Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast Eric Hurlock, Digital Editor

On this week’s Hemp Podcast, I recap my recent visit to the Heart of Europe, the Golden City, the City of a Hundred Spires, the capital city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia — Prague.
The occasion for my trip was the European Industrial Hemp Association’s 21st annual Conference, this year held in the Czech Republic.
I was invited to be part of an American delegation representing the American hemp industry. The trip was funded through a grant from the USDA Market Access Program, or MAPS.
The Market Access Program allows the Foreign Agricultural Service, the FAS, to partner with American trade associations, cooperatives, trade groups and small business “to share the costs of overseas marketing and promotional activities that help build commercial export markets for U.S. agricultural products and commodities,” according to the USDA website.
The National Industrial Hemp Council was given official cooperator status by the USDA earlier this year, giving it access to MAP funding.
At the conference, I witnessed my fellow Americans developing relationships and making business deals, and I saw the purpose of the USDA’s Market Access Program playing out in real time.
During the conference, I interviewed over 30 hemp people from around the world.
On this episode we’ll hear what people had to say about hemp in Europe, what the U.S. can learn from the Europeans, what the Europeans can learn from the U.S., and a whole lot more.
Before the conference started June 5, Lorenza Romanese, managing director of the European Industrial Hemp Association, was hopeful for a successful event.
“I hope that people will engage. I hope that people will go back home knowing more than what they knew when they arrived,” she said. “I hope that they are able to develop business opportunities.”
Francesco Mirizzi is senior policy advisor at EIHA and focuses on the fiber and grain sectors.
He said the fiber industry is well developed in Europe, thanks in large part to farmers and processors in France.
“We kept production in Europe after the Second World War, and we have something like seven or eight big size decortication facilities that allowed us to build a market for fiber,” he said, “mostly dedicated to specific paper application composites, and especially in the automobile industry, and fibers for insulation material in construction and chives (hurd) for construction, like hempcrete.”
An epicenter of hemp construction in Europe is war-torn Ukraine, less than 800 miles to the east of Prague.
Sergiy Kovalenkov is a Ukranian hemp builder who has been teaching refugees displaced by Russia’s war on Ukraine how to rebuild with hemp.
“We train the refugees, the people that lost their houses. And they started to build their own homes during the war using local biomass,” he said.
“So when you tell me you have problems, trust me, let’s go to Ukraine. I’ll show you what problems are,” he said.
Hana Gabrielová, a recent podcast guest, is from Czech Republic and was instrumental in bringing the conference to her home country.
She has worked with hemp for over 20 years and is involved in many ares of hemp in Europe, including as a board member of EIHA as well as a member of the CzecHemp Cluster, an advisory board to help guide and grow the Czech hemp industry domestically and abroad.
Gabrielová was very kind to me, pointing me in the right direction on Czech food, restaurants, pilsner, and what I should see while visiting this ancient city.
She recommended the svíčková (pronounced sveech-covah), which she described as the national dish consisting of a root vegetable cream sauce and high quality beef sirloin, served with dumplings. It was good.
As for what to see in Prague, she said I should see the astronomical clock in Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge over the River Vltava.
“They are not far from each other,” she said. “Prague is not too big so you

 
On this week’s hemp podcast we discuss a recent amendment to the House draft of the 2024 Farm Bill known as the Miller Amendment, which was introduced by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill.
The amendment effectively bans all hemp products with any amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the naturally occurring chemical compound found in the cannabis plant.
The 2018 Farm Bill defined hemp as any cannabis with less than 0.3% THC.
But because of vague guidance from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Food and Drug Administration, a cottage market has developed for intoxicating products from otherwise legal hemp, such as delta-8.
In March, 21 attorneys general from around the country signed a statement imploring Congress to close this perceived loophole, saying these unregulated, intoxicating products were packaged and marketed to children.
In a statement on her website, Miller said delta-8 products were being sold in packaging that looks like candy.
“We must stop teenagers and children from being exposed to addictive and harmful drugs,” Miller said.
Miller is from a farming background and represents a rural district in southern Illinois.
Many in the hemp industry think this amendment will have unintended consequences that could shut down the industry and destroy the livelihoods of people who are making legal and safe hemp products.
On the show this week, Lancaster Farming talks to two lawyers serving the hemp industry to hear their perspectives.
Justin Swanson, a cannabis lawyer from Bose McKinney & Evans in Indiana and the president of the Midwest Hemp Council, says the amendment is bad for the overall industry, citing harm to fiber and grain sectors and genetics.
“In my opinion, it eliminates the genetic seed stock that farmers have built, over the last six years, under the broad definition of the ’18 Farm Bill,” he said.
Courtney Moran of Agricultural Hemp Solutions is legislative counsel to the National Hemp Association.
Moran believes this amendment will have less of an effect on the fiber and grain sector, but still finds the new language troubling for the overall industry.
Moran doesn’t see it as an “industry-killing” amendment, as it’s been presented in online headlines.
“I would not uses those words,” she said. “It is a major shift from the policies and language that we’ve seen in both the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills,” and if it moves forward it will have major consequences.
But she reminds listeners that this is only the House draft and there are many more procedural hoops the Farm Bill must go through before being signed into law.
Both lawyers suggest that the amendment has Big Marijuana’s fingers all over it.
The legally murky market for delta-8 and other hemp-derived intoxicants is cutting into the marijuana industry’s profits.
Also on this episode, we check in with Morris Beegle, founder of the NoCo hemp Expo in Colorado, who tells us more about the June 5-7 European Industrial Hemp Conference and Expo in the Czech Republic.
Learn More:
Justin Swanson

jswanson@boselaw.com
317-684-5404
The Cannabis Practice Group at Bose McKinney & Evans

https://www.boselaw.com/cannabusiness/
Midwest Hemp Council
https://www.midwesthempcouncil.com/
 
Courtney Moran

Campaigns@agriculturalhempsolutions.com
202-656-7023
Blog: https://www.agriculturalhempsolutions.com/blog
Socials: @AgHempSolutions
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/agricultural-hemp-solutions-llc/
Web: https://www.agriculturalhempsolutions.com/
Agricultural Hemp Solutions
https://www.agriculturalhempsolutions.com/
 
Morris Beegle
We Are For Better Alternatives
https://wafba.org/
European Industrial Hemp Council Conference & Expo, Prague, June 5-7
https://eiha-conference.org/
 
News Nugs
Rep. Miller Votes Yes on Farm Bill
https://marymiller.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-mary-miller-votes-yes-farm-bill
Farm Bill Amendment Would ‘Devastate’ Hemp-Derived Cannabinoid Industry, C

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Czech hemp farmer, consultant and advocate Hana Gabrielová, who started her first hemp company, Hempoint, in 2010 and has been instrumental in developing the hemp industry in the Czech Republic and Europe ever since.
More recently, with several American partners she founded KonopiUS, which distributes European hemp genetics in the U.S. and provides agronomy consulting services.
Gabrielová said the regulatory process to grow hemp in the Czech Republic is relatively easy compared to the U.S., where growers need a permit, an FBI background check, and THC testing before harvest (For now. Fingers crossed for the 2024 Farm Bill and the Industrial Hemp Act).
“Hemp farming is not really difficult in regards to the law,” she said. “The farmers can buy seeds, which are on EU-registered database.”
While growers don’t have to get a permit, they are still required to inform the government.
“You have to announce one month from sowing, how much did you sow? Where did you sow? Which variety did you sow?” she said. “And announce it to the customs office.”
Gabrielová is a board member of the European Industrial Hemp Association, which is based in Brussels but is holding its annual conference in Gabrielová’s home city of Prague June 5-7.
The conference will bring together hemp entrepreneurs and policymakers from around the continent and the world.
This year’s event includes a trade show where hemp companies can display their products, similar to the NoCo Hemp Expo that took place last month in Colorado.
There are plenty of European cannabis events, but Gabrielová said this one will be different because it will focus strictly on industrial hemp products instead of “vape pens and marijuana seeds.”
Hemp was prohibited for 60 years in the Czech Republic and faces the same marijuana stigma that confuses people in the U.S.
While industrial hemp and marijuana are different varieties of the cannabis plant, industrial hemp has a wide range of industrial applications, such as building materials, textiles and bioplastics, and food ingredient applications for both human and animal consumption.
The hemp industry is relatively small in the Czech Republic. Gabrielová said there are about 300 farmers growing hemp, mostly on small farms, but a handful of big farms too.
Processing is a challenge because there is no decortication facility in the Czech Republic, “so we have to import all the hemp fibers,” Gabrielová said, “which is a lot, because we have a big paper mill here.”
Also on this episode, Lancaster Farming talks with Patrick Atagi from the National Industrial Hemp Council, who has organized a delegation of American hemp companies, including HempWood, IND Hemp, Tuscarora Mills (and one hemp podcaster) to attend the EIHA conference and expo in Prague next month.
Funded by USDA Market Access Program, the mission of the delegation, Atagi said, is to increase production and help U.S. farmers by finding markets for American hemp goods.
“It’s to push product globally and establish a foothold in Europe and beyond,” he said.
In two weeks, the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast will be reporting from the Czech Republic.
Learn more:
Hempoint
https://hempoint.cz/en/
KonopiUS
https://www.konopius.com/
European Industrial Hemp Association
https://eiha.org/
CzechHemp Cluster
https://www.czechemp.cz/en/home/
Cannabis Embassy
https://cannabisembassy.org/
Sustainable Cannabis Policy Handbook
https://cannabis2030.org/
National Industrial Hemp Council
https://nihcoa.com/
News Nuggets!
Key Components of the Industrial Hemp Act are in the Farm Bill
https://nationalhempassociation.org/25816-2/
NIHC to receive 275K in RAPP Funding
https://fas.usda.gov/programs/regional-agricultural-promotion-program/rapp-funding-allocations-fy-2024
Thanks to our Sponsors!
IND HEMP
https://indhemp.com/
National Hemp Association
https://natio

On this week’s Hemp Podcast, we talk to Guy Carpenter, founder of Bear Fiber in North Carolina, where he is spinning a blend of hemp and cotton into yarn and making garments like hats, shirts, and socks.
“The vision was to incorporate sustainability and longevity into people’s lifestyle,” he said.
Bear Fiber developed proprietary methods to produce cottonized hemp fiber, and is making connections around the U.S. and the world to reestablish hemp as a primary “source of natural fibers for better products,” he said.
When mixed with other fibers, such as cotton, hemp brings added strength and durability to textiles, he said.
Carpenter has witness drastic changes to the American textile industry over his career.
“The American textile apparel industry as it existed, doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.
“Textiles have have been remaining rather strong, but apparel, of course, has gone to lowest cost producers and, primarily China.”
American textile jobs are more craftsman-oriented and geared toward luxury goods, and hemp can make those products better, more durable, more sustainable, Carpenter said.
While he sees hope for the industry with hemp, the industry is still contracting.
He said companies in the supply chain are going out of business.
“We’ve lost five spinning mills. We’re losing a dyeing and finishing operation in South Carolina that’s been a bulwark in the industry for decades,” he said.
Spinning is the big issue, he said. But he is hopeful because he sees the work being down to save the industry
“There are people who are working on solutions, not to build it back to the way it was, but to be able to spin better yarns and more technical yarns, and also more sustainable yarns, which are what the industry is calling for.”
Bear Fiber
https://www.bearfiber.com/
Hempcrete events:
Hempcrete Workshop in Pennsylvania, May 25
https://americhanvre.com/cast-in-place-workshop/
2024 NIHH Hemp Building Workshop
https://nihh.org/
2-Day Intro to Hempcrete
https://www.muddauberbuilding.com/2dayhempcrete?mc_cid=f1f4673930&mc_eid=128b44621a
Thanks to our Sponsors!
Mpactful Ventures
https://www.mpactfulventures.org/
IND HEMP
https://indhemp.com/
Forever Green
https://www.getforevergreen.com/
Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council
https://www.pahic.org/
 

Apologies to Jimmy Stewart. I only went to Washington for one day. I took the train from Philadelphia May 6 to record a podcast episode at the Ag on the Mall event on the National Mall in D.C.
The National Hemp Association and the Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council invited me to spend time at their display.
They had a tent set up with tables full of products made from hemp: cat litter, animal bedding, shirts, rope, bio-plastics socks, flooring and biofuels. They even had a regular old 5-gallon bucket made from hemp.
Next to the tent was The FiberCut, a four-tiered, adjustable-height sickle-bar mower made by Hemp Harvest Works in Nebraska.
I spent the day talking to the hemp folks at the booth and people passing by, including Erica Stark, executive director of the National Hemp Association.
“We are showcasing everything hemp. We have the hemp house on wheels here. We have the BMW i3. And most exciting is we have the new Livewire by Harley-Davidson that has hemp fenders on it that were actually grown in the United States,” she said.
This week’s episode is a collection of short interviews with a handful of people.
Pablo Falla, a business owner with businesses in the U.S. and South and Central America, told me about the differences between growing hemp in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.
“Down in South America it’s totally different,” he said. “We got a perfect 12/12 all year long. So we can do up to four harvests a year.
Andrew Bish, president of the Hemp Feed Coalition, had just returned from a meeting with the undersecretary of rural development at the USDA.
“A lot of the dialogue was how we can create opportunities for fiber and grain producers to be able to access some of these government programs, some of these funds that they’re not able to access right now because of the risk,” Bish said.
National Hemp Association
https://nationalhempassociation.org/
Pennsylvania Hemp Industry Council
https://www.pahic.org/
Hemp Feed Coalition
https://hempfeedcoalition.org/
Special thanks to Sandra Mason and the team at AEM
Thanks to our Sponsors!

IND HEMP
https://indhemp.com/
Forever Green
https://www.forevergreen.com/
Americhanvre
https://americhanvre.com/
SunRay Hemp

This week’s podcast takes us to a hempcrete workshop in Barto, Pennsylvania.
That’s where Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre Cast-Hemp hosted a four-day hands-on training session to teach the basics of the spray-applied method of hempcrete installation using the Ereasy system.
Training began Saturday morning at McIntosh’s shop at a farm in Berks County.
With a total of 14 participants and four assistant instructors, he said, “this is our single biggest training.”
Attendees traveled from around the country and the world, including Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota, California, and British Columbia.
Damien Baumer, who developed the Ereasy Spray-Applied system in 2014, traveled from his village in France to help McIntosh with the training.
Baumer said his system is not in wide use in France, but is used in many other European countries, and now has a strong footprint in America, thanks to McIntosh.
McIntosh’s company, Americhanvre (a mash-up of America and the French word for hemp, chanvre), is the authorized North America distributor of the Ereasy system, and there are now more Ereasy systems in use in America than in the inventor’s home country.
Baumer is happy to see the growth in America, and said through a translator, “Cameron’s a warrior who’s been fighting for the last three years to make this happen.”
Earlier this year, Americhanvre was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Army for $1.9 million.
While the training isn’t directly related to the grant, McIntosh sees the connection.
The purpose of the SBIR program, he said, “is to commercialize your technology and your company, not only in the private sector, but also publicly.”
Attendees get more than basic instruction on how to run the spray machine.
“We also teach estimating and bidding. We teach accounting, we give the participants tools that they would need not only to run the system, but also to run a successful business around it,” McIntosh said.
The Ereasy system is simple in its design and function. Hemp hurds are mixed with lime and water in a hopper. That slurry is then pushed through tubes by a large air compressor while the lance operator sprays the wet hempcrete mixture at a wall or, in this case, an SIP panel, which can then be used in construction.
Attendees sprayed over 30 panels during the course of the workshop.
Denzel Sutherland Wilson traveled from Gitxsan Nation in north British Columbia.
“I came to learn how to spray hempcrete and just see if this would be something that could help us back where I come (from),” he said.
Wilson is from the community of Kispiox, which sits at the confluence of the Skeena and Kispiox rivers. It’s surrounded by mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other.
“We have a lot of poorly insulated and overcrowded houses and mold issues,” he said. “And this hemp seems like it could address a lot of issues in the housing realm.”
He also said he finds great inspiration from the work the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota is doing with hempcrete, where the tribe is building houses for community members in need.
Danny Desjarlais is the head builder at Lower Sioux and was on hand at the workshop to assist in the training.
Desjarlais and his team have built three hempcrete houses in the past year and they are gearing up to build more.
He sees hemp construction as a way to rebuild rural communities around the country.
“For any community that wants to give their community members jobs and even better homes or whatever product you’re going to make with it,” he said, “the potential for the jobs is there and the potential to take back your community.”
On this week’s podcast, we meet the people at the workshop. Why did they sign up? What did they learn? All that, plus a tour of a hempcrete house in Pottstown.
On this episode we talk to the following people:
Cameron McIntosh
Damien Baumer
Navid Hatfield