Industrial Hemp Podcast

On this week's show, we catch up with Lancaster County farmer, hemp innovator and cover-crop coach Steve Groff to hear about the progress on two machines that have been years in the making and, he thinks, are finally about ready.

The headliner is the Fiber King in-field decorticator, a project Groff has been developing with Larry Serbin of Hemp Traders. Instead of hauling bulky raw stalks off the field, the machine decorticates the hemp right where it grows: the fiber is laid on the ground to dry for a couple of days and then round-baled while the wet hurd drops into a standard forage wagon.

Groff calls it a systems approach. They're ready to build the first commercial unit and are testing at universities, but they're waiting on investor funding to get there.

The economics are the whole point. Hemp is expensive to move as raw biomass — you just can't get enough weight on a truck — so decorticating in the field adds value for the farmer and lowers transportation costs as the crop gets denser. "You want to give the farmer as much profit as possible," Groff said.

We also talked about his four-inch precision no-till hemp planter, developed through a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture innovation grant. By singulating seed and placing it on even four-inch spacing, the planter aims for the uniform, pencil- to Sharpie-sized stalks that textile buyers want, Groff said.

Steve Groff

stevegroff.com

Hemp Traders

hemptraders.com

One Plant Documentary World Premiere — Nashville Film Festival

Nashville, TN Sept. 26

nashfilmfest2026.eventive.org/schedule/one-plant-6a729213e47b192d0a91b154

Hemp Lava Love Workshop

Tucson, AZ Oct. 13–15

hemplavalove.my.canva.site/garden-wedding-website-ph-in-white-red-black-romantic-scrapbook-style-style

One Plant Documentary Screening

Lancaster, PA Oct. 24

eventbrite.com/e/lancaster-farming-sunflower-present-one-plant-tickets-1998324956739

Americhanvre

americhanvre.com

IND Hemp

indhemp.com

Forever Green

hempcutter.com

This week on the Hemp Show we're digging into a few of the calendar items we mentioned on last week's show, specifically the run of events in New York state next month.

On September 15, Cornell's 10th Annual Grain and Fiber Hemp Field Day comes to the Cornell AgriTech campus in Geneva. The field day will feature a John Deere combine demonstration that will include harvesting grain, drying the grain and putting the fiber harvest on display — baling it, decorticating it and splitting it into bast and hurds.

Register here: https://cals.cornell.edu/events/2026-cornell-grain-fiber-hemp-field-day

Then, September 16–18, the National Industrial Hemp Council will hold its Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The theme is "Seed to Style." Two days of programming will open with a keynote from NIHC president Patrick Atagi before moving through sessions on reaching the sustainable consumer with the Bezos Earth Fund, hemp biocomposites and bioplastics with Cameron McIntosh of Americhanvre and Greg Wilson of HempWood, USDA research and natural-fiber partnerships across flax, cotton and hemp.

Register here: https://nihcglobalsummit.com/

Day two of the event runs from field to fiber through equipment and processing, Latin American fiber opportunities and an international industry panel. The event will closes with "Back to the Future: Bringing Hemp Back to the Textile Mainstream," featuring Maciej Kowalski of Kombinat Konopny and "Concept to Catwalk," a look at hemp luxury moderated by Farm to Fabric's own Jen Adams. The event will be capped by an evening reception and fashion showcase.

And that all leads up to Farm to Fabric, a hemp textile symposium running September 18-20 at the Brooklyn Peace Center and on Governor's Island as part of New York Textile Month. It's a free event, open to the public, with NIHC as the title sponsor.

On September 18-19, the Brooklyn Peace Center feature a pop-up hemp store, a technology and digital creation room, and the Farm to Fabric Experience, where members of the Tuscarora tribe will show the historical process of pulling fiber from the stalk and turning it into yarn. On September 20, the event will continue on Governor's Island for the Julian Magazine release and a fashion presentation.

This episode features a conversation with Jen Adams, organizer of the hemp fashion event in Brooklyn, who said her organization, Choose Your Change, "chose industrial hemp as a subject matter to show the breadth of what we do as an organization, but also to try to elevate and get the stories and voices in the hemp industry."

Register here: https://www.fluidforms.co/f/cyc

All this and more on this week's show, including a news nugget/calendar item about The Hemp Feed Coalition's upcoming webinar on August 20, a free session on Canada's hemp seed meal feed ingredient application.

Register for the webinar here: https://hempfeedcoalition.org/webinar-series/

USDA Germplasm Bonus Event

After we made the audio for this episode, we received an email from Zach Stansell, the USDA hemp germplasm curator to invite me to the USDA Hemp Stakeholder Engagement Event on September 10 at Cornell AgriTech's Jordan Hall in Geneva — five days ahead of the Field Day. It's free, no registration, in person or online, with a full day of USDA-ARS talks and a stakeholder roundtable on the future of hemp research. If you're headed to Geneva, get there early.

Learn more here: https://hemp.cals.cornell.edu/2026/08/05/usda-hemp-stakeholder-engagement-event-september-10/

Americhanvre Cast Hemp

americhanvre.com

IND Hemp

indhemp.com

Forever Green — KP4 Hemp Cutter

hempcutter.com

On this week's Hemp Show we are focusing on recent news stories and upcoming hemp events, including the Farm-to-Fabric Hemp Textile Symposium in New York City, September 18-20. See the full list of events below.

Plus a healthy helping of Hemp News Nuggets from HempToday.net:

Ireland confronts hemp bottlenecks as Parliament weighs reforms to restart industry

hemptoday.net/ireland-confronts-hemp-bottlenecks-as-parliament-weighs-reforms-to-restart-industry/

Botswana clears path to commercial hemp production after successful government trials

hemptoday.net/botswana-clears-path-to-commercial-hemp-production-after-successful-government-trials/

Proposed EU carbon market update could boost business case for hemp starting in 2030

hemptoday.net/proposed-eu-carbon-market-update-could-boost-business-case-for-hemp-starting-in-2030/

South Korea puts $21 million behind minor cannabinoids for medical hemp products

hemptoday.net/south-korea-puts-21-million-behind-minor-cannabinoids-for-medical-hemp-products/

'Australia has the potential to become world leader' if government will support hemp

hemptoday.net/australia-has-the-potential-to-become-world-leader-if-government-will-support-hemp/

Discover NC Textile Hemp — Raleigh, NC, August 6–7

discovernctextilehemp.textiles.ncsu.edu/

HempBLOCK USA Training — Alma, CO, August 7–9

us.hempblockinternational.com/installer-training/

Fibre for Our Future: Unlocking Hemp & Flax — Cobden, ON, August 13

instagram.com/p/DbGWIkNgm0e/

Cornell Fiber & Grain Hemp Field Day — Geneva, NY, September 15

cals.cornell.edu/cornell-agritech

NIHC Global Industrial Hemp Fiber Summit — New York, NY (FIT), September 16–18

hempindustrial.com/

Farm to Fabric Hemp Textile Symposium — Brooklyn / Governors Island, NY, September 18–20

fluidforms.co/f/cyc

Southern Illinois Hemp Symposium — Carbondale, IL, September 18

conferenceservices.siu.edu/conferences/southern-illinois-hemp-symposium.php

Condor Seed

condorseed.com/

IND Hemp

indhemp.com/

The Goodness of Hemp

thegoodnessofhemp.org/

Kings AgriSeeds

kingsagriseeds.com/

This week's Hemp Show takes us once more back to Poland, where Maciej Kowalski gives us a tour of his vertically integrated hemp textile company in Elbląg, a small town in Northern Poland, not too far from the Baltic Sea.

Today we'll let Kowalski guide us as we tour the Kombinat Konopny facility.

His approach to business is straightforward: Make things people need.

"What do they need? They need socks. They need beanies, they need pants, they need blouses, they need shirts, everything," Kowalski said. "The sock became like the symbol of what we're trying to achieve seven, eight years ago when we started."

This episode follows Kowalski as he takes us from blending, carding, and spinning, to decortication and breaking up the bales, giving us a backwards journey from sock, to yarn, to fiber, to bale.

Kombinat Konopny

https://kombinatkonopny.pl

Kombinat USA

https://kombinatusa.com

European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA)

https://eiha.org

Natural Materials Unlimited

https://naturalmaterials.eu

European Hemp Hub

https://www.pole-europeen-chanvre.eu/en/

Americhanvre Cast Hemp

americhanvre.com

IND HEMP

indhemp.com

Bish Enterprises

bishenterprises.com

1937 International

1937international.com

Condor Seed

condorseed.com

HEMI — Hemp Education and Marketing Initiative

thegoodnessofhemp.org/

We have an outbuilding at home — we call it the Little House.

It's a small old barn that sits out in our back yard, maybe 25 feet from the back door. It was a barn for animals at one point, then a garage, then an apartment. There's a lot of interesting energy in the Little House. It's been many things over the years: an art studio, a bakery, a jewelry-making place. By 2018 the Little House had given birth to this very podcast. The Little House has been an epicenter of entrepreneurial spirit and love for a long time.

When I got home from my recent trip to Poland, I found out there was a water leak in the Little House, which sent me on a mission of ripping and tearing — rugs, floors, decking and drywall. And before I knew it, I needed a new wall on the west end. And of course, it was going to be a hempcrete wall, right?

Hempcrete is hemp hurd — the woody inner core of the hemp stalk — mixed with a lime-based binder and water and packed around a wood frame like insulation. It's breathable, naturally resistant to pests and fire, and because hemp pulls carbon out of the air as it grows, a hempcrete wall can be carbon-negative. It's about as close as you can get to building a wall out of a farm field.

After years and years of following the industry, reporting on builders like Cameron McIntosh, Micaela Machado, Danny Desjarlais and Matt Marino, these people are my heroes. And now, after having made seven batches of hempcrete by hand, anyone who has ever built something out of hempcrete is my hero.

Luck favors the prepared, so I sought knowledge. I drove down to the Ice House in Ellicott City, Maryland, to learn from Gayle Killen. She taught me how to mix by hand, how to pack the edges better than the middle, and how to stay safe — PPE always, and a jar of vinegar handy to neutralize the lime.

Cameron McIntosh, up at his shop in Bally, confirmed the numbers and sent me home with hurd, buckets, tampers and a saw. Drew Oberholzer and Ana Konopitskaya of Coexist Build donated nine bags of lime binder. Acts of kindness bind us all together.

So I mixed and packed and mixed again, all through the Fourth of July weekend, sweating it out in the backyard, covered in lime burns, until a hempcrete wall stood where the old one used to be.

My kids tell me it smells like corn. But whatever it smells like, it looks like agriculture. Imagine if we could build our houses with locally sourced, annually renewable resources so we can survive, so our children can survive, so our children's children can survive. That's what this is about: the future, and learning how to do things so we can face it together. This hempcrete wall is emblematic of the changes you'll see coming. We're building, growing, making and doing.

LimeWorks.us – EcoLogic HempCrete Binder Platinum

https://www.limeworks.us/product/ecologic-hempcrete-binder-platinum/

Americhanvre

https://americhanvre.com/

Hemp Building Institute

https://www.hempbuildinginstitute.org/

HempBuild Magazine

https://www.hempbuildmag.com/

US Hemp Building Association (USHBA)

https://www.ushba.org/resources

International Hemp Building Association (IHBA)

https://internationalhempbuilding.org/

HEMI Take Action: https://thegoodnessofhemp.org

Condor Seed

https://condorseed.com

Forever Green – KP4 Hemp Cutter

https://hempcutter.com

This is a special encore edition of an interview we published on YouTube two years ago. This is my conversation with Michael Klepacz, an Ohio native and Air Force veteran who moved to Poland in 2012 and founded Natural Materials Unlimited, a company that makes textiles and products from hemp, linen and other bast fibers.

In this bonus episode, he talks about how the business grew from hemp wick to guitar straps, pet accessories and custom fiber products for clients around the world.

The conversation digs into long fiber versus short fiber hemp: why long fiber produces stronger, higher-quality textiles, why Europe's processing equipment wasn't built for it, and why China's demand for European long fiber has scrambled the supply chain. Klepacz also traces hemp's textile history (including its role in old ship sails and painters' canvases), and shares his frustrations with U.S. and Polish hemp policy, ignorant regulators and platforms like Google and Facebook that still block hemp marketing.

This episode is being republished alongside a new interview host Eric Hurlock recorded with Klepacz in Poland, revisiting the conversation as the two catch up in person.

Natural Material Unlimited

naturalmaterials.eu

HEMI (Hemp Education & Marketing Initiative)

hempinitiatives.org/

The Goodness of HEMP

thegoodnessofhemp.org/

This week on the Hemp Show, we continue our hemp adventure in Poland, catching up with American expat Michael Klepacz, owner of Natural Materials Unlimited. Klepacz sits near the end of the hemp supply chain — he doesn't grow or process raw fiber himself. Instead, he sources hemp and other natural fibers from regional mills and turns them into finished goods, from hemp wick to dog leashes, as a contract manufacturer for brands worldwide.

Klepacz gives us a walking tour of his factory — beeswax, waxing lines and a dynamometer that tests twine strength — and makes the case for hemp as Europe's best fiber.

We're also re-releasing his first appearance on the show, a 2024 conversation that never made it to the podcast feed, so you can get the full picture of an American entrepreneur building a hemp business from scratch in Poland.

Natural Materials Unlimited

https://naturalmaterials.eu

RAW Hemp Wick (10ft)

https://rawthentic.com/prawducts/smoking-gear/lighters-matches-wicks/raw-hemp-wick-10ft/

Libeco Belgian Linen

https://www.libeco.com

EIHA (European Industrial Hemp Association)

https://eiha.org

HEMI — The Goodness of Hemp https://goodnessofhemp.org

Bish Enterprises — FiberCut https://bishenterprise.com/fibercut

1937 International https://1937international.com

Condor Seed https://condorseed.com

IND Hemp https://indhemp.com

This is part six of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12.

Julia Bialecka is CEO and co-founder of S-Lab, short for Sustainable Laboratory. The company uses hemp and mycelium to make packaging that replaces expanded polystyrene. Based in Spain, S-Lab has already piloted its material with L'Oréal, Nespresso and JTI.

"Every polystyrene Styrofoam packaging unit that was ever produced still remains somewhere on the landfills because it's 500 years there," she said.

The material performs like polystyrene but fully biodegrades in 30 days and is certified home-compostable. Hemp makes up about 90% of the product, and mycelium is the other 10%, acting as a glue that binds the hemp shives together as it grows.

S-Lab is closing a €2.5 million seed round and preparing to move from startup to scale-up.

"My dream is that one day I go to the grocery shop, to the cosmetics shop, and I see most of the products packed into our material," Bialecka said.

S-Lab (Sustainable Laboratory)

s-lab.bio

Institute of Natural Fibers and Medicinal Plants (IWNIRZ)

iwnirz.pl

European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA)

eiha.org

EIHA Conference

eiha-conference.org

Condor Seed

condorseed.com

HEMI — The Hemp Education and Marketing Initiative

thegoodnessofhemp.org

Bish Enterprises — FiberCut Hemp Harvesting

bishenterprise.com/fibercut

1937 International

1937international.com

This is part seven of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12.

Beau Whitney is the founder of Whitney Economics, based in Portland, Oregon. He has tracked the economics of hemp and cannabis since 2014, and his data is a fixture at industry events around the world. But he found that the numbers alone didn't always land with audiences.

"When I would start talking about hemp as an automobile part or as a substitute for lithium EV batteries, I would lose the crowd," he said.

So Whitney had a hemp-based spoon made and started handing it to skeptics during talks to show that hemp isn't a drug but a real material. That grew into a second venture, the Everyday Hemp Company, which now makes hemp cutlery, straws, plant tags and a plant-based pallet wrap he calls "planet wrap."

Between the data and the products, Whitney's message is the same on both sides: hemp is a real economy, not a novelty.

Whitney Economics whitneyeconomics.com Everyday Hemp Company everydayhempcompany.com

Institute of Natural Fibers and Medicinal Plants (IWNIRZ) iwnirz.pl

European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA) eiha.org

Condor Seed

condorseed.com

HEMI — The Hemp Education and Marketing Initiative

thegoodnessofhemp.org

Bish Enterprises — FiberCut Hemp Harvesting

bishenterprise.com/fibercut

1937 International

1937international.com

This is part eight of a ten-part podcast series documenting the European Industrial Hemp Association's 23rd Annual Conference in Poznan, Poland, at the Institute of Fiber Plants and Medicinal Medicine, June 10-12.

Caroline Matthews represents Tatham, a fiber processing machinery company based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Tatham is a 200-year-old, fifth-generation family business that started in wool processing — carding and spinning — and has moved into hemp over the last decade or so as interest in the crop has grown.

Today the company manufactures hemp decortication and cleaning machinery. One of the things drawing the most attention at the conference is Tatham's smaller, compact line that processes about one ton an hour, rather than the four-ton systems that can feel daunting to newcomers.

"There's been a lot of interest in our small system, which is good, because I also think that means that farmers can club together and maybe think how they can invest in a system that's more achievable, really," Matthews said.

Tatham

tatham-uk.com

Institute of Natural Fibers and Medicinal Plants (IWNIRZ)

iwnirz.pl

European Industrial Hemp Association (EIHA)

eiha.org

EIHA Conference

eiha-conference.org

Condor Seed

condorseed.com

HEMI — The Hemp Education and Marketing Initiative

thegoodnessofhemp.org

Bish Enterprises — FiberCut Hemp Harvesting

bishenterprise.com/fibercut

1937 International

1937international.com