From all of us at Prairie PROducers, we’d like to wish you a Happy New Year and say thank you to all of those that supported us in one way or another in 2020. We are extremely thankful for the connections we made, the opportunities we were given and the growth our future holds. In today’s episode I thought I would give a podcast overview and a recap of our year.
We launched the Prairie PROducers Podcast in July, since that time we published 11 episodes. We interviewed a variety of people from our own staff, the MN Department of Agriculture, cannabis accountants, a variety of hemp entrepreneurs, and many others! Our episodes have been played over 550 times, around the world. In fact, we have listeners from 10 countries. Our goal going forward is to continue to share information and education on a variety of industrial hemp topics.
As a business, we worked closely with local farmers who each raised a trial grow of roughly 20 acres. Each farm operated a little differently, as far as planting dates and planting methods. Between us and them, we also experimented with cutting and baling methods. Overall, we believe the farmers were successful and learned a lot through the process. We truly wouldn’t be where we are today without them. Behind our facility we grew our own test plots, where we experimented with 5 varieties of seed, 3 planting dates, and 3 populations. We monitored stand counts, rate of growth and fiber quality in both our plots and the farmers’ fields.
Towards the end of the summer we had a Field Day, where over 150 people attended to view our plots, and learn more about industrial hemp. We gained many connections that day and are thankful for all that attended.
Currently, we have our hemp bales stored as we wait on processing equipment. Our Genetics Research Manager, Joe Dollerschell has been busy with indoor grows. He harvested feral seed, and is now growing and cross-breeding different varieties and documenting what he is learning. His plan is to plant these varieties in our test plots to get a true representation of how each variety grows in our Minnesota weather conditions. As we did in 2020, these plants will be tested by the MN Department of Agriculture for THC levels. This process is an internal experiment, that will most likely take years to develop best practices and a true understanding of growing industrial hemp.
In 2021 we plan to be fully processing and look forward to connecting with those that are either interested in growing hemp for fiber or are already growing for grain or cbd and want to sell us their fiber, to eliminate waste and potentially open another market. In the few short days we’ve had in the new year, we already have some great conversations going and can’t wait to share all those details with you as they unfold!
