tomato, or tobacco style, or even all indoors in their climate, really control environments. Which cost a lot of money, right?

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: And so, the price of a pound of hemp is X, tomorrow or next year it’s going to be Y. And if their cost of doing business is Z, and Z is higher than Y, than that’s not really going to last forever. And so as more and more hemp gets produced, the price of hemp, the price of CBD for that matter, comes down. So it really is a race to efficiency and that’s where I believe direct seed agricultural farming using machines and mechanization, automatization, those kind of things are really going to further this industry over the next three to five years.

Matt: Now what about like nutrients in the soil? One of the things that farmers deal with in western Nebraska is they’ve been growing soy beans and corn for so long that they’ve literally stripped all the nutrients out of the soil. Does hemp behave differently? Is it the kind of crop that could possibly be used to reinvigorate nitrogen levels and stuff like that? Or is it a lot more … is it very nutrient heavy?

Josh Hendricks: Yeah. So it’s a phenomenal rotation crop given that it actually leaves the soil better than it found it. It’s a reginative crop. So, it’s going to sequester CO2 in the soil, and if you add it to that rotation now, it actually makes corn and soy a little bit more sustainable because you’re not having to use all that. You know when I come in with corn or soy behind hemp, I’m going to use less chemicals, less nutrients, things like that, and it’s going to cost me less money which means I’m going to make more money hopefully off the corn.

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: But also, going to hopefully start steering that into more sustainable direction as well.

Matt: Now, we don’t have like you said, a commodity for stuff like this yet, but people are growing it and selling it. What is it comparable to something like cotton, or something like soy beans, or something like corn?

Josh Hendricks: Depends on the market, or what you’re growing it for. Obviously if you’re growing it for fiber, you’re looking at more along the lines of a kenaf pricing. A little bit better than hay obviously because it is a little bit more labor … or not labor intensive, but a little bit more work and it costs a little more to do it.

Josh Hendricks: When you talk about grain or the seed, you’re definitely going to get more than soy or corn. It’s not going to be a ton more, but it’s really not any more cost prohibitive to do it.

Josh Hendricks: And then when you talk about CBD, that number’s astronomical right now.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Everybody’s paying added percent per pound. So let’s say you have a 5% CBD, if you get $3 a pound, you’re getting $15 a pound, and you’re getting in the neighborhood of five figures an acre. And hopefully you have less than five figures to make [inaudible 00:17:59].

Matt: Sure.

Josh Hendricks: So, and that’s unheard of in agriculture. And that’s not going to last forever. Just like it’s not going to last that way forever with marijuana.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: Break people’s … most people’s bubble there. But they were giving away weed in Oregon.

Matt: So we’re going through like a boom right now. And when this all comes together, and finally they … the FDA does approve everything and we have farms everywhere, do you see a bust coming?

Josh Hendricks: I do. I mean I think … like I said, this is a race to efficiency. I’ve been going around the country, I’ve been preaching that for six months to a year. And I’ve told everybody that there’s a lot of people out there recreating the wheel, because they believe in their genetic. And that’s fine, I totally appreciate that, I support it. I mean we need people working on new genetics everyday.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: But there’s a risk involved in that. And that’s, how much money are you willing to spend to develop a genetic and to develop a growing philosophy, if you will, or production philosophy, cultivation philosophy that is very costly? Of course there’s going to be niche markets and people are going to pay high dollar for certain things. But I do think that what you’ll see, eventually, is a commodity style pricing on hemp for both hemp flower material, hemp seed crushed up, hemp seed oil, and then obviously, hemp fiber and hemp herd. You have five different markets there that the prices are going to fluctuate based on supply. And eventually, the supply meets the demand.

Matt: Of course.

Josh Hendricks: Price starts coming down. So, that’s the game with any agricultural crop or soon to be commodity. I think we’re just on the cusp of it.

Matt: Sure. So let me ask you, you said you have a small farm. How big is your farm?

Josh Hendricks: My grandfather’s farm is about 100 acres. And then we have a couple other small farms and one big farm that’s really more just woods.

Matt: Okay. So how much of that are you using to grow hemp? Of that 100 acres?

Josh Hendricks: So we grew 11 acres each year, the three years that we did grow. Then my neighbors are growing somewhere in the neighborhood of a little over 100 acres this coming year.

Matt: Okay. So, what do you think you can get out of 100 acres? Like what does that produce? Let’s say it’s all successful, no problems. Best case scenario. What are you producing in 100 acres?

Josh Hendricks: Well if we’re growing with direct seed, and we’re harvesting the tops and we’re harvesting the stock the way that they do it in Europe, you’re looking to get 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of not … it’s not going to be high CBD, you’re looking at 1% to 2% CBD. But once we CO2 extract that, we can get what we need at CV Sciences. And then bailing up the fiber, you’re going to get a little less than average. I don’t even know the number off the top of my head, because that’s not my business. But, they’re going to get another … so basically they’re going to get a check from us based on the dry weight produced off the field and the floral materials, their stems and seeds in there because it’s both male and female.

Matt: Right.

Josh Hendricks: And then they’re going to get a check from another company like say, a Sunstrand who’s in Mobile, Kentucky who’s a fiber processor for weight of each bail of the stock that they have.

Matt: So the real benefit is you’re not just growing a strawberry. You’re not just growing an ear of corn. You’re growing a plant that is used a lot of different ways. And because it’s used a lot of different ways, you can sell it to a lot of different people.

Josh Hendricks: Well, and the guys doing this are big time farmers that they understand that it’s a numbers game, right? They need to rotate their crops. It’s going to benefit them on the corn and their soy. Especially these organic farmers that we’re looking at. I mean, they’re looking at it as [crosstalk 00:21:25].

Matt: Right. [crosstalk 00:21:29]

Josh Hendricks: [crosstalk 00:21:31] commercial farmers are doing and doing organic. Kind of insane.

Matt: Again, Josh and I had a much longer conversation here and he’ll definitely be back on the show. He brings up some really good points about how young this industry is, the hemp industry. And sure, there’s a lot of challenges to be face right now. But there’s also a lot of chances to do it the right way. And that’s pretty unique for agriculture in this country.

Matt: For the final segment of this show, I wanted to play

Matt: A little bit of a talk that I listened to at the NoCo Hemp Expo in Denver just the other weekend. This was the introduction to the Indigenous Peoples Panel that I sat in and listened to and they bought up some challenges that I didn’t even think about. The panel was introduced by a woman named [Oloah 00:22:20] from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation who’s been growing Hemp for a while and doing pretty well with it. Unlike a lot of other farmers the Pine Ridge Reservation has to be very careful with what they do and how they treat their crops I let Oloah speak about some more.

Jen Price D.C.: Indigenous language [00:22:38]. Good morning or good day volunteers, my name is Oloah and I have traveled here from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, just like many of you, to make connections, network, try to find, I guess, a hemp family is what we’re doing. When I was asked to give opening statements I kept thinking to myself what do I want the Hemp Industry to know about the mentality in the not so indigenous nations, the true landlords of this continent and I want to start out with … by saying, with any industry we know that there’s good and bad in everything.

Jen Price D.C.: So, being a landowner also, land I inherited from my grandparents I see this is a very dangerous time for Indian country again, because we see predators coming in to our homelands trying to obtain land through promises of money, through promises of status, so I want to say we need to pay attention to this fat-taker mentality, so I wanted to talk about a [locota 00:24:09] word that we have and that locota word is [wachetu 00:24:12]. And through our history that word has come to define a white man, but that isn’t the literal term for it, although it could probably explain color. But I guess I wanted to say this word is, in today’s world is more a mentality set or a mindset. Wachetu is taker of the best part of the meat, takes the best part for him or herself, takes the best part of it for self. So I guess I wanted to explain that word that in today’s world Wachetu isn’t just white. There’s red, there’s brown, there’s black and yellow fat-takers today, but see we learned this well.

Jen Price D.C.: So, I guess I wanted to speak about that word because my fear is that this industry becomes fat-takers industry and we don’t want that to happen. I heard [Winona 00:25:26], a hero of mine also, speak earlier and she talked about how this industry is led by white men and I think a big part of my nervousness today was, in my mind, I thought that’s who would be in the audience, is all these … this different side of the hemp industry and looking out at everybody I don’t see that. So, I’m taking it that they’ll review our videos, our statements later. I’m hoping because we don’t want, as indigenous people, we don’t want to be these historical relics to be mocked anymore. As I mentioned before being the true landlords, caretakers of this continent, and we forgot our part. I see our Nations as coming out of historical, generational, chemically induced, oppressive state of mind, but that’s over now. We’re taking our future into our own hands and taking it back from fat-taker.

Jen Price D.C.: So, I guess I wanted to come and express that in this relationship building in this industry, I think of it as how … I think of allowing people into my home, not just anybody get to come in. As Indigenous Nations we’ve seen, you give an inch, they take a mile. So if we only let em into our doorway will they flood our homes? Will they come in and just takeover and assume and assert themselves? We’ve had that happen to us before and I think, now that we’re out of this chemically induced oppressive state of mind, we’re not going to let that happen anymore. So, with this industry being a light for many Nations to come out of that ration line, I’m hoping that these relationships will go for generations. I want to leave everyone in this industry with a question or something to think about.

Jen Price D.C.: Are you here as a fat-taker? Are you willing to share knowledge? Because if you come in a good way we always accept and return in a good way as Nations, as Traditional People of these lands. And again, I do want to acknowledge the [Arapoho 00:28:21], like Winona mentioned earlier, cause traditionally this was their land before Denver ever existed, these town, these buildings, this was already a home to a Nation. So, I think that’s a part that this fat-taker mentality of the hemp industry refuses to see also is that coming out of denial that no, you don’t own land. You stole land. You’re illegally growing and living on stolen land. And so that brings guilt, you know, we’ve seen all this. So, again we’re here about being neighbors and to discuss healing aspects for self and earth, for a mother we all share. That’s Mother Earth and locota it’s [Euchimacar 00:29:17] for us, our grandmother. She was always here for us so it’s time to take responsibility back again, like Winona said, and give back.

Jen Price D.C.: And the locota we know in our history, we were to always feed the spirits and what land and things contaminate it, how are we going to do that? So again, we’re taking responsibility back into our own hands. And so those are just some insight I wanted to share, and again, leave you with something to think about is … Are you here in the hemp industry as a fat-taker?

Jen Price D.C.: We’ve had dealings with fat-taker and we don’t want to deal with fat-taker anymore. So we’re hoping to build relationships that eventually turn into something more solid. And again, also with the bad, just because we allow you into our homelands, don’t assume that you’re being invited into our spiritual spaces. That’s also boundaries as relationships and as relatives as we need to understand. So again, lets keep our common mother in mind in all our interactions with each other and it’s Mother Earth.

Jen Price D.C.: Thank you.

Matt: That whole Indigenous Peoples Panel that I sat through was really amazing and they talk a lot about how successful they’d been with growing hemp and how much respect they have for the plant. They spoke about farmers selling their genetics for seeds and whatnot and how nobody owns these plants and how they bought some of these genetically modified seeds and they returned to feral plants on their own land that grew better there.

Matt: It shows a real respect for the hemp plant itself that, I hope, stays in this industry and it filled me with a lot of hope for the industry. You’ll hear a lot more about my time at NoCo in the next show. I’m gonna do a whole diary on it, but I hope you learned something about growing hemp this week and I’d love to hear your reactions and your questions.

Matt: You can always hit me up via email at matt@ministryofhemp.com. Call us anytime, day or night, at 4028196417 with your questions or comments and I’d love to play them on the show. Shoot us a tweet @ministryofhemp on twitter, hit us up on Facebook at facebook\ministyrofhemp and please, ask us question, that’s what we’re here for. We’re trying to demystify this and learn together. As always, there will be a full written transcript in the show notes for this episode, and please if you get a chance and you enjoy this, leave us a rating on iTunes. It really does help other people to find the show. In the meantime, take care of yourself, take care of others and make good decisions will ya.

Matt: This is Matt and the Ministry of Hemp, signing off.

As always, you can find download the complete show transcript here:

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Marc Grignon: Hemp Can Help Sustain Native Americans https://ministryofhemp.com/marc-grignon-menominee-hemp/ https://ministryofhemp.com/marc-grignon-menominee-hemp/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2018 22:24:38 +0000 http://ministryofhemp.com/?p=54714 When you begin to look into the fight for hemp legalization, you start to unearth stories you weren’t expecting to find. That’s exactly what happened when we talked with Marc Grignon and learned about the 2015 police raid on the Menominee hemp fields.

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When you begin to look into the fight for hemp legalization, you start to unearth stories you weren’t expecting to find. That’s exactly what happened when we talked with Marc Grignon and learned about the 2015 police raid on the Menominee hemp fields.

Currently, Grignon is the spokesman for Hempstead Project Heart, which raises awareness about the benefits of hemp for everyone including tribal communities. Previously, he worked as  staff assistant for the Office of Native American Affairs under Obama’s Small Business Administration.

Grignon developed a passion for hemp as his tribe’s casino ambitions failed. For years now, the Menominee have been fighting for a way out of dependence on government assistance. For a way to provide their reservation with a sufficient income.

Grignon is one of the 8,700 members of the Menominee tribe of Wisconsin. Their history is believed to span back 10,000 years where they dominated 10 million acres of modern-day Wisconsin and the upper half of Michigan state.

John Trudell, wearing sunglasses, smiles at the camera. Hemp activist John Trudell co-founded Hempstead Project Heart with musician Willie Nelson, before passing leadership of the organization to Marc Grignon in his final days.
Hemp activist John Trudell co-founded Hempstead Project Heart with musician Willie Nelson, before passing leadership of the organization to Marc Grignon in his final days. (Photo: Tara Trudell, used with permission)

Despite the dramatic circumstances of the raid, Marc Grignon remains a steadfast advocate of hemp. We caught up with him recently to learn about how he got involved with hemp and how he believes hemp can help support Native American tribes.

OVER TIME, TRIBAL ATTITUDES TOWARD HEMP HAVE SOFTENED

It was during Grignon’s final semester at college when he began to look into his tribe’s background — studying the language and digging deep into their culture. As he went about this research, a piece of information “fell into my lap,” he told us.

The Menominee have a word called “Shaeqnap” and it means wild hemp. The definition talked about a plant that could grow anywhere from 5 to 8 feet high. The tribe used it for fiber, basket making, bowstrings, and so on and so forth.

Grignon was so fascinated by the discovery, he brought it to the Menominee Language and Culture Commission. They were less enthusiastic about his discovery. When he asked about shaeqnap, they simply insisted, “No. We never used cannabis.”

This was a bit of a blow to Grignon as he’s been a long-time hemp advocate. His goal has been to use the plant to provide the Menominee people with a stable source of income. Though not everyone agreed with this idea, Grignon held a determination which would prove to be worthwhile.

And over time, he said attitudes are shifting. “With the evidence we’ve brought to light, more Menominee cultural people see our future in hemp.”

PLANTING THE SEEDS: HOW MARC GRIGNON GREW HEMP WITH THE MENOMINEE

In the summer of 2015, Grignon was working on an Agricultural and Research Project through the College of Menominee Nation and his tribe. One particular day, a former legislature approached him and asked if he’d be interested in working with hemp. Since the Menominee had just passed a law allowing for the reservation to grow industrial hemp for the sake of research, Grignon was very interested.

Part of the reason for this law was due to the fact the Menominees were trying to get the legal paperwork to start a casino. They fought for twenty years only to have Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s governor at the time, kill the idea.

Grignon saw hemp as holding the possibility of being a “natural economic drive.” He recalled:

“So, I was brought on. We planted on July 7th, 2015. 3 acres. I was kind of in charge of monitoring the plants and taking care of them. I was on weed control and I’d go into the fields and pull them out by hand with other Menominees. That’s how I got into the whole thing.”

MENOMINEE HEMP FACED CONSTANT THREATS FROM LAW ENFORCEMENT

The Menominees took all legal precaution prior in order to make this happen. They informed law enforcement of their laws and the fact that they had plans to grow that cultivation season. However, upon hearing this, the feds felt the need to come out and see the fields.

“There were some strong words between the attorney and my tribal leaders,” Grignon remembers.

“The feds were like, ‘we want you to uproot this stuff.’ And we said, ‘No, man. We abided by our government to government relations where we told you we were gonna do it, we passed the law, we had our community’s input on this law, nobody has an issue with it, and now we’re gonna move forward with it.’”

A densely packed hemp field grows tall under a partly cloudy sky, a forest in the background of the field. Marc Grignon helped legalize hemp in Wisconsin after police raided a Menominee hemp field in 2015.
Marc Grignon helped legalize hemp in Wisconsin after police raided a Menominee hemp field in October 2015. (Photo: Marc Grignon)

Which is just what Grignon did. Nearly three months went by. He and the Menominees continued tending their 3 acres of hemp. Throughout this time, law enforcement sustained their efforts to stop the tribe from cultivating these crops.

OCTOBER 23, 2015: POLICE RAID MENOMINEE HEMP FIELDS

In fact, the tribe had a strong suspicion that they would be raided. Even though they followed all rules and regulations, Grignon says, “It’s a real cluster-fuck when it comes to federal Indian policy and federal Indian laws.”

On October 23rd, just when everything was in full bloom, Grignon drove to the fields to find police dressed in camo, fully armed with automatic weapons. He stood and watched as a bulldozer destroyed all his hard work.

Not only was this a giant blow to the operation, but it was an even bigger blow for the next season’s grow. For those plants contained the seeds the Menominees hoped to plant the following year.

Though Grignon was deeply upset, he wasn’t discouraged. In fact, in the months prior — when the Menominees were anticipating the raid — Grignon had reached out to an activist that would not only change his life but hemp’s future in the state of Wisconsin.

MARC GRIGNON’S HEMP ADVOCACY CONTINUES AFTER MENOMINEE HEMP RAID

This certain someone was John Trudell, a Native American author and political activist. Grignon reached out to Trudell in hopes of saving his 2015 harvest. Less than two weeks after feds destroyed it, he received a call from Hempstead Project Heart in which they wanted to carry out an education campaign.

When Trudell found out about the feds destroying the Menominee’s fields, he was very upset.

“He wanted to set up a legal defense fund and do whatever in his power to help us,” Grignon said. “And we took his help. But two weeks later, his cancer spread and he was taken into hospice.”

Grignon had gotten a phone call explaining this and how Trudell wanted to hire him onto Hempstead Project. Being that Trudell had been an idol of Grignon for most of his life, he felt the need to meet the man. Purely for the sake of discovering what the future held for both hemp and Native American culture.

“I flew out there and met him and he basically told me my reputation was on the line,” Grignon explains.

“When we talk about how screwed Indian country is and how dependent we are on the government, I look at hemp and I see a solution.”

“[He said] if I couldn’t get hemp legal in Wisconsin within a year then I wasn’t the person I say I am … everyone will tell you he’s the most intense individual you’ll ever speak to. And they’re absolutely correct.”

Trudell’s perspective on hemp was that “it couldn’t save us, but it could help us.”

Grignon admits he wasn’t able to make Trudell’s wish come true alone nor within a year. However, with the help of a coalition, he made hemp legal in Wisconsin.

CAN HEMP HELP BRING PROSPERITY TO INDIAN COUNTRY?

During Grignon’s time as a staff assistant for the Obama administratio, he saw many real problems he hopes to solve with hemp. This was during one of the previous times the government didn’t sustain proper funding and, in turn, partially shut down for a period of time.

Grignon saw how this affected Native American tribes who weren’t making big bucks off casinos. He knew those tribes depended on government grants. Not only does Grignon not agree with this, but it frightens him to think the Menominees can lose the ability to finance themselves whenever the government shuts down.

Grignon sees hemp as a way for the Menominees to financially sustain themselves. As a source of sustainable profit which may just bring the tribe back to their original roots.

“When we talk about how screwed Indian country is and how dependent we are on the government, I look at hemp and I see a solution.”

The post Marc Grignon: Hemp Can Help Sustain Native Americans appeared first on Ministry of Hemp.

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