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Hempitecture Aims to Make the ‘Most Sustainable Building Material on the Planet’

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

Release Date: 03/27/2024

Bear Fiber Weaves American Textiles with Hemp

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

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...

Industrial Hemp on the National Mall

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

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...

Hempcrete Workshop Lays Foundation to Build Industry and Community

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

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...

Exploring Hemp Fiber Agronomy and Genetics

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week’s hemp podcast, we listen to a panel discussion from the NoCo Hemp Expo that took place in Colorado earlier this month. The panelists were Rachel Berry, a farmer and founder of the Illinois Hemp Growers Association; Terry Moran, a sales rep from Kanda Hemp, an importer of Asian hemp varieties; Corbett Miteff from KonopiUS, an importer of European hemp genetics; and Larry Smart, a geneticist and plant breeder from Cornell University. The panel discussion was moderated by Eric Singular who described the topic of discussion as “the intersection of agronomy and genetics in hemp...

420 Special: Rumble Strip – John Rodgers Weed Farmer

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this 420 Bonus show, we share an episode of one of our favorite podcasts, . It’s made by Erica Heilman who tells stories of rural Vermont. On this episode she interviews Vermonter John Rodgers, a stonemason the Northeast Kingdom, where he also runs a construction business, plows driveways and rents properties, and for sixteen years he served in the Vermont Legislature in both the House and the Senate. He works all the time so he can hold onto the farm that's been in his family for 200 years. It was a dairy when he was growing up there. Now he's growing weed for Vermont retailers. Thank...

10th Annual NoCo Hemp Expo Gathers Many Voices

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

This week’s hemp podcast is a recap of the 10th annual in Estes Park, Colorado, April 11-13, where industry stakeholders gathered to collaborate, commiserate and celebrate the state of hemp in 2024. The episode features voices from many attendees, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. “We’re really all hands on deck to make sure Colorado continues to be an ag powerhouse, and hemp is a big part of that,” Polis said. State Ag Commissioner Kate Greenberg agreed with the governor and said the “conversation is really just diversified in what hemp is capable of.” Hemp...

Experimental Hemp Micro Processing With Steve Groff

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Steve Groff from in Holtwood, Lancaster County, where he is getting ready to plant 70 acres of industrial hemp. “This year it’s all fiber. And we’ll probably plant about 10 varieties,” Groff said. Of those 10, about a third will be what he calls his “core varieties“ that have performed well previously on his farm or in the Mid-Atlantic region in general. “We are going to be testing several other newer varieties that might perform well, that we need to basically, I’ll say, ground-truth and see how they work,” he said....

Eyes on the Prize: The Somewhat Messy Process of Getting Hemp Grain into the Feed Markets

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this bonus episode we talk to Andrew Bish and Morgan Tweet from the Hemp Feed Coalition, the advocacy group that has been working for four years to get hemp grain approved as a livestock feed. Opening up the feed markets is the one of the most important issues in the hemp industry today. Hemp grain was given tentative approval by AAFCO in January, with a final vote in August. On this episode the HFC folks respond to a recent blog post published by Agriculture Policy Solutions, another advocacy group with deep ties to the hemp industry, a blog post which at best confuses the issue and at...

The Bee’s Knees: Ken Meyer on the Buzz About Hemp in South Dakota

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

In this week’s hemp podcast, Lancaster Farming speaks with Ken Meyer, beekeeper and hemp processor from South Dakota. Meyer and his family run a fourth-generation beekeeping business as well as the state’s first industrial hemp processing facility. As a young man, Meyer enjoyed beekeeping but was encouraged by his elders to get an education instead of going into the family business, which he did, and he had a fruitful career as lawyer. In 2013, his dad and brother successfully recruited him back into the family business of keeping bees, and today he oversees the beeswax rendering facility...

Right Coast Hemp Hosts Hempcrete Workshops in New Jersey

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this bonus episode of the Hemp Podcast, we talk to Mike Mercadante from Right Coast Hemp in Manahawkin, New Jersey, where the company is holding the first of a series of hands-on hempcrete work shops, May 10-12. The workshops are intended to give local builders and contractors a chance to get to know hemp as a material and see how the hempcrete process works. Learn more about Right Coast Hemp Learn more about Hearts of Mercy Register for the workshop May 10-12 Thanks to our sponsors: IND HEMP Americhanvre National Hemp Association Forever Green King's Agriseeds Pennsylvania Hemp Industry...

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This week’s podcast guest Mattie Mead competed in a 2013 pitch competition at Hobart College in Geneva, New York.

He had just shared his vision for a company that made building materials out of hemp.

“One of the judges for the contest said, ‘So let me get this straight, you’re looking to build houses out of a Schedule 1 substance?’

“And I said, well, ‘Yes.’

“Today it’s a Schedule 1 substance, but in five or so years it’s going to be federally legal,” Mead said. “And I want to be on the forefront of what I believe to be an emerging industry.”

Indeed, industrial hemp was legalized with the 2018 Farm Bill and today Mead is co-founder and CEO of Hempitecture, a building materials manufacturing company in Idaho.

“We’re focused on what we believe are the most truly sustainable building materials on the planet,” Mead said.

“And as you could probably guess by our name, our not-so-secret ingredient is hemp fiber.”

Hempitecture makes several construction materials from hemp, including HempWool thermal insulation, a plant-based alternative to fiberglass insulation.

Another product line is FiberPad, a hemp-fiber-based, non-toxic carpet underlayment.

Hempitecture brought a state-of-the-art manufacturing center online in early 2023 in Jerome, Idaho. The company sources hemp fibers from Montana and Alberta, but recently a processor in Idaho — Whitefield Global — has come into operation, providing Hempitecture with fibers produced by farmers in Idaho.

“Seeing this kind of movement towards industrial hemp cultivation in the Rocky Mountain West — and seeing it move closer and closer to our manufacturing plant — is really encouraging,” Mead said.

He also talks about his company’s latest round of fundraising.

“We opened up our second round to the public on March 18. And within the first day of going public, we’ve put $740,000 of reservations in this investment round,” he said.

He also speaks about expanding Hempitecture by building a second manufacturing facility in upstate New York.

“As we look towards expansion on the East Coast, we want to use our Idaho facility as a blueprint and replicate that blueprint nationally,” Mead said.

Also on this podcast episode, we hear from Morris Beegle, founder of the NoCo Hemp Expo taking place in Colorado in April. We’ll have a handful of news nuggets as well, including a story about kitty litter made from hemp.