The Emerald Triangle in Mendocino County, California has a rich history of cannabis growers for over 50 years. Listen in as we speak with Cathy Brown, who shares with us the ups and downs of cannabis cultivation and the struggles for small farmers to get proper licensing according to strict and expensive guidelines. Learn how she has turned the setbacks into an opportunity to live even closer to nature and share her rich land with others. Visitors can have a first hand experience of sustainable living on her 160 acre ranch, eat from her organic garden, and have a cannabis-friendly camping experience. BIO Cathy and her husband Bill are off-grid, Cannabis homesteaders for 25yrs, living a lifestyle detached from centralized services and supporting local community-based businesses in Mendocino County, California’s Emerald Triangle. As homesteaders, they both do what they can to sustain themselves on the land. Retired environmental science and biology teacher, Cathy has always crafted herbal remedies/products for the family as needed and when appropriate, Cannabis is an ingredient. Cannabis is treated no differently from any other plant Cathy grows in the garden. Everything grows together. To make the homestead more financially sustainable, Cathy has diversified Farm to Family’s income to include “Cannabis Friendly Tent Camping” through Hipcamp.. Here, they offer a judgement free, private space on the homestead for camping guests to enjoy the forested mountains of the Emerald Triangle. As additional experiences, guests can get a first hand look at their lifestyle: book a tour of the off-grid homestead, eat from the CCOF certified organic gardens, or book some time to chill with their horses. Small events with overnight options are accessible through Farm to Family’s website www.farmtofamilyranch.com Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-brown-90870439/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Learn best practices for healthy soil and better oil with Steve Groff of Cedar Meadow.Farm. BIO Steve Groff and his family farm 200 acres of cover crops for seed, pumpkins,hemp, and heirloom tomatoes in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Some fields have been continuously no tilled for 40 years! He has spoken all over the U.S and in a dozen other countries. For the past 20 years he has pursued how to make nutrient dense foods a reality on his farm. Steve is developer of the famous Tillage Radish cover crop and is the founder of Cover Crop Coaching which educates farmers and farm advisors about effective cover crop use and soil health principles. His recently released book “The Future-Proof Farm; Changing Mindsets in a Changing World” is available at SteveGroff.com. CedarMeadow.Farm was started in 2020 to market the unique CBD hemp products grown on Steve’s Cedar Meadow Farm. “Better Soil, Better Oil” is this brands claim that is backed up by ongoing studies and based on the results from decades of using this system on his 3 rd generation vegetable farm. Transparency is a high value, and anyone is invited to see for themselves how this regenerative farm is packing more nutrients into the products produced from these well cared for fertile fields! Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-groff/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Alice is an exceptional leader in the hemp space with Kentucky Heritage Hemp. KHH has gone above and beyond to lead the industry with top notch and quality CBD for brands such as Charlotte's Web. Listen in as we learn more about regenerative agriculture and what it takes to lead with stellar and respectable business practices in the cannabis space. BIO Alice is the President of Kentucky Heritage Hemp, the premier provider of 100% USDA certified organic CBD and other hemp products. KHH extracts CBD and CBG from organic hemp plants and creates top-of-the-line extract, distillate, isolate and custom blends. The company’s laboratory is cGMP and kosher certified. Kentucky Heritage Hemp's bulk wholesale ingredients are used by the world's most exacting consumer brands for capsules, tinctures, drinks, edibles and topicals.  After starting her career in large public companies (PepsiCo, Kraft, Sears), Peterson shifted to high-growth businesses.  Her early focus was finance and M&A before moving to operating roles.  She ran the Treasury and Corporate Finance functions at Sears during the company’s restructuring (mid-1990s), and was asked to lead the Sears Online business in 1999; she grew it from zero to $500 million in 18 months. She left the Fortune 100 world and in 2002 founded Syrus Global.  Syrus created a technology platform to provide risk management, ethics and compliance solutions for businesses large and small. This service became a core service for businesses focused on Environmental Social and Governance (ESG).  Syrus was acquired by a public company in 2009.  She stayed with the acquiring company through 2011 to open and grow markets in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Peterson is the founder and principal of The Loretto Group, which helped businesses achieve sustainable profitability, operational scaling, and winning cultures.  This built on a prior role as Executive Vice President of Operations for Fluresh, a cannabis grower, processor, manufacturer, and retailer in Michigan.  There, she was responsible for bringing together the people, processes, and systems to build velocity into the core business model. Prior to joining Fluresh, Ms. Peterson ran a healthcare start-up where she operationalized the founder’s concept, raised capital, and enhanced the user experience.  She had previously worked in private equity, where she bought, turned around, and sold companies with her partners.  She started and ran Big Shoulders Capital, an asset-based lender. Alice Peterson has served on the boards of large and small, public and private companies, for more than 20 years.  Public company boards include 360 Communications, Fleming Companies, TBC Corporation, Hanesbrands, and Williams Partners.  She currently serves on the board of SP Plus Corporation (NASDAQ) and chairs its Audit Committee.  She is a qualified financial expert. She is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, The Chicago Network, and the International Women’s Forum.  She holds an MBA in finance from Vanderbilt University. Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicepeterson/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

We wear clothing daily and it touches our largest organ of our bodies, our skin. In addition, our worn clothing goes through the wash almost weekly, and microfibers leak into our water supply. If you could know more about your clothes and what ingredients they contain, would that change your purchasing decision?  Do you think there should be more transparency for the Fashion Industry to share the fabric ingredients and include labor costs, etc? Tune in as we speak with Peter Gorse, who created a “Garment Label” prototype akin to our food’s “Nutritional Label”. BIO Peter Gorse trained as a product designer at Coventry University in the UK. One of his designs won an Audi Design Foundation Award. Afterwards, he set up his own brand to design products, which included a small clothing collection. These products and clothing were sold via a number of wholesale accounts from Dockers Europe, Paul Smith Shops, Selfridges, plus numerous independents. Peter has also gained experience of marketing by filming a promotional video with MTV and appearing on an early morning breakfast TV show called Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast. More recently, Peter has had the opportunity to conduct textile research on regenerated cellulose fibres at Cranfield University in the UK. During Covid, when laboratories were closed, Peter created the Garment Facts label. Which he is now trying to progress after receiving significant interest. Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petergorse/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Matt Marino has moved hempcrete construction to new levels with his modular build system.  Listen in as Matt uncovers the how and why of building with hempcrete. BIO Matt Marino is the President and Founder at Homeland Hempcrete. He has a background in operations and has focused most of his career on supply chain efficiencies, but has also spent years building, renovating, and managing properties. Early on when exploring the hemp industry he realized that building with hemp not only aligned with his interests but also had the opportunity to make a huge impact. His goal now is to make hempcrete more accessible and accelerate the adoption of healthy and sustainable building materials. Founded the same year the US Farm Bill legalized production of industrial hemp, Homeland Hempcrete entered the market utilizing the traditional cast-in-place build method. After years of trial and error they decided there must be a more effective solution that will decrease install time and get more hempcrete to more customers. The solution they have embraced is pre-made, pre-cured, high-quality modular hemp panels. Their panel system allows for consistent quality, quick and easy install, customized design, with finishes that can be applied immediately after install. Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-marino-hempcrete/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Learn what it takes to start farming industrial hemp; what genetics are best for your environment and purpose. What do all farmers need to consider before even starting to grow that is essential for success?   Listen in as we speak with Hana Gabrielová from Hempoint. Hana has years of experience in hemp seed genetics and has advised many hemp farmers and advocates in best practices in order to be successful.   BIO Hana Gabrielová is a 20-year veteran within the hemp and cannabis industry. During Hana's career she has experienced a wide range of EU and international cannabis policy work, NGO education work, and for-profit organisations. Her company Hempoint, founded in 2010, farms and processes organic hemp, as well as producing and distributing a variety of hemp food and animal feed products. Hempoint is heavily engaged in distribution of EU registered hemp seed varieties internationally and provides consulting for farmers, companies and stakeholders. Hempoint provides a vehicle for policy work with various non-profit organisations and the publishing of the UN book Cannabis and Sustainable development. Since 2018 Hana has been president of the CzecHemp cluster which is the leading association involved in the strategy of hemp and cannabis policy development in the Czech Republic. In early 2022 Hana co-founded the new company KonopiUS to support the US farmers with high quality fibre and grain seeds from EU.   Speaker Tags/Social Media:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/hana-gabrielov%C3%A1-49170356/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Join us as we speak with Abhishek Mohan, Founder & CEO of Hempstreet.  Learn the connections of medical cannabis in regards to Ayurvedic formulations and the benefits for a patient centric approach. BIO Abhishek has been part of sunrise industries his whole career. Over the last 15 years he has been part of the online games, data security, venture builder and fintech space and seen ventures go from seed to public listing across south east asia, India and Japan. Abhishek is the Founder & CEO of Hempstreet, which is India’s first and largest research to retail venture in the medical cannabis space. The company is now in the midst of the largest rollout of medical cannabis dispensing clinics and its network currently stands at over 9100 clinics across 25 states. Hempstreet has also recently won the coveted BIG grant from BIRAC (the first ever medical cannabis company to win) for the development of a “world first” novel transdermal delivery technology for cannabinoids. Previous winners were biotech stalwarts like Bharat Biotech who developed one of the key covid-19 vaccines. Hempstreet is taking the fight to mass ailments utilizing responsibly dispensed cannabis based medication. Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohanabhishek/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Robert Ziner knows how to use AI-based manufacturing systems to scale business and is doing this with Hemp. With over 30 years of previous experience in building materials and AI, Robert brings a wealth of skills and know-how to expand the industry in hemp bioplastics. Robert previously founded and operated a public company which acquired three companies and generated over $240M a year in sales.  He has been working with advanced processing systems for hemp for the past 7 years. BIO Robert Ziner is the CEO of Canadian Industrial Hemp Corporation, the company. He founded CIHC in 2016 after being sent to China by the Canadian Alberta government, to determine if AI could be effective in building a viable and thriving hemp fiber industry in that province. Robert has a 30-year history in AI and advanced manufacturing technologies as they relate to natural fibers. He was in the lumber industry since 1974 and in 1987 partnered with General Electric’s Factory Automation group to develop an AI-driven, Computer Integrated Manufacturing application for secondary wood processing – which was patented in 1991. This technology redefined the economics of secondary wood processing, increasing production flexibility and consistency to help reduce production costs by over 50% - and increasing the Value Added by over 100%. After building a new facility in 1997, sales increased from $37 M a year to $240 M by 2001 CIHC’s proprietary Smart Stalk System is now globally patent-pending: It redefines the economics of hemp stalk processing by transforming it into hemp fiber optimization and includes the world’s first automated hemp fiber quality control system. Robert is a recognized expert in fiber processing, optimization - softwood lumber and HEMP! Robert believes in the power of Cyber-Physical engineering, structures and systems; recognizing that innovation is always first created in the imagination's virtual world - to then be translated into existence! Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertziner/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Hop on for a quick chat with Caleb Kauffman of Lancashire Farm as we hold space for the community of small farmers, the heart of the hemp industry. Caleb has been leading with bringing transparency to the marketplace from costs of farming to cost of isolates into the larger market. He is on a quest to stand up for fair compensations that is sustainable for supporting further growth of the farmer and the industry as a whole. BIO Caleb Kauffman was born and raised in the rolling hills of Lancaster county. Caleb’s passion for hemp comes from his own life experiences. In his thirties he was diagnosed with PTSD from childhood sexual trauma. Since remembering this over 20 years later in life he has been on an intense journey of love, acceptance, venerability, perseverance, and a belief that at the very source of it all, that it is good. Cannabis has changed his life. He first started using CBD and THC a couple of years ago and immediately noticed the improvements in his mental life. At the same time Caleb started going to counseling to work through the trauma. Together with cannabis and counseling he began the beautiful journey of healing. Caleb’s heart is to grow hemp flowers with love and care because that is how cannabis has cared for him. His goal is to help save the planet with hemp.  He truly believes that this plant can completely change our life and how we interact with nature. Caleb has found a sacred work in being passionate about the cannabis plant. His hope is to grow some of the best hemp flower around and help others find healing in the process. Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb-kauffman-5799b232/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support

Join Hemp Foundation TALKS! as we speak with Marci Zaroff, the founder of over three decades of Eco Lifestyle brands and a world renowned environmental leader. Listen in as we learn about the progression of sustainable fashion through organic textiles into the mainstream, further insights into the growth of ECOfashion, and how fashion can impact social justice and regenerative agriculture for good. BIO Marci Zaroff coined the term “ECOfashion" in 1995 and is an internationally-recognized ECOlifestyle expert, educator, innovator, serial entrepreneur, and Author of "ECOrenaissance: Co-Creating A Stylish, Sexy and Sustainable World," (Simon & Schuster.) Founder/CEO of GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified ECOfashion Corp —a “Greenhouse of Brands”—including B2B turnkey sustainable fashion manufacturer MetaWear, regenerative/organic cotton farm project RESET, QVC affordable organic lifestyle brands Farm to Home and Seed to Style, and D2C organic fashion brand YES AND. Also Founder of Under the Canopy, Producer of "THREAD Documentary I Driving Fashion Forward,"and Co-Founder of Good Catch, BeyondBrands and The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, from food to fiber, Marci has been instrumental in driving authenticity, environmental leadership & social justice worldwide for over three decades. Board Member of the Textile Exchange and Organic Center of the Organic Trade Association, global keynote speaker, and recipient of countless awards, Marci is also featured in the book “ECO AMAZONS: 20 Women Who Are Transforming the World,” and is a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute. @marcizaroff Speaker Tags/Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marci-zaroff-b5990a3/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hempfoundation/support