Secretary Russell Redding made an official Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trip to Montana this week to meet with founders of IND HEMP, one of the largest hemp fiber and seed processors in the U.S.

On this week’s podcast, Lancaster Farming catches up with Redding as he visits the hemp facility in Fort Benton, Montana. The show features a joint interview with Redding and IND HEMP founder Ken Elliott from the IND HEMP office.

Redding said he originally planned to attend the Montana Hemp Summit, hosted by IND HEMP, in Great Falls later this month, but had a commitment in Pennsylvania he could not cancel.

Wanting to see the oil seed and fiber processing facilities with his own two eyes to better understand what is needed back home in Pennsylvania, he scheduled a last-minute trip to Big Sky Country.

The fact-finding trip is part of a larger commitment from his department to develop a robust hemp industry in Pennsylvania, where, so far, the industry has struggled to find capital to build out the processing infrastructure.

Redding spent the day with IND HEMP founders Morgan Tweet and Ken and Julie Elliott who answered his questions and gave him a tour of both the oil-seed facility and the fiber-processing facility, housed in separate facilities on IND HEMP’s campus in Fort Benton, a town along the Missouri River in north-central Montana with a population of around 1,400.

IND HEMP has created just over 50 jobs since setting up the facility in 2019.

Redding is returning home with a new perspective.

“I think in Pennsylvania, having something that would look like what is happening here in Montana is exactly what everybody in the steering committee and the hemp engine is trying to do, but it’s not the final answer,” Redding said.

“What I’ve learned today is that there’s a quest to just keep building out the marketplace,” he said.

“And the economics of that marketplace then determine sort of what those income streams look like for both the company and the farms,” he said.

Elliott is optimistic about the Keystone State’s potential in the burgeoning hemp industry, partially because of Pennsylvania’s reputation for hemp in colonial times. He was keynote speaker at the Pennsylvania Hemp Summit in Harrisburg November 2022 and has since gotten to know key players in Pennsylvania’s hemp industry.

“We can help you guys take that next step,” he said. “We would love to be part of whatever the solution is for Pennsylvania’s the hemp industry.”

Do Pennsylvania farmers even have an appetite for hemp, after the boom and bust of the CBD market along with recent controversies surrounding so-called hemp-derived intoxicants like Delta 8?

Redding thinks Pennsylvania have an appetite for something big and boring that can be another revenue stream for producers.

“The margins, whether you’re in Montana or Pennsylvania, are thin,” Redding said.

“So to whatever extent we can add diversity to it — you can help de-risk the operation by adding an enterprise — that’s universal.”

Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Hemp Program

IND HEMP

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