This week on the podcast, Lancaster Farming talks to Abner Johnson, chief operating officer at Pure Shenandoah, a Virginia-based, family-owned hemp company that has built a successful CBD brand while simultaneously going all in on fiber and hurd.
Johnson and several of his siblings operate a full-spectrum hemp facility in the Shenandoah Valley.
They process cannabinoids using CO2 extraction while also developing a fiber processing facility and operating a retail store that doubles as an event space and education center in downtown Elkton, about 15 east of Harrisonburg.
“We started off like everybody else,” Johnson said, “with the CBD oils. We did a few different types and different strengths, kind of capitalizing on different terpene profiles.”
Today the company offers a wide range of full-spectrum CBD products from oils and gummies to pet products and smokable flower.
In the first few years of production, the company grew more CBD hemp than it needed. To maintain its product lines, it only needed to grow around 20 acres a year.
“And that was a little bit of a Debbie Downer,” Johnson said, “because we wanted to see hemp take over and be the new cash crop and help out so many people.”
And that, Johnson said, is why he and the company started growing and researching hemp for fiber and hurd.
They started with 15 acres of fiber hemp the first year, around 200 acres the following year, and now they are currently growing several hundred acres, stockpiling the harvest in round bales to be processed at their fiber facility that’s coming online soon.
The company was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research Grant from the Air Force to develop hempcrete blocks.
Johnson said the U.S. military has set very ambitious carbon goals, and hemp as a building material fits nicely into its plans.
“Receiving that contract is a huge, huge step in the right direction,” Johnson said.
He said the military’s interest in hemp reminds him of the Hemp for Victory program during World War II and how farmers were required to grow hemp in the American colonies.
“History repeats itself,” he said. “And this contract with the Air Force to me is like a domino falling in the right direction.”
Learn More about Pure Shenandoah
News Nuggets
Minnesota cannabis czar steps down over illegal products in her hemp shop
https://hemptoday.net/minnesota-cannabis-czar-steps-down-over-illegal-products-in-her-hemp-shop/
USDA Says Genetically Modified Hemp Plant ‘May Be Safely Grown And Bred’ In The United States
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Americhanvre Cast-Hemp, North American distributor of the E-Reasy Spray applied Hemp Crete System
IND HEMP in Fort Benton, Montana
