I hope that this administration realizes that there's a potential with industrial hemp, like all of us in this space, realize, and that it can be a new agricultural crop that can rotate in with corn and soy and and wheat and be millions and millions of acres and can contribute to a healthy food system and a healthy material system that can offset some of the negative health aspects that we have. So I hope that this administration takes this crop seriously.
So that's the opening quote, kind of sets the tone for the show, puts the guest front and center. Right. That makes sense. Then you identify who it was. That was Maurice Biegel, founder of the NoCo Hemp Expo. And then you introduce the show. This is the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp podcast. Really? Wait, what do you mean? It's just that it's a really long and kind of cumbersome name, don't you think? Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I see what you mean. Well, why not just call it the Hampshire?
That's probably not a bad idea, but right now, let's get back to starting the show. Right. Good call. Right. So the next thing you do is introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Eric Hurlock. Hi. My name is Sophia Clausius. Welcome to the show. Nice. Thanks. And then what? You introduce the guest. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Today we're talking to Maurice Biegel. Do you know much about Maurice Spiegel? Not really. No. Well, he's a hemp guy through and
through. He's involved in a bunch of different endeavors, but I think he's most well known as the founder and M.C. at the NoCo Hemp Expo. It's the largest annual gathering of hemp people in the country. This year is the 11th annual NoCo and it's in Estes Park, Colorado in April April 10th through the 12th. Oh man. What? We forgot to play the theme song. I was wondering why it sounded weird, but I'm following your lead here. Well, the. Music is over there in that box.
Can you grab the theme song and get it started? Hey, that's not the theme song. I like this one. It's got a whistling part. Yeah, I like this one too. But at some point we have to play the theme song. It's like the glue that holds this thing together. So yeah, today we're talking to Maurice Beagle. He just got back from a month long trip to Africa or like from Kenya down to Cape Town. And did you know that there is a 12 story hotel in South Africa made out of Hempcrete blocks? No way.
Yeah. And apparently Morra stayed there, so we'll hear about that. Plus, he's involved in planning the European Industrial Hemp Association's annual gathering in Berlin this year. So we've got a lot to talk about. And NoCo. Yeah. And NoCo, have you ever been to Estes Park? No, never. I've never been to Colorado, actually. Have you? Yeah, I've been to Colorado a few times, but last year was the first time I was ever in Estes Park. What was it like? It's a beautiful and magical place,
you know. It's right at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. So you're surrounded by these giant, snow capped mountains, and there's a creek that runs through the middle of town and into the mountain lake. There's prairie dogs and magpies, and there's a herd of elk that, like, wanders around. Plus, the Stanley Hotel is there. And that's where Stephen King dreamed up The Shining. And occasionally you'll see a full grown adult man dressed up in a Bigfoot costume. Hey. What's this?
Oh. Be careful. Sorry. It's okay. I shouldn't have left that there. But hold on. Let's, like, recap a little bit. So you. Me? Yeah. You. You're going to be joining me here as co-host for a few weeks, and then I'm going to hand the whole thing over to you. And you will be the guest host for a few weeks until I get back. And where are you going? Well, let's just say I'm going on an adventure. Oh. So mysterious. Yes, indeed. So I thought today we could take a quick tour of the podcast.
You know, show you where where stuff is, how stuff works. Generally show you the ropes. Hemp ropes, I assume. Exactly. Just don't ask if you can smoke them because everyone is tired of those jokes. Noted. So after you have the introduction out of the way, then you come over here, you open up the cabinet and you take out the sponsor messages. Okay. Wow, you've got a bunch in there. Well, some of them are old, like from a few years ago. But these. Here are the current sponsors. I and Hemp Kings.
Agora seeds. Forever green and commercial. Yeah, that last one sounds French, but they're from here in Pennsylvania. And we've got a few more sponsors in the works. So what you do each week, you check the calendar, and then you run the ad for whoever's on the calendar for that week. You can play the prerecorded ads, or you can just say the message yourself. Like this. This episode is brought to you by iron D Hemp in Fort Benton, Montana, where they believe in the goodness
of hemp. And the hemp is a family owned, mission driven feed fuel and fiber hemp company that's bringing new opportunities to American farmers. Yeah, you got it. Check them out at Indie Hemp. Com. But I could also run one of these. The CFPB for hemp cutter. Introducing a revolution in hemp harvesting. Setting a new standard for harvesting quality, speed and efficiency. The CPP for prepares hemp for ideal shredding and easy on field testing. Raking and baling.
Easy to maintain and designed to withstand the punishments of hemp harvesting. The CFPB for Hemp cutter. Available only at hemp cutter.com. So when the ads are over, you start up the news nuggets music, and you give the good people of the world a couple of nuggets of hemp news. I try to find stories that are, you know. Wait, wait, where are you? Where are you going? Hey. What's this? It's a door. I can see that. It's a door. What's on the other side? That's the spirit. I admire your curiosity.
What's on the other side? Well, there's a room full of more doors, more boxes of music, old interviews, stacks of notebooks. There's a pair of 8000 kicks in there. An old John Deere, 420. You know, just a bunch of random stuff. But, yeah, let's let's go in and check it out. Wow. Look at all of this. Yeah, I know it's overwhelming sometimes. Is all of this hemp related? No, but some of it is. There's a lot of farming stuff in here. Some gardening stuff, musical instruments.
There's even a whole area devoted to Shetland fiddle. You could literally point to anything in this room. And I could tell you a long, detailed story about it. Go ahead, pick something. Don't we have a show to do? Yeah. You're right, but you got to see this first. This is the coolest part of this whole room here. You see that door there? Which one? There's, like, 15 doors in here. That one there, past the green tractor. Yeah, that's the one. Follow me. Check this out. What? Are you. Kidding me?
Yeah. This is the ocean. Well, it's not really a room. It's just the ocean. Sometimes I sit in here on the beach for. For a little bit until I know what I'm going to do next. And then I go do it. It really helps. Wow. There's more to this podcast than I would have ever guessed. Yeah, hemp is more than you think. Oh, just make sure that when you come out here, you prop the door open because this one locks behind you. I found that out the hard way. Anyway, let's get back to the show.
Yeah, I'll meet you there in a second. All right. Welcome back. Thank you. Yeah, I meant the audience, but. Yeah. Welcome back to you, too. How was your time at the ocean? Amazing. Good, good, good. All right, so here we are. It's work. Last week of February 2025. Wow, this year is flying by already. It'll be March before you know it. You know it. All right, so just a few nuggets of hemp news this week. Cool. I love this one.
The documentary film about the Hempcrete project at the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota. The film is called Green Buffalo. It was made by Joel Caldwell for Patagonia, and it tells the story of Danny DesJarlais and his Hempcrete crew at the Lower Sioux, any community as they meet the housing crisis on the reservation with love, hard work, determination and hempcrete. In that film just won first place at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Yep. First place in the Short Documentary category. We're going to be talking to Danny and Joel on the show in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that upcoming episode. Roger that. What else you got? Well, last week I mentioned the Hempcrete workshop in Austin, Texas at the center for Maximum Potential Building Systems March 27th through the 30th. But there is another hemp building event that same weekend in Arizona.
There is another. The Hemp Building Fiesta is hosted by the Old Pueblo Hemp Company in Tucson, Arizona. March 28th through the 30th and will feature a hands on hempcrete building workshop, a fashion show, and a screening of the Green Buffalo film. Let's add a link to the Green Buffalo film on the show page for this episode. That's a great idea. We will, and we'll put a link to the Hemp Building Fiesta signup page too.
All right, are you ready to play the theme song and hear my interview with Maurice Biegel? As ready as I'll ever be. Hey, Maurice Biegel, welcome back to the Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp podcast. How are you? I'm doing good, Eric. How are you doing today? I'm doing okay. You know, there's a lot going on here at Lancaster Farming. A bunch of stuff coming up. But I know you've been busy. You've been sort of traveling the world a bit. Let's get into that soon.
But first, just reintroduce yourself for us, if you could. I am Maurice Beagle. I'm the president, founder of Wathba. We are for better alternatives. A lot of people know me from let's talk camp.com. I've got a podcast as well as, you know, an a media platform. I produced NoCo Hemp Expo. I've done a lot of hemp expos, and I also produce the conference, which is coming up later this year in Berlin. That's the European Industrial Hemp Association conference. That is correct.
I've got a hemp guitar company which you've seen, the hemp guitars, Silver Mountain hemp guitars, hemp paper company at Tree Free hemp.com. I do hemp apparel. I'm an advocate, activist, evangelist trying to spread the good word of hemp all around the world. So that's basically what I do. I've been doing this since 2012, and I come from the music industry 25 years into that before that. So that's kind of my background. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for bringing us up to speed.
So yeah, the NoCo Hemp Expo, this is the 11th one this year. You're going up to 11 this year. And that's April 10th through the 12th in Estes Park, Colorado. We'll talk about that soon. So you just got back from a globetrotting trip, right? Like you were all over the place and maybe just in Africa. Right? You were. That's a big continent. I was in Africa. But as I think maybe the last time we talked was after Thailand. So I went to Thailand at the end of
November. I went to Peru in October, I went to Japan in September. So I've been in a variety of different continents. It's been pretty crazy. But yeah, I got back from Africa. I was there for almost a month. We went out there and did a conference in Kenya with the National Industrial Council of America, as well as India hemp, hemp, wood, hemp plastic Company.
So there was a pretty good group of us out there trying to advocate for the legalization of industrial hemp in Kenya, as it's not legal there yet, but it is legal in several countries in Africa. But okay, there are opportunities in Kenya. And we had a good turnout for the conference. There was a 100 plus people. There is a lot of politicos in the room, a guy who is directly reporting to the president, kind of the president's right hand man, so to speak, and I got to interview him on my podcast.
And it was it came out very hopeful. So I think that there there's opportunities there. There's opportunities in a lot of places in Africa. Yeah. What was the name of the conference in Kenya? It was Key Haken, which is the Kenya Hemp Conference in Kiama. The who's a farmer guy that's out there was a big part of helping get this together, along with Angel, who has a group called Save the World.
But I had met Kiama, an angel, at the Asia International Hemp Expo in 2022, and they've been wanting to do stuff in Africa for a while, and I tried to assist a couple of years ago, but the timing wasn't quite right and several of the people from that original Asia conference participated. Paul Stanford came out, he gave a keynote on kind of the history of hemp and cannabis. We had to be careful about really discussing cannabis per se, because they're really not interested in in legalizing that.
They really want to focus on the industrial applications. And so when Paul speaks, you know, he gives a pretty thorough history of things for the last 10,000 years. And it's kind of hard to eliminate the medicinal and healing aspects of cannabis when you're talking about the whole history. I mean. It's a huge part of the plant. Yeah, absolutely. It is part of the plant.
And so it's interesting when you go to some of these places where really the focus is just industrial hemp, and to try to separate the two. And you can certainly separate it through policy. But when you're just trying to do this, describe and discuss the history of it. It does throw some challenges and obstacles up there. But Paul did a great job. Good. Okay. You mentioned that in the hemp and hemp would work. Where there as well.
Can you talk a bit about sort of like the role they played or, you know, what they were doing there? Well, they were partners in the event I, I and hemp was. So they provided some raw herd for doing some building some blocks and stuff like that. And so Trey Riddle was there and he spoke and covered kind of all the product aspects from hemp seeds and grain and what they're doing to all the fiber and heard and, you know, just gave a thorough overview, which Trey
is great at. He's certainly one of the smartest people out there when it comes to talking about downstream products. And then Rusty Peterson was there, and he talked about the climate aspect and carbon credits and the analysis of, you know, the whole cycles of everything. And, you know, rusty did a great job as well. And, you know, Greg from hemp wood was out there and so was being his wife that Greg presented on what hemp was
doing. And different parts of the world where they've got shop set up now and the, you know, the trials and tribulations of getting his product line to where it is now. So Greg's another guy that presents very well. And how were these American companies received by the Kenyans? Very well. Very thankful for us coming out to all the guys that presented on kind of the downstream products. Paul Benham was there and Paul presented on the Hemp Plastic Company, which is based out of
Colorado. Paul's obviously based out of Australia, but Paul's been in it for 30 years and can talk about the food aspect, cannabinoids in the plastics aspect, as good as anybody can. So I think that we came with really some high level people presenting on things that are very important to the marketplace and things that can happen now in Kenya or, you know, shortly thereafter. But to get the the industry seated, one of the things is, was we're trying to facilitate trade and export opportunities.
So are there opportunities for the hemp plastic company in India, hemp and hemp wood to seed the market and get things going and maybe license some technology and assist. And you know, so we're moving product to these markets. And that's what the USDA wants to see with these grant funds and so forth. So I think we made inroads there. And there's inroads into other countries Zimbabwe and South Africa and and Malawi and there's there's other opportunities there. But Kenya obviously was the focus.
That's where the funds were directed to for this trip. And again, I couldn't be happier as to the representation from Greg and Trey and Rusty and Paul and and Patrick and everybody that got to present. You mentioned the funds for this were USDA. That's the market access program. The the maps. It's the wrap program, the regional with the regional agriculture promotion program.
Okay. And so the NHC had funds from the last year's tranche, and then they got a new allocation for this year and next year, which I believe is good to go. But as we know, things have been kind of held up when it comes to the disbursement of some of these funds that are already approved by Congress. So I'm not I think we're good on it because it's agriculture and it's promoting American farmers and American business.
And it doesn't have to do with some of the other things that this administration that is not very keen on. It's logical why it should remain funded, but at this point, who knows what's going to happen, right. Like things are, things are there's they're flooding the zone with with actions you were over there for you said almost a month. So I imagine you were there when the news was coming out that they were cutting the USAID program essentially. What was that like on the ground over there?
Well, so I was in Kenya for about a week, and then I went to Cape Town. Me and Paul Benham went there to do some reconnaissance and entailed, we'd like to hold a conference there next year, and we'd like to do other things in Africa. So the the news broke and we were there. And it was unfortunate because I'm sure and we know that there's lots of fraud and waste in government programs and so forth. And, and it certainly needs an
overhaul. But when you come at it with a wrecking ball and there's a lot of very important funds that are being allocated to, to Africa in particular for, for diseases and hunger and so forth. And it's not like all of these funds is one big Ponzi scheme and so forth. So it it definitely is impactful because, you know, if we have another outbreak of some weird pandemic and, you know, not every pandemic is probably a conspiracy, there's probably a reality that some of this stuff is real.
And so if we're going to pull all aid from that, and, you know, when we've been a leader of trying to help with humanitarian things for decades and decades, you know, it definitely hits those guys hard. So I feel bad, you know, I don't feel bad about waste getting taken care of. So I definitely think that should happen. But, you know, some of the information that's been floated out there to me seems like it's misinformation. It's propaganda. And I think it's just unfortunate for everybody.
I'm definitely just like in the wait and see what's going to happen seat here. You know, I heard somebody on the radio say something to the effect of, you know, they're going to break something that they can't fix and that'll have ripple effects across generations. I would agree. I think, you know, breaking everything to start it from the ground up when. Yeah, it's just not that easy.
And again, I you know, I have problems kind of with both sides of the aisle and the way government efficiency is and how its monies have been allocated and so forth. But yeah, I'm not a big believer in the way they're trying to take care of this right now. You know, Trump is president for all Americans, not just a third of the country that voted for him. Yeah. And I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point. Like, because what else can we do?
You know, we just have to, like, sit back and be like, all right, well. You know. Well, see, I, you know, I hope RFK can clean up some of the food system stuff that we know that's out there and we stop using it. It's interesting because he's not head of the USDA, but he's talking about, like, agriculture type stuff, which does fall. You know, it comes down to the food aspect of it. And, and we should stop using chemicals that are banned in other countries, glyphosate and so forth.
And we should look at organic and regenerative practices, which I think we all agree on that. Yeah. The whole thing is is ripe for change, right? Like, there's so many of our systems that are just like they've developed in ways that they're they're not healthy. But then, you know, how do you how do you make the change. You. You know, so yeah, this is a really exciting time in American history and somewhat terrifying, right. You know, I've got kids. Yeah, we'll see what happens.
But I'm an optimist. Right. And luckily, so were you. Right. And we're in the hemp space together. I hope that this administration realizes that there's a potential with industrial hemp. All of us in this space realize and that it can be a new agricultural crop that can rotate in with corn and soy and and wheat and be millions and millions of acres and contribute to a healthy food system and a healthy material system that can offset some of the negative health aspects that we have.
So I hope that this administration takes this crop seriously and doesn't look at the negative aspects of, oh, all they're doing with this is taking things and converting them into intoxicating things that are unhealthy, and that we have no idea what they're going to do. And so there's that aspect of our industry that we've talked about before, and I don't think we need to really get into that a whole lot that that stuff's going
to be dealt with. However it is with the FDA and, you know, lobbying between the cannabis space and the intoxicating hemp space. And yeah, My goal, like your goal, is just to see industrial hemp fiber and grain applications, environmental applications be front and center for this crop. Yeah. Yeah, I you know that. That's what I'm fighting for. I believe in. And I think they'll make our health better. And I think it'll make the planet better. Amen to that. Yeah. Big, boring and ubiquitous.
Right. That's the bumper sticker for me. Changing the subject. Sort of getting back to South Africa and hemp. Okay, so I hear they've got a multi-story hempcrete hotel there. Did you see it? Did you stay in it? Tell me about that. Me and Paul stayed in it for several nights, and it was awesome. We were on the 11th floor. Of course you were funny enough. Of course we were. And yeah. So they used about 60 tons worth of hemp within the building. Got another building right next
door. That's eight storeys. It's using another 60 tonnes worth of hemp. And then the same architect. They've got a building going in across the street after this one that's going to be 11 or 12 storeys. It's going to do the same thing. So it's pretty darn cool because there's no other place like that on the planet. And there is support for industrial hemp in South Africa. They're getting ready to institute new regulations that have been approved and so forth. And it is 2% THC in the
field. It's not 0.3%. It's not 1%, it's 2%. Oh, hello there, South Africa. Exactly. And this isn't so cannabinoid folks can come in and like push the system. And I mean some probably will. But it's for the varieties that that don't care about THC like good varieties that might spike. Right. Like and if you if you don't care about THC in your in product, then why. I don't even understand why it's part of the discussion. But anyway.
This is going to give them the opportunity to really work on developing localized genetics and letting them the plants do what they need to do without penalizing the farmer. And so they do have Landry strains there. They've been growing cannabis for hundreds of years in South Africa. And there's some particular Landry's genetics. It can get up to 18ft high right now that are hemp, but they've got like six, 7% THC.
So, you know, how do you deal with that when really anything grown from that plant is going to be going into industrial uses? If you do use some of that, say, the leftover flower bud product, why can't you just take that and, you know, bring it into the medicinal side? Because they are going to have a unique program between how they do industrial and then medicinal CBD, THC and and so forth.
So They have an opportunity to do things, I think better than they've been done in the US, Canada and Europe. And I got to speak to several people in the political sphere there, as well as a lot of the key stakeholders. I got to meet more people in this country in a short amount of time that are just really awesome people in the industry than probably anywhere else that I've been traveling to the last 5 or 6 years. So that was very encouraging. So I have good hope for for South Africa.
And there's been things floating around from our administration about what's going on South Africa, which I have to say is categorically false. But I don't know if you heard any of that stuff before, but. I'm not following it. But I imagine it has something to do with, I don't know, apartheid and the change in government there in the 90s, and I bet Elon. Musk people getting their land confiscated, particularly white people, which has not happened in the way their constitution is
written. It gives the government the ability to take over land that's not being utilized for the benefit of the people in the country and so forth. And it hasn't happened yet. But at the same time, the people could take over land that the government owned, and they could challenge that in courts, that it needs to be utilized for something that's going to benefit the people. So there's a little there's a lot of misunderstanding
out there. And, and everybody that I met in South Africa, from white people, that black people, everybody, every country has their own issues. But, you know, the energy was was quite good. And people generally get along. And, you know, I really enjoyed the people there a lot and everything about South Africa. So I hope that all this stuff blows over and that we can all get on to just trying to make the world a better place. There you go. Do you know where they sourced the hemp for those hotels.
So they're growing hemp now for I think they're utilizing for the new hotel that they've grown it. They're okay. They did get hemp from the UK for that first building, and it was pretty pricey, but that they did source it from the United Kingdom. And I'm not sure what company that that's where it came from. And so now they've got, I don't know how many hectares of hemp that they're growing. There's a company called Afra mat that's, I think a subsidiary of a mining company there.
That is they're growing it for seed. And then the leftover material is being made into hemp panels and bricks and, you know, filler type stuff. So they've got a plant set up to do that. And there's several other companies that are ready to go as far as setting up brick making, block making companies. So there's a big interest in making construction materials are first and foremost. And there's a big interest in the food side too. That's excellent. And the plastic side.
Yeah. And probably the textiles to write something for everybody. Well. You know, people are excited about textiles. The problem with textiles like it is here in the US, there's not a lot of textiles left in South Africa. While there is a little bit still, most of that stuff is Asia oriented. And what is being created in South Africa? The yarns are coming in from Asia or they're coming in from Europe.
And now you could certainly make the argument, like we're trying to make here, that you can create fiber and, and make it spin a ball and create the yarns here and so forth. And that's what some of these people want to do. And I get it. You know, I'd love to have hemp t shirts made in America or hemp t shirts made in Africa. That's all locally grown. And maybe from a boutique standpoint, it can be done, but from a big scaled aspect, I think they're a long ways away, just like we probably are.
And they're probably further away because we've at least been working on it, some with GUI and bare fiber and Pts designs and Tuscarora mills. Yeah. Tuscarora mills. Exactly. So it's not like we don't have folks that have been trying to work on it. Yeah, but it's it's it's not as easy as one might think as we've come to find out. All right. So you were you were in Africa for almost a month traveling around with Paul Benham.
Was there anything else from Africa that you wanted to share with us before we move on to NoCo? Well, Cape Town has an amazing climate. They've got some of the best food in the world. Most of the food is from right there in Africa, right out of the ocean. The wine country there is as good or better than Napa and Sonoma. Everything's half the price as it is in America. It's like Paradise. It's like Colorado meets Southern California meets wine country in California meets Baja. Mexico meets.
Hawaii meets. Maine meets. Anyway, it's it's quite spectacular. So I'll leave it at that. And anybody that has a chance to go to to Cape Town, go there, stay at 84 Harrington, which is the Hamp Hotel, and yeah, who knows, maybe I'll meet you out there. I love how you included Maine on your list of awesome places. And the reason I included Maine is because I had lobster rolls with fries and salad for 15 bucks.
And it's, you know, compared to Maine, the lobster might not be quite as good, but it's it's right there. Let's say Maine is a ten, Cape town's a nine. But for the price, it's it's just really you can't beat it. And we're talking killer steaks for 15 bucks instead of like 40 bucks. Here I it's it's quite amazing. Why did we book this interview at lunch time? I'm getting so hungry. All right, well, welcome home. I'm glad you had a successful trip to Africa.
We are less than two months away from the 11th annual NoCo Hemp Expo this year, taking place in Estes Park, Colorado, where it was last year for the first time. Well, let's first share with me just some of the high level things that you're excited about. And then we'll dig into more of the the scheduling and the speakers. Well, I'm excited that we've made it to year 11. So that's first and foremost. It's been a long road.
And as I always like to say, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. And we've still got a long ways to go. I wish that we were there, but it seems like the road is never ending and we're going at it again. And we've had a pretty good group jump on thus far. We've got a good speaker lineup programing is coming together. First Citizens Bank is back again as our presenting sponsor. They're continuing to support the industry. And we're going to talk about fiber.
We're going to talk about grain. We'll talk about cannabinoids. We'll talk about flour. We're going to talk about everything that we always talk about. And we're going to talk about the current state of the US hemp market, the farm bill, getting everybody together. We're going to have another hemp industry associations gathering this year, like we did a couple of years ago that you were at. And so we've got one of those meetings set up at the end of the day on Thursday.
So all of the associations are invited who've been participating and who would like to participate. We want all voices at the table. We're trying to align our messaging. So we have a one voice approach. And I think we generally all agree on most things. The intoxicant side of things is certainly there's differences of opinion on on that stuff. And again, I don't really want to get into that. We'll let that kind of play out how it's going to play out.
There's less of a focus on intoxicating hemp at NoCo now than there used to be. Is that fair to say? Well, there really was never a focus on it. It was present once we came back from the pandemic. So in 2021, all of a sudden, boom, here are all these companies. And I was like, what is all this? And then 2022, you know, there was more. And then we stopped doing Southern Hemp Expo because that became that was really all about that. And the narrative of change is like hemp is this, hemp is this.
And it's like hemp was never that. And you can make the argument that it is now based on the way the law is written and how it's been interpreted by certain people like Bob Hoban and Rod Guy and Justin Swanson and others in the industry, and you can certainly make that argument. But Colorado has passed legislations where they, you know, you can't really sell that stuff in the state of Colorado and you can manufacture it. It's been sunset it into our laws or whatever that terminology is.
But no, there's while some of those, some of that's there, you know, I'm not excluding anybody in any especially, you know, if people are doing it right and they're aboveboard and they're professional and they're not trying to sell stuff to kids, and they're labeling things correctly and and trying to be responsible, an age gate, I think that's where it needs to go. Some of these compounds that are out there, THC, HCO stuff that doesn't exist, it's just completely
synthetic. And we have no idea what the long term effects are. And, you know, people get high for days by smoking some of this type of stuff. It's, you know, that's just I don't agree with that. You know, if it's. So again, I don't I'm not a prohibitionist. I'm I think prohibition has led to all of this. Oh for sure. Yeah. Prohibition isn't the way, but it's. A prohibition isn't the way in having good, honest discussions with the operators or doing this.
You know, I am a fan of hemp beverages that are low THC, and if they're done correctly and dosed correctly and, and don't have any residual solvent type stuff, and I think there are good operators that are out there doing that, it does increase access. And I'm all for increasing access and consumer opportunity and let the market decide. But they need to be safe and tested. And I don't think a lot of that's been done.
And I listen to people who are lab people that are way smarter than I am when it comes to that stuff. Christopher who dollar from poverty labs. Me and him have talked extensively over the last several years, and I certainly get where he comes from. And some of these other guys that I see on LinkedIn that I see all this divisiveness between the camps and stuff. And I just I can't stand that. It's like, let's just have conversations and not fight. And it's like. Why can't we all just get.
Along? The same thing with our politics, where you've got the left and the right and we're fighting and then and it's just becomes. Counterproductive, right? Yeah, we have so much in common, but we're fighting about the dumb stuff that we don't have in common. Yeah. It's frustrating. I, I think petty. Yeah. It's petty on the hemp front. Like I think it's a linguistic thing. It's like the fiber and grain side of things.
Like, I feel like they have claim to the word hemp in a way that, like the hemp beverage person or the CBD farmer does not have. Right. Like us, we've had this word in English and, you know, other Indo-European languages for a long time that hemp means this certain thing, right? And, you know, the 2018 farm bill changed everything.
So I think part of our mission, like, as you know, in the marketing arm of whatever the fiber and grain side of things, it's it's that sort of linguistic fight, like to sort of reclaim the meaning of that word. We'll see how that goes. Industrial hemp is industrial and food applications. That is non intoxicating. And if it's intoxicating hemp then it's been altered with and it's been converted. And really it belongs. It belongs on the adult use side.
And this is where regardless of the source if I didn't if it's intoxicating it needs to be age gated. It can't be marketed towards children. It needs to be labeled correctly with what is in the product. It's intoxicating cannabis as well. Yes, and it's industrial cannabis. And like over in Africa, there they prefer the word cannabis and industrial cannabis. And so this is where again it's terminology and it's linguistics like you're talking about. And we got to figure it out.
And we haven't figured it out yet because there's too many people arguing about it. All right. Well let's get back to NoCo. Right. And so the Green Buffalo film by Patagonia Films. Have you seen that? I'm sure you have. It's about Danny De Jali and the crew, but there's some great shots of of last year's NoCo Hemp Expo. And Danny will be there again this year. We do have a good indigenous group of folks coming out Mary Jane Oatman, Rob Pirro, Winona LaDuke, cool, and many others.
Do you have any like, big political people? Like, did you get RFK Jr or do you get somebody from from that world to come show up? Not not at that point or not at this point, I should say Maybe, but Jared Polis has spoken every year and he's invited again. I haven't heard back. That's the governor of Colorado, correct? It would be great to have RFK.
I think RFK has probably got enough on his plate where he's not going to show up to a hemp expo and having one of his people speak, I don't necessarily know. I have invited the FDA out again, and they're on budget freeze right now as far as travel. And my guy at the FDA had his job as of last week, but I haven't heard this week, so I'm not sure. Yeah, I remember the FDA guy from last year at NoCo, and it felt to me like he was the guy who drew the short straw in the office.
And they're like, all right, you're the youngest, you're the newest. You have to go in and tell the hemp people that we don't know what we're doing, but you have to do it in such a way that makes them think that we are in control. Well, I was talking to the other FDA guy that was there who didn't speak. So I'm not going to drop me. You know, the one who did speak. I'm not sure if he still got his gig or not.
I know the one that didn't speak, that I got to speak with a lot, and we got to get into the weeds and debate things and disagree on things, but it was actually quite good. And I really appreciate him coming out and interacting with stakeholders and having these face to face sessions, and where we can all be honest about the science and, and the regulation and how it's affected business and so forth.
So I hope that they come out again this year, and we can have face to face conversations and and try to come up with a path. Supposedly there is a path, but I don't know. I think that path may have been altered based on this election. Yeah. We're on a different path now. I think we might be in just an alternate reality now. Who knows? Speaking of alternate reality, last year when I was at NoCo in Estes Park.
I was walking, you know, from the hotel, right, which is where some of the the conference was happening. But then there was the expo. Like what? Like a couple of blocks away down the road. Yeah. And I was walking over, you know, in the beautiful Colorado sunshine. And I see a truck in the parking lot. And in the back of the truck is a giant Bigfoot statue. And like, oh, you don't see that every day. And then I look closer and there's a man in the front cab wearing a Bigfoot costume.
So I just went up. I knocked on the glass. I'm like, hey, what's going on, buddy? And he got out and he's he's like, the the Estes Park Bigfoot guy. And apparently for years and years, he's been walking up and down the streets dressed as Bigfoot, trying to raise, you know, Yeti awareness. And then he told me about the time that he saw a couple of Bigfoot, and he he had to be careful, though, because he said they put, like a zap on you.
I'll. I'll play that audio, I guess, maybe at the end of this interview, but. Yeah. Estes Park is an amazing place. I, I spent a beautiful week there last year. I was busy, I was I was talking to a lot of people. I made a lot of great content. But I also had breakfast every day at a place called the Notch Top. And if you're Candace the waitress, if you're listening to this, thank you so much. It was it was great.
So yeah, I'm so glad that you moved the conference to Estes Park because wow, what a great place. It's great up there. And Bigfoot Days is the weekend after NoCo so that they've got that event. And coming up this month they've got frozen dead guy days that's in March. Frozen dead guy days. Yeah. So there's a there's been a there was a frozen guy cryogenically frozen who was in Nederland for a long time, and they moved him to Estes Park. And so they moved the event there.
And they have a bunch of jam bands and they have like coffin races. And so it's a it's a big to do. The kind of kicks off the season in Estes Park. So frozen dead guy days. I think String Cheese Incident played maybe last year. And so they mean they get some pretty big people up there. If you're coming into town for the the NoCo event, you should just like book a longer stay so you can catch the the Bigfoot thing at the end of the next week. So there you go.
We plan your vacation for you here on the podcast. Yep, there's a lot to do in Estes Park and in the Rocky Mountains. Just as long as we still have a forestry service and people working at the national parks. Yeah, yeah, we'll just let that one with that one float there. Last year I went with you sort of to the European Industrial Hemp Association's conference. It was in Prague last year. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I got to go with sort of the delegation this year.
You guys are doing it in, in Berlin. All right. And what are the dates on that? That is June 11th through the 13th. And it's at the different in Berlin. And what can you tell us about that? Because you said you're sort of involved in the planning of that. Yep. I'm producing it again. Really in collaboration in partnership with Monica and Lorenzo and Daniel Cruz. But yeah, it'll be very similar to last year. We're in a in a hotel space this year where last year we were in a convention center.
And so we've got a hotel space where, you know, conference room, and then you come out in the opening area and then there's the food and the booths, and everything will be all kind of mixed together. Where last year we things were a little separated, thought that it could work. I mean, it was a beautiful view from everywhere, but, you know, it was a little too spread out based on, you know, having 250 people or whatever there. So this year, I think will be a bit more intimate.
The programing is getting ready to be announced on the website, as well as tickets going on sale and exhibitor space being opened up. So that's going to happen probably by the time this podcast is live. So and that is a hardcore conference.org and that's e h a just and again it is it's not. So and people pronounce it a variety of different ways. But you should hear how people say the word Lankester.
All right. So the conference coming up 11th through the 13th of June, I'll have a link for that on the show page for this episode. Once it drops, I'll have a link to NoCo as well. And heck, I'll probably put a couple links up to some of the things that you made from your your your trips abroad. I know you had like your, your tie tapes or you had a clever name for for your podcast series from your, your different things. Yeah. So I had the Peru tapes. I had the Japan tapes, Ty
stuff. I was going to do another Ty tapes, which I had done before, but this one I did did some live broadcast of Let's Talk Camp at the show. So that was just live at the Asia conference. And then do you have some content from Africa too? Yep. I just I put up the Kenya Tapes last week. I've got to finish the Cape Town tapes this week. It probably will go up next week.
And I my recording set up on the road is not near as fancy as yours because I'm using my little Tascam and it's like I'm just a guy on the street and it's, it's a little bit more garage and street oriented business. I got honestly, I don't really care that much at this point in time. Once I get fancy into a big studio like you, Eric, you and I grew up. You're my mentor now. I'm your mentor. I thought you were my mentor. Tables have turned.
I when I would do like, you know, remote interviews, you know, like on location like the first time I interviewed Cameron Macintosh and like, Drew and Anna from co-exist. You know, the hemp house on wheels, I had, like, an SLR camera. I had a little tape machine, I had my computer, and I had all these, like, crappy microphones, and it was like an embarrassment. But luckily it was audio only and it turned out okay. And they were very kind to me.
But now, yeah, I have a like a better mobile microphone that was given to me from some very kind people. So yeah, my, my like Kermit the Frog, you know, reporter on the street game has has risen a little bit getting there. But thank you for pointing that out. Yeah. All right. So I told you this before, but I'm not going to be at NoCo this year. I know you've got something coming up and I wish you the best of luck with that.
Yeah. Thanks. So anyway, I won't be at no NoCo code this year, but I'm hoping to to get some kind of either representation there. Or maybe I'll, you know, set up a series of interviews remotely. Then I can check in with people from NoCo because I love the event. I love being there. I love walking around and just, you know, feeling the energy and talking to people and interviewing, you know, their reactions to things, and it's always great.
So if people are on the fence about going to NoCo, get off the fence, go buy a ticket, get out there. It's you won't regret it. Love to have you. The more the merrier. It's an important year for the industry. Conversations need to happen. We need to get aligned more than anything. And I've been saying that for years, and I'm going to continue to say it because alignment has happened and we are aligned on a lot of things, but still, we've got a long ways to go and everybody's voice is important.
So please come out and get to know each other and participate however you want to participate. All right. Well, Maurice Spiegel, it is great to talk to you. I appreciate you taking some time with us here today, and I'm glad you made it back to the States safely. Thanks for sharing your stories with us. Well, thanks for having me on, Eric. And as I always say, keep doing a great job because you are.
You're interviewing great people and putting out great content and keeping this conversation going in the right direction. So thanks for all that you do. Thanks, Maurice. That means a lot to me. How do I look? All right, there you go. That's the episode. And this is the outro where we wrap it. All up just like that. It's over. Yeah. It goes by so fast. And then you thank everybody for listening. Thanks, everybody. And you remind the people who you are. Thank you for listening to the hemp
show. I'm Sophia Curtius. And I'm Eric Hurlock, senior digital editor at Lancaster Farming newspaper. The greatest agricultural newspaper in the world. You're starting to get the hang of this. It's not rocket science. Check us out online at Lancaster Farming dot com. You should tell them to sign up for the newsletter. That would make Travis our newsletter guy, very happy. It would make Travis very happy and I think it would make everyone happy. So yeah.
Sign up for our newsletter at Lancaster Farming dot com. And if you have any questions or comments about what you heard today, you can always reach us a. Podcast at Lancaster Farming dot com. And then you sign off for some sort of old timey expression. The one I chose is. Until next time, I'll see you in the newspaper. Yeah, we'll talk about that. See you next time. Bye. As the outro music comes to an end, you throw in old Mitch McConnell industrial hemp. Why do you do that?
I'm not even sure anymore. Tradition. Precedent. So then you start the music, and then you read the credits. This episode of the Hemp podcast is. Copyright 2025 by Lancaster Farming newspaper and part of. The Statement Communications Family. Today's show was written and recorded. Edited and produced by. Eric Hurlock. And Sophia Curtis. The music you hear throughout the show. Is courtesy of Tim. Bird Shack.