Global Fiber Hemp Summit Box Set: Sides 1 and 2
Industrial Hemp Podcast
Dear listeners, This week on the Hemp Show, we’re dropping the needle on a very special commemorative box set from the 2025 Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina. In this first installment — Sides 1 and 2 — of a three-episode miniseries, we hear from a wide range of voices building the fiber side of the hemp industry from the ground up: farmers, machine makers, wet processors, entrepreneurs and professors. They’re working in the field and in the lab, bridging research and manufacturing, and helping steer the industrial hemp conversation back to its core: fiber,...
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The Fiber of Our Being: The NIHC Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit Recap
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week on the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast, we’re listening to a recap of the 2025 Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit, hosted by the National Industrial Hemp Council of America at the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State, that took place in Raleigh, NC, July 15-17, 2025. For three well-planned days, leaders from across the hemp value chain came together—from farmers and geneticists to processors, engineers, and global apparel brands. On this episode we follow the flow of the summit itself, threading together powerful takeaways from the TED-style talks across agriculture,...
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How to Nip Intoxicating Canabinoids in the Bud
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week on the Hemp Show, we’re continuing the conversation around the need to split the industry into two. There is much confusion in the minds of law makers and consumers when it comes to what hemp is. For years hemp advocates championed the fact that hemp doesn’t get you high, but thanks to a loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill, somebody figured out how to get high from hemp, and so began the era of intoxicating hemp that we find ourselves in now. But if hemp is getting you high, it’s not hemp — it’s weed. Stop calling it hemp. And that’s why there needs to be a legislative fix....
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The PA Flax Project & The Return of American Linen
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week on the Hemp Show we’re talking about flax, a fiber plant with remarkable similarities to industrial hemp when grown for textiles. There’s a fair amount of flax growing this year in southeastern Pennsylvania. The last time this much flax grew here, tractors hadn’t even been invented yet. By the late 1800s flax production was in rapid decline in the Keystone State, pushed out by cheap cotton and forgotten by a country racing toward synthetic fiber — which makes 2025 a special year in Pennsylvania. Thanks to the PA Flax Project, spearheaded by Heidi Barr and Emma de Long,...
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The Etymology of Hemp and Why Words Matter
Industrial Hemp Podcast
Lately on the podcast, I’ve been wrestling with a question of language. What does the word hemp really mean, where did that meaning come from, how has it shifted over time, and who gets to define the word hemp today? For a thousand years, hemp was known as the plant or material that you made things from — things like rope, cloth and paper. But now when people hear the word hemp, they think about weed. And that’s not helpful for a nascent industry trying to raise capital, build infrastructure and develop markets. To help me sort out the history and meaning of the word hemp, I spoke...
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Bast Fiber Tech and the Rise of Hemp in Nonwoven Hygiene
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week on the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast, we’re talking about wipes. And diapers. And makeup pads. And all the other throwaway hygiene products we barely think about — but use every day. Most of these single-use items are made from plastic. Why? Because plastic is cheap, consistent, and engineered to run smoothly on fast-moving machines. But that convenience comes at a cost: landfill waste, microplastic pollution and a total disconnect from the land. But what if we could change that? What if the raw material for these essential products didn’t come from oil — but from...
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Virginia Hemp Month, Responsible Hemp Standard & Banking Barriers on Brush Mountain
Industrial Hemp Podcast
On this episode of the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast, we take a look at the fight for industrial hemp’s future — from grassroots advocacy to global certification and the ongoing struggles farmers face in the banking system. Act 1: Virginia Hemp Month – Reclaiming the Word "Hemp" Joe Domino and Scott McStacy of the Virginia Hemp Coalition join the show to talk about their efforts to officially recognize June as Virginia Hemp Month. With events ranging from hempcrete building workshops and beekeeping demonstrations to film screenings and brewery gatherings, Virginia is building...
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Victory Hemp’s Processing Expansion and the Future of Hemp Ingredients
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week on the show we reconnect with Chad Rosen, founder and CEO of Victory Hemp Foods, who was first on the show back in the summer of ‘21 when I drove the Lancaster Farming National Hemp Tour RV right up to Victory Hemp’s grain bins in Carrollton, Kentucky. When I was there 4 years ago, Victory was processing batches, roughly 20,000 lbs a month, but they just put in a new processing line that lets them do 120,000 pounds of hemp hearts per month, a sixfold increase. But that’s not all. The new production line features “patented processing technology” that Rosen said, “delivers...
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Inside The NIHC Global Hemp Fiber Summit With Guy Carpenter
Industrial Hemp Podcast
The hemp event of the summer is taking place in Raleigh, North Carolina, July 15-17. It's the Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit, hosted by the Wilson College of Textiles, in conjunction with the National Industrial Hemp Council. This week on the Hemp Show, we’ll talk to the lead organizer of the event, Guy Carpenter. Unlike other events focused on industrial hemp, this summit centers squarely on hemp fiber and the industries that are growing up around fiber: textiles, apparel, denim, upholstery, non-wovens, construction, hempcrete, insulation, acoustic panels, automotive, biocomposites,...
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The Hemp Show in Three Acts: A Café, a Workshop and a Reckoning
Industrial Hemp Podcast
This week’s episode of the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast unfolds in three acts, each exploring a different facet of the growing hemp industry — from a café built on hemp-based food, to a hands-on construction training, to a linguistic deep dive into the meaning of the word hemp. Act 1: A Hemp Café in Mount Pleasant The show begins with a conversation with longtime hemp entrepreneur Cindy Amick, whose new endeavor is the Planet Hemp Café, which opens June 7 in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. The café aims to showcase the full potential of hemp in everyday life —from...
info_outlineThis week on the Hemp Show we’re talking about flax, a fiber plant with remarkable similarities to industrial hemp when grown for textiles.
There’s a fair amount of flax growing this year in southeastern Pennsylvania.
The last time this much flax grew here, tractors hadn’t even been invented yet.
By the late 1800s flax production was in rapid decline in the Keystone State, pushed out by cheap cotton and forgotten by a country racing toward synthetic fiber — which makes 2025 a special year in Pennsylvania.
Thanks to the PA Flax Project, spearheaded by Heidi Barr and Emma de Long, there are 30 acres of flax for fiber production in Chester, Montgomery and Lancaster counties this year.
Thirty acres sounds small, but it’s a far cry from the eighth of an acre the organization started with in 2022, or the zero acres for generations before that.
When they harvest their 30 acres of flax next week, de Long said, this will be the first flax for fiber ever mechanically harvested in Pennsylvania.
“When flax became no more in the United States, thanks to cotton and free labor and synthetics, the linen industry was destroyed. And since then, it has mechanized in other parts of the world. So now that we are having a resurgence of growing fiber flax and bringing this industry back, we have imported equipment from Belgium and we’re ready to rock and roll,” she said.
Barr said the Pennsylvanian Department of Agriculture has been instrumental in helping further the nascent flax industry in the state.
“We advocated for and they added fiber flax to Pennsylvania’s specialty crop list, which made us eligible for a specialty crop block grant, which we received,” Barr said.
The organization also received an Organic Market Development Grant through USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which they are using to implement their business plan and scale acreage, educate and support farmers, and to develop a plan for a scutching mill, Barr said.
She said the mill will be a worker- and farmer-owned cooperative, based on flax-producing co-ops in Europe.
The podcast this week shares a handful of voices from the PA Flax Project’s Flax Flower Picnic, held June 14 at Lundale Farm in South Coventry Township, Chester County.
In order of appearance on the show, we hear from Emma de Long and Heidi Barr from the PA Flax Project; Natalie Horvath, design director at F. Schumacher and Company, a family-owned textile and interior design powerhouse in New York; Bill Schick, director of agriculture for the PA Flax Project; Mike Roth from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture; Paul Turner, chair of the Department of Theater and Dance at Rowan University; Leslie Davidson from the Pennsylvania Fibershed; and PA Flax Project member Rachel Laramee.
After flax, we check in with Dr. David Suchoff from NC State University in North Carolina about the Global Fiber Hemp Summit in Raleigh later this month.
Learn More:
PA Flax Project
F. Schumacher & Co.
Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture
Pennsylvania Fibershed
North American Linen Association (NALA)
Thanks to our sponsors!
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