Sign Missouri Banking Permission Slip Myself

Industry sign banking missouri permission slip myself

i said you know we're losing we're going to lose tobacco farmers you know we're going to have to find an alternative and he said well what are you what are you proposing and i said well governor i said you live on one of the biggest hemp farms back in the 1800s and early 1900's in the county here and i said we've got a rich history my grandfather grew him i'm really excited to have you on today and i'm really excited to share what you're doing and kind of your experience in the industry and so forth so i'd love um first for anybody that's listening or watching to please like share subscribe we have lots of content at globalheadassociation.org and on our youtube channel and spotify google there's lots of podcast opportunities anyways uh joe i'm really thrilled to introduce you and to have you on today and kind of get your background and experience in the industry um i'd love for you to give a quick rundown about who you are and what you've done and how you got into this how did you how did you start in this industry uh well you know things in our lives kind of dictate what happens next and i was living in belize building roads and bridges and low-income housing uh refugees and um the government changed we lost all our contracts and uh you know all my road and bridge equipment was left down there and i came back to just kind of wait and see what was going to happen with the government change and so i go back down five or six weeks later and all my equipment has been scavenged so i lost i don't know a couple million dollars worth of equipment in the jungles of police so thinking that was one of the worst things that could ever happen in my life um i come back trying to decide you know okay what am i going to do next in the meantime i was reading these newspapers old back in the 1940s and i came across this article that said f g clay resigns from the kentucky hemp girls co-op and so i was like you know we've got the kentucky tobacco growers co-op but what's this and you know i said he was he was resigning at the behest of president roosevelt to come to washington d.c and run to him for victory program so i'd heard about the him for victory program and i knew gatewood galbraith who ran for governor three or four times in kentucky on the marijuana or really cannabis uh platform so i knew about you know cannabis but back then uh hemp and marijuana were just exactly the same thing if you said something to somebody mention the word hemp hemp and marijuana were synonymous so anyway so i that piques my interest so um i went to the secretary of state's office in kentucky to um to ask you know if they had the records and he looked at me like you know uh this guy you know what's he up to you know marijuana and so uh he looked in the computer and he said he said no we don't you know we don't have it it's not not in here now what are you sure and he went yeah i said nope and so now i'm like okay it's a dead end you know and there's another one of those moments where in your life things you know turn out different because i left the secretary of state's office and walked up to the um or you know walked out the door and walked down the hall and they've got these in at the capitol they've got all these big wide halls with marble all over them and so i'm 15 20 feet down the hall and i hear something and i don't know what you know like well you know so i turned around and stuck my head in the door i said did you say something and he said yeah he said what year was that you know i don't i would have been like the 1940s and he went oh he said that wouldn't be in our records here anyway that would be in our down in the archives he said this is our friday so he says give me your name and phone number and if i find something next week i'll let you know and so i did so monday morning nine o'clock the phone rings it's like i found it i found you know he's all excited i went i said whoa who is this he said to jerry over the secretary of state's office he said i found all the directors for the kentucky hemp growers co-op i was going to kidding he says no i got he said i got everything and so i hop in the car i was drove right there and you looked at all the tax records and the original corporation records and they had like 17 people signed the original corporation papers i'm like i've never seen and i guess maybe in associations they do that but i've never seen where you had so many people signed on to a corporate document so i took it to a friend of mine whose dad owned the largest family-owned tobacco company in the world and his dad was real big in agriculture back in the 40s and so went to him and showed him and he went hey he said this is who's who in the agriculture industry back in the 40s and now i'm like okay something something's up here so that's kind of what got me started and it's like that saying you know you stick your toe in the water next thing you know you're up your ears an alligator so uh i found out my grandfather grew him uh you know that uh europe was just getting ready to allow all these countries to start growing him france had been growing hemp and producing bible and rolling papers canada was getting ready to they were petitioning the canadian government because they're part of the eu also and um through england so all this stuff was going on i collected all this uh information and then another seminal moment uh this was in this i think spring or summer of 1994 and uh not you know i don't sit around just listening radio but the radio happens to be on and i hear governor jones is having open door at four which he opens the doors up you come in sign up about what you want to talk to him about and anybody can go in and talk to him so uh i i end up going over there and i wasn't going to tell him i wanted to talk to him about him and so i said i want to talk to him about you know because this is when tobacco all the tobacco executives were telling uh they were swearing in front of congress that they didn't think nicotine was addictive and so you know and i i saw the writing on the wall that we were going to lose tobacco and back then you couldn't drive a quarter mile in any direction in kentucky and not see tobacco and uh and now what's it 28 years later and or 26 years later and you you you can drive all day long and never see a tobacco patch and if you do it's like two or three hundred acres so uh so i told him uh wrote down and i want to talk to him about tobacco so um i go in and uh i start talking to him i said you know we're losing we're gonna lose tobacco farmers you know we're gonna have to find an alternative and he said well what are you what are you proposing and i said well governor i said you live on one of the biggest hemp farms uh back in the 1800s and early 1900s you know in in the county here and i said we've got a rich history my grandfather grew him and then i started showing him the european union's rules and all these pictures and uh this equipment that i found in paris kentucky um i showed him this book about the hemp history of kentucky um and i showed him all this stuff and uh and at the end of it i said um governor do you have a piece of paper and he looked at me and yes let me have a piece of paper and he handed me a piece of paper and underneath some of this equipment i'd found in paris kentucky there was a bunch of uh fiber underneath them so i took that fiber cut it up beat it up with a hammer and finally turned it into a powder man it took forever but uh i got one of those paper screens to make paper with and made a sheet of paper it was like a rattle it was like like bible paper sure and well i took that and played it on his paper and cut out even square of both of them and i said do you have a match and he's like well yeah he gives me a match and i light his the you know regular writing paper up and it burns and leave this big crust there and then i lit the uh the hemp paper i made and just poof it turned into this like real fine you know tiny gray speck he looked at that and he went whoa and in hindsight i don't know why i did it but i think that kind of made an impact on him sure and i don't know why because it really in retrospect it didn't mean anything it's caught his well yeah so but he looked at me and he said well joey said um if you were me he said if you were governor he said what would you do and um i said governor if it was me i would form a task force to look into seeing if what i'm telling you is true or not and he said joe i said i have no id no doubt that what you're telling me is true and um and i said governor it's not really that it's that it's public perception if you have a task force then it gives validity to what they say sure and it's just not you saying it and he looked at me he said joey said you're exactly right and he looked at what was james last name he was his uh agricultural liaison and he said james i want you to work with joe and he said let's let's do this so that was kind of what really got the ball rolling um and then after that uh that that afternoon or the next day i i'd been working with a buddy of mine dave's faulting and andy graves was a guy that he worked with that was a big vegetable farmer at the time and uh so i i told dave and this was before i met with the governor but i told dave i said we got to go start collecting season because you know they're destroying all the wild hemp out there you know they had the the marijuana eradicate or the cannabis eradication program and where they were giving uh the sheriffs or police state whoever it was they would give them so much per plant that they destroyed so dave knew a bunch of the farmers because he had worked for the university of kentucky and that's how he introduced me to andy because andy had a bunch of hemp growing on his farm so met andy we collected seeds you know then i meet with the governor and then we meet with andy's dad who was the um emeritus chairman of the board of national city bank he was like a pillar of the community and he just retired so we go in and meet with him and i was telling him y'all met with the governor he's gonna do this task for us and you know we found the kentucky hemp growers co-op and um you know i want to tell you about him and you know what what what's happening in the world and he looked at me he says he said you don't have to tell me anything about him he pointed over the wall and there's a picture of him as a 16 year old kid with his suit on and this little fedora type hat out in a field weighing up hemp with one of the field hands and uh he said he said i grew him uh because i harvested the crop when my dad died when i was 16. oh he said so what do you want i said i'd like for you to be the the chairman of the board of the kentucky hem girls co-op and andy's going to be the president because he was the president of the fed county farm bureau so he was known by all the farmers and i said i'll be the executive director and do the day-to-day stuff so that is what kicked off the whole thing and a side story that's just it's just hard to believe but during the war um andy's dad jake who is now you know was now he's the chairman of the board of the kentucky hemp girls co-op uh his dad had um uh done a uh he'd collected all the hemp seeds for um in kentucky illinois tennessee uh missouri he collected all the hemp seeds so he had this tobacco warehouse just full of of hemp seeds and so the government came in and confiscated for the war effort and they um they took the seed and gave it to the kentucky hemp they formed the kentucky hemp co-op in order to redistribute jake's father's seed and now jake is the chairman of the board of the organization that took his that distributed that and i mean it's just it's so it's hard to believe yeah there are no accidents right yeah and then okay so this starts rolling we're getting you know we've been getting press we were going to farm bureau meetings we were going to county fairs you know any place where you know something where we could help educate the people and so we were getting a lot of pr and our buddy of mine was a friend of woody harrelson's and uh he had told woody about what i was doing so one day my phone rings and uh it's like woody and i'm like you know but when my son answered the phone and uh he what he said is joe hickey there and he was going uh he said yes this is joe and joe was young then you know what he's going well maybe you're dead so joseph who's calling he says woody and so uh joe comes in and i'm thinking somebody's playing a prank on me so i you know answer the phone it sound like woody and so uh we talked for about an hour and he said i like to come in and meet you and it's on a tuesday and i'm sure you know he said what's a good time anytime he said what about thursday so he comes in thursday and i pick him up and um when we first met we just because i have eight seven brothers and a sister so i grew up in a big family and another kind of ironic thing that happened my younger brother bob had passed away a few months earlier and he was this guy that when he walked into the room you just felt his presence he was just that he was just the kindest nicest i mean it's just hard to describe the kind of heart and soul that he had and here comes woody and it's like bob coming back i mean it was it i get coach he was thinking about right now so uh that evening woody called his wife up laura and denny and said uh i want you to meet joe you know you guys fly in tomorrow so they flew in and stayed for i think three days and then left and when woody left he said you know let's start a business let's do whatever we need to do i'm here to help so that's led to a 26-year friendship i guess and so we did a lot of things in the meantime uh we did a survey that showed 76 percent of kentuckians strongly favored somewhat are strongly favored letting farmers grow hemp and i came up with the idea of planting the hemp seeds planted four hemp seeds because five hemp seeds was a felony so uh we orchestrated that whole thing in kentucky in 96 and um and then so that trial went to 2000 and woody was finally found not guilty and that's it's just a longer story than what we've got time for here today but um i will tell a story that the end that i like to share with people is i had governor nunn who was a friend of mine he was governor when nixon was president he was a right-wing law and order governor republican governor so and he's an older gentleman then he knew about him and everything and um and he knew about woody's trial and i asked him i said would you do the closing statement at woody's trial and he went sure and uh so he's doing a closing statement and i'd given him a hemp candy bar and so uh he has it and he's he's you know telling the jurors yeah first of all he's telling the jurors that you know you can't um you know uh you know what jury nullification is okay so he's basically saying he's looking at jurors and going look you know if you you know they're growing it everywhere in europe and everything and so this law is not a fair law so you know if you if you think that the law is not fair then you you're the last bastion for um you know adjudicating what's a a law that's that's wrong and you can't do that but he's the governor the judge is what's the job you're going to do judge is going to say quit saying that but so he let him you know get away with that but he's given his arguments and uh he said well ladies and gentlemen he says he said he reached his jacket he said i've got this hemp bar with me and uh he said with permission the court he didn't ask permission he just assumed it as a governor he said i'm gonna take a bite of this so he takes the bite and he sits there and chews it up he's looking around at the jurors and everything and he's going um well ladies and gentlemen jury he said i got it on me and he said i got it in me he said so if you're going to convict this man right here he said you're going to have to convict me too and you could see the jurors were just like okay and then he closed it out by saying he was standing right next to the prosecutor's desk and he was going ladies and gentlemen he said my esteemed colleague tom jones says that because he had already given his closing yard he said mr harrelson's simply here because he s trying to legalize marijuana and he said ladies and gentlemen the jury he said if i thought that for one second and he slammed his hand down on the table real hard and tom just startled him because he's down riding he's i'd be sitting at this table right here and that's how he ended it and so he he walks out comes down sits down the juror goes away and uh it's funny because they they come back into the to the courtroom and i looked down at my watch and it's exactly 4 20. [Laughter] and i'm watching them and they're all looking as they come in they're looking at us sitting there at the table and i leaned over i said woody i said it's not guilty and he said how could you possibly know that it's not guilty and i said well they're looking at you if it was guilty they wouldn't be looking at you and he said really oh yeah he said we'll see so it was not guilty and um so that was you know that kind of in the meantime we had been talking to legislators about trying to get a bill passed and they said well we're not going to do anything until you know because people still had the idea that hemp and marijuana were the same thing and they said until you educate the public about it we're not going to do it so that was the reason that woody funded that university of kentucky research that showed 76 of the people were somewhat strongly in favor so we took that we were going to the legislators we didn't get the bill passed in 2000 but in 2001 the year after woody's trial or it really was only a few months after woody's trials and um so we went to the legislators and we were you know we're making some good headway and we met with the president of the senate and uh tom what was his name um anyway no david williams so david said well if you guys can get the votes i'll let it come to the floor knowing we couldn't get the votes he knew we couldn't so we get the votes we get more than what we needed and he was not letting it be heard wow so i go see the governor and governor um nun who had helped us out with boys trial and i told him i said look you know david david said he would let this thing hit the floor and it's not he's not let hit the floor and he said do you have the votes i said yeah we've got the votes he said are you sure i know we have the votes and he said jump in the car so we drive to frankfort and go up to david williams office and walk in and he just walks right past the secretary and just you know i'm following him and the ladies turn she says uh he governor he has somebody in there with him and uh gonna look sorry he's that's fine and he said joe just wait here so i sit down he walked in the door and about four or five minutes later a guy walks out and then another four or five minutes later he walks out and he said let's go and so we go down the hall and he's going it's going to be heard so they you know we get a vote it passes the governor signs it and the one thing that made a difference for kentucky is i had the forethought of adding one sentence at the end of the bill that said that kentucky immediately adopts any and all federal rules and regulations pertaining to industrial and so when the farm bill passed in 2014 and you know there's a lot of stuff that happened after that you know we started a company in canada 10x that we were growing and processing and importing uh hemp and so we had developed a seed variety called denny after woody's daughter and so we we had the seed up there and we the basic the company was shut down because we were harassed with customs and dea about bringing stuff over the border and they shut the we were sending live seed to the to the bird feed industry and they came back and threatened to to fine us if we didn't bring back i don't know it was five or six loads of hemp seed and so we filed a suit against them and but anyway so all that you know a lot that went on but we had the seed in canada that we had developed so when the farm bill passed uh we met with jamie comer who's representative now but he was the ag commissioner and we said well we've got some seed that we'd like to um we'd like to you know we like to plant it but it's not it wasn't in the country yet and so he said he said look he said if you have hemp seed and it's in the state it's legal all right okay so we um i won't say we smuggled it because we didn't we just had ups send it to us and so we were what got us ahead is when the farm will pass we didn't have to get the legislators to come in and say uh okay we're going to have to pass the bill to allow university research and set up all this stuff because we had already uh adopted federal rules and regulations with that legislation so we were able to go right at it immediately so that's that's what got us started and um so but that's the short version of of what happened i skipped over a lot of things but you know that's how i got started so when you talk about putting all of your archives together that's what you're talking about is building this story around how hemp basically started again in the united states and who the players were and that's i love this stuff i love yeah knowing so knowing then where it's been and where it's going what's the big you know what what should people be paying attention to well i think the biggest thing right now mandy is uh well what was the last major crop introduced into the into the american agriculture soybean soybeans back in the it started back when henry ford and george washington carver and all those guys were you know working with soybeans to look at what they could do with it and it took what 40 50 years for that to become a mainstream crop so the historical value of what's going on right now is this is going to be the last major crop ever introduced into um into the american agriculture there's just nothing else out there if it was we wouldn't have been 40 years waiting on it right we already had a history of doing it so we know it'll grow anywhere from florida to alaska and uh there's different areas that would grow good for fiber there's different that grow good for seed and but i think the important thing knowing the history and everything about it the important thing right now is for the farmers to realize that you know this is an agricultural crop you know it's not a horticultural crop it it it can be a horticultural crop but it's not all farmers aren't horticulturalists so it's to be a mainstream crop you have to be an agricultural crop and uh when this whole thing got sideways and you know i'm working with cbd right now but i say cbd hijack the hemp industry because um what happened was that uh you know we were looking at fiber and seed and and grain processing it making food out of it turn the fiber into car parts that was our original focus and then um uh i got a call from um uh josh stanley one of the stanley brothers and he was going you know uh cbd is gonna be you know it's gonna be the big thing in the future and uh he was right because then you know what happened is the first couple years farmers were kind of like uh i don't know you know you know i don't know enough about it so i'm not going to do it but the farmers that jumped in early made great money and uh you know they were they were probably making somewhere between twenty and forty thousand dollars an acre yeah early on when isolate was selling for thousands of dollars when i first started isolate back in i think it was 2015 was uh 70 000 a kilo that same kilo you can buy today for like four or five hundred dollars but what happened is the same thing that happened in canada in i think it was 97 or 98 when canada legalized hemp uh there for a couple years farmers that grew it made some good money and then all these other farmers saw what was going on and so you had all these farmers jumped in and started growing uh hemp for seed and all of a sudden the market wasn't there for all of the production and so you had all these farmers now that were stuck with all this seed a lot of them lost a lot of a lot of money in the middle of it so the exact same thing happened with cbd and so the first couple years everything was great and then i remember it was the spring of 1993 two two years ago um i started realizing what i was thinking look they're growing all this this cbd material how much cbd is it gonna take because there's i mean i can't believe how much cbd there was like i don't know 30 000 acres or something like that of cbd growing in uh in kentucky yeah majority of the crops were cbd so um i got to figuring and i said okay there's let's just say there's 300 million people in the united states if everybody uses a bottle of a one ounce bottle of 2400 milligrams which is probably more than what they would use but let's just figure that on the high side if they used a bottle a month that's uh 12 bottles per person so it's 12 times 300 million and that gives you how many uh bottles that you would have to produce and then i just figured back from there you know and i i was figuring on the the high side just maybe so so i get down to the spot where uh i realized that kentucky because when i got down okay the number was still big and i was going okay that number's too big but even though it's that big we've only penetrated ten percent of the market so now you have to to multiply that by 10 and now we were growing enough in kentucky alone to supply the whole united states every single man woman and child for 10 years in kentucky alone and it was growing everywhere so uh i remember the first it was um the southern hemp expo and i spoke there and i think it was in september because i was telling the farmers you know i said if you don't if you guys don't have a contract and you don't know that it's a solid contract with a reptil you know firm then you better be looking at what you're going to do with that crop and i think people kind of started listening uh but it still didn't it didn't get out there you know actually i just read something uh was it called pan x or an exchange x or whatever it is um a quote from uh whoever the the president is i read it today she's going we're growing way too much hemp out there to supply the market and she was kind of breaking it down i was well it only took her two years yeah catch up but i well and i get calls i actually just had a call today about somebody calling for the same thing they grew and didn't have a contract and don't know what to do and i just my heart goes out to these people because they're losing millions of dollars and all their savings and their farm and it's it's it's a travesty yeah it's a traffic because cbd is not an agricultural crop right cbd is like it's going to be like uh cannabis or you know marijuana crop you know i always say it's like the craft craft wine or craft beer right they have these craft bros these boutique grows they're not commodity gross they're not growing in row crops agriculture like you said no no because what we're doing you know the company that i've got right now uh we're not going to be buying uh uh hemp cbd for cbd on the open market you know we're gonna we're gonna contract with probably three or four farmers to grow everything that we need for production because we're not gonna need you know a few hundred acres right so we don't need a whole lot and so we're and we what what people need to understand if you're gonna start a brand or or have a company that's gonna succeed you have to have the genetics in there you have to pick your genetics so you can have consistency in your product because if you don't have consistency in your product but what what it's like is having a key and the lock that has all the different tumblers and those different tumblers are the amount of uh cbd thc cbg cbn all the variables they have noise so one key may slide in there and work for uh alzheimer's and one key might go in there and help with uh eczema so it with different keys so it's different genetics have a different effect that um that you may want for your company so it's going to be you know it's like tobacco is now tobacco's contract grown you know these tobacco companies will contract with one farmer he's growing you know 200 300 acres and they're getting all the exact same quality that they have where before they were buying anywhere from a quarter of an acre to five acres and it's all different and so now they have more consistency in in their end product than they did before and that's where it's going so but hemp being an agricultural crop is going to be it's going to be phenomenal you know just adding another crop in the rotation of the field for these farmers is going to be great what are some of the benefits can you like if someone asks give me five five top benefits to hemp well i mean the biggest one is what it does for the soil it has a deep tap root so it gets it breaks the soil up deeper and it makes it better for crops that follow it there was a study in canada that's that if you if you grow hemp and follow it with soybeans you'll get like a 10 to 20 percent increase in yields because uh hemp is not a host for the cis nematodes and that's what attacks soybeans so it kind of clears the fields out so the soybeans doesn't have the issue with uh so bad with the cis nematodes and there's so many misnomers about hemp oh it'll grow anywhere you know you know weeds won't grow in it um it will it doesn't need a lot of water it doesn't need a lot of fertilizer uh you know early on you hear all that but the truth is it's like tobacco or corn or anything else you've got to have good ground you have to have water you have to have uh uh you know a good fertilizer you know i mean you need all the things you need for a great crop so you know what i think really hurt the industry early on was all these people saying all these things you know i will say hemp is probably more drought tolerant than any other crop sure it you know it's going to thrive better if it has water so i i think that's probably you know the things that people don't know that they should know about hemp it's it's just a regular crop you know well then there's variables right i think just like in the cbd space i'm seeing in the fiber industry different different seeds grow different crops for different end use whether it's the textile industry or the construction or the oil and gas right if we're if we're making biofuels my understanding is this the oil content from a hemp seed compared to any other natural fiber natural well that's the one thing i'll say is that's one of the things that people talk about is using it for biofuels but do you have any idea oh my dog's walking in here with muddy feet out and so but what what you have is um that that distracts me what what was i saying um biofuels were talking about cell biofuels no but you know how much a gallon of hemp seed oil is right now well somewhere between 25 and 45 dollars a gallon so it's not really it's not really an oil that you can use for it's not cost effective you know you may be able to use like they do corn and grind up the whole plant you know once you harvest and get the seed out of it and make a biofuel out of it but my contention has always been we've lost uh well they say half of our top soil in the last 200 years so if we start using our topsoil for something besides food then we're you know if we start you know if you start growing millions of acres and using this fuel you're basically just robbing peter to pay paul yeah that makes sense this actually came up the other day this argument of using the seed you know if it's being grown for food like soybean or any of these others taking our food source when our people are starving and that makes sense with our land i mean well the and you know uh this really in the topic we're on but you know if we're talking about sustainability and uh growing crops you know for food you know we need to quit growing crops for animals right you know i mean in all reality you know i mean if we use that same those same crops to feed people we've got more food that would feed the whole world right now but like i say that's a different story to get into but there's a lot of broken and i'll tell you what hemp and bringing hemp into this has uncovered a lot of broken well a lot of passions i didn't know i had right well what uh you know people say that you know uh hemp can do everything all right it's the answer to everything and i said hemp's not the answer to everything that's there's no doubt about that but it sure is a key to a lot of things that can make this world a better place you know for future alternative solutions right it's something we can harvest and grow and with the you know one thing that comes up often is the carbon you know the carbon footprint um and the benefit for farmers that hasn't been available or that for the first time now we're sustainable and profitable right usually when i'm in a room with investors and the word sustainable comes up investors are like no we're good because we're not gonna make money on it we're now actually have that opportunity um well the only reason we hadn't made money at it is because the alternative is so much cheaper right now and you know it's like the small town i grew up in had a t-shirt factory they had a shirt factory um they had a dress where they were making clothes and the everybody was buying those clothes and supporting those factories and this the factories were basically supporting the community and what happened is when i forget who it was but when all these big industries started going to south america and china and every place else to get cheaper manufacturing in cheaper goods than it just basically you know the local you know we don't you know we used to have guys that made shoes you know we used to go when you know eight kids nine kids you know we've had the guy that made shoes for all of us and uh you know we had a local grocery store you know granddad brought milk to us uh and eggs uh you know we basically just you know it was just like a big community and now you know everything's bought overseas you know you've got the walmarts and the big box stores that everybody goes to now and all everything's consolidated it's basically what happened back when you know the industrial revolution there was a fight that nobody knows about there was a group including henry ford george washington carver was it james hale i think was the guy that was kind of the leader of it but it was called the chemergy movement and the chemical movement was basically you can make anything you can make from a hydrocarbon you can make from a carbohydrate hydrocarbons are just carbohydrates under heat and pressure in millions of years it turned into hydrocarbons so they knew that and so you know the bakelites the old phones that handle the things you hang up you know you'd pick up and ring the phone those things were made out of out of plant material it was bakelite so it made plastics out of it and so their dream was we're going to take the industrial revolution and have it fueled by all these farmers across the whole united states so you would spread that wealth everywhere and what happened is the guys that had a lot of money that were could afford to punch a hole in the ground and then build these big giant refineries to uh to purify it and turn it into fuel and everything else they could do it so much cheaper but what it did it consolidated all that wealth instead of spreading out through the whole country it consolidated that wealth within you know four or five six families and so that's basically what's happened with our food industry right now is it's all getting consolidated and you know you don't have the small dairy farmers anymore you know you don't have the small guys that had gardens that they sold at the farmers market you know that's starting to come back a little bit but still you know we're you know we're in an area situation you know it's just like technology you know when you when you concentrate all that in one area you know it cuts off all alter alternatives you know i i think it's kind of like what's happened with uh the the internet and iphones and everything else is we're all dependent on these satellites and we're all dependent on you know electricity and wires and everything else to keep us connected and you know if we had a sunspot like we had back in the 1800s or wiped out a bunch of the telegraph lines if we had the same thing you would wipe out our satellites and you know you couldn't get gas you couldn't get groceries so you didn't have access to your money you couldn't open the doors to get to the grocery stores everything is digital right so i you know and you know i'm i'm all for it i i use you know here we are right now you know but it's just kind of a scary place to be in you know it's kind of like losing electricity in the middle of the winter well look what happened in texas i mean this is just kind of a small piece or the big you know what was it the land hurricane i don't remember what it's called that hit iowa in the midwest and knocked out the millions of acres in you know land and agriculture and you know us how dependent we are on technology and what happens in a snowstorm you know and now texas is without power for days because they drop below 20 degrees or you know stuff like that that's just it's an eye what are solutions something that um that i think is other things important for people that are thinking about the hemp industry is you have to have a constant uh you know product you have to have a known uh supply and a known um well it has to be the same you know like you if you're toyota and you're going to buy you know okay so if we're going to supply fiber for toyota they want to know two things are we going to get the same quality every time and our is your supply chain enough where we're never going to run out so that's two things right there that if you don't have those things you know you're not gonna ever have an industry that's gonna be sustainable and talk about growth i think what you just said is extremely important for people to hear especially when we get so many people buying or getting into decorticating facilities that are small pull behind your truck is that sustainable and why not yeah well well the other thing if you're going to do this you know the the issue we've always had is it's the chicken and an egg thing you know toyota is not going to switch over to natural fibers until they know that they have somebody that's going to be able to process it and supply them with consistent quality and a consistent supply right nobody is going to be on a processing facility until they know that the farmers can provide them with the feedstock for their uh the manufacturing you know if they're processing so you know it's like who's gonna shoot first you know who's gonna make the first move so what i've told people the only way that i see that this thing can that we can get out of this chicken and egg is through like a five or ten year uh long-term uh contract that basically it's it's great for like say we'll just use toyota or ford you know somebody like that as an example you go to them and say look if we can if we can guarantee you you know over the next five years and show you that we can ramp up and you know you'll start buying you know small scale from us and we'll scale up each year if you're if you're going to buy from if you'll sign a contract it's non-binding if we don't if we can't do it if we can't supply you no harm no file but in the meantime you get all the pr that you're going to help the kentucky or the american farmers uh by you know offering this opportunity for them to participate in the new industry and it doesn't cost you anything so to me that is the way that you start then once you have those guys that say okay if you can supply us this quality of fiber and you can show that you can do this then we'll do it then then a manufacturer could go in and say okay you know we have this contract with toyota said they'll buy from us if we can do this and then he goes to the farmers and starts a co-op or or gets a group of farmers together and uh you know makes them part of the the end product to give them some value added to it and say look you know you guys grow this we'll process it and get it to them and then to take it a step further you know you have someone 150 miles or 200 miles away that's doing the exact same thing and you have like five or six of these units so if if there's a crop failure in one area then those other four areas can help supply your supply chain and gives the industry even a more uh confidence that you can do what you say you're going to be able to do so look at not just not just crop failure right what if i mean parts and equipment right if we have a break in our supply chain and we can't get parts from china or from wherever your equipment comes from um and you go down and now you can't supply a contract like that i just i more and more i i see value in a co-op setting or a type operation an operation like what you described for multiple reasons and being able to give our rural farmers or small farmers a way to compete on a yeah bigger scale yeah i love it yeah but i see you know i'd say see a great future for it well i'd love to participate however i can i want i would love to help put something like this together um talk to me about standards really quick a lot of people ask all the time you know why isn't it hemp is so great and there's so many opportunities why isn't it mainstreamed if it has the r value that it does for insulation or if it is stronger or lighter or more sustainable you know like claims have been why isn't it being used and a lot of conversation is in our groups or focused around these standards right that need to be created what are your well i i think it's like any industry you know we're there's new technologies coming out all the time there's they're able to now uh cottonize fiber that they can use for for clothing um you know there's there's all these new technologies the one that we're working on just it works with cannabis but it works with really any uh lipids so you know we'll be we'll be working in the food industry and the cannabis industry with this new technology because it's basically what it does uh we use a lipid and in this case when it comes to hemp it'll probably be uh hemp oil but it could be mct all it could be uh olive oil it could be anything and uh but what we'll be doing is is we've got these big reactors we put the oil in and then we'll put the floral material in there or the the high-end buds and um then basically what we do is we infuse these all the cannabinoids of terpenes and plaroids we infuse it actually into the oil where right now what you have is a co2 extractor or uh ethanol extractor hexane or something that has all the residual stuff in it and when you use that you lose a lot of the plearoids of the cannabinoids and terpenes in the process but you end up with a thick tar and you take that tar heat it up heat your carrier all up mix it together and now it's floating in there together and that's why they say you know shake your bottle before you know before using it and if they're feeling out of a 55 gallon drum they've mixed up you know getting continuity in you know those 7 000 40 ounces that's in there you know you've got to constantly keep it stirred up and everything so this process infuses it into it and you're in a a closed uh system so you can't you don't lose any of the terpenes you don't lose any cannabinoids or flavoroids anything and we can take say we could put some mint in there and we could have a mint flavored uh cbd oil we could put uh turmeric ginger we could put anything when you're extracting you're not using a like a solvent it's not really it's extracting but it's more of a bonding process so it is taken out of it but you know we're not extraction process to me is you're taking it out and and here it is right here and what we're doing we're not taking it out we're just it's we're transferring it into the oil and bonding it in the oil so it can be used in the olive oil industry to to flavor olive oils sure we can flavor butter we can flavor ghee yeah we any any lipid we can add flavor to in a way that's never been done before so and that's what what has to happen in the hemp industry in order to really be successful you almost have to find niche and come up with some kind of new technology or some way of harvesting or processing or doing you know a value added to the end use of it to really be successful in this industry so you know to me it's like you know if if i was investor i would be looking for these new technologies or new ways of doing things and not be a me too because you know anybody that's building a ethanol extractor right now there's already you know there's already more extractors out there than because it's the same thing that's happened with the the uh the cbd industry the growing of it you know now there's there's so many extractors out there that um you know in the prices are dropping you know i could buy um the guy called the other day he's got 1500 pounds of uh i think it's 14 cbd that's compliant below 0.3 on the thc he said i just got to get it out of here he said i'll give it to you for a dollar a pound and so people just are you know and he won't ever grow again right that's what i hate about this industry that you know it just so many people got into it thinking they were going to make money and lost money and crashed the market and anybody that built their you know like a lot of people got into it and they spent money knowing they could get uh you know a couple years ago you know eight ten thousand dollars a kilo so they they built their business model around that and now those guys are in trouble because that same kilo that they thought they were going to get a minimum of 8 000 far now that same kilo was selling for five six seven hundred eight hundred dollars so unless they can sustain their self until this wave goes by of all this excess whether it rots in the field or you know who knows what's going to happen to it but once that's gone then you have these contract growers like we're doing and those guys will make good money but uh you know those people that lost money i just my heart goes out to them because those guys will never come back to the hemp industry you know after you get burnt like that you're like hell with that you know i lost fifty or hundred thousand dollars you know don't even talk to me about him ever again so that's what that's what we're running into a lot so i think that that's where this cbd market like when you say that cbd stole the hemp industry because it did yeah it tarnished so many farmers and it's here i'm like no we need to grow fiber and we have this opportunity for this whole new market that is much much bigger and yeah we need to be looking at an agricultural crop if we're talking about helping all of america's farmers and building an industry around it you're not going to build you'll build cottage engine industries around cbd but you're going to have to grow it as a fiber crop or food crop in order for it to become a mainstream commodity what what real quick we're almost out of time and i don't want to keep you much longer but on the big scale who do you see or where do you see product moving to you know who are our big buyers is it uh certain countries is it industries the food industry food industry is going to be big because it's a great source of protein you know you can make milk out of it well i wrote a story for john roulak years ago john uh has that company nativa you know i knew john when he was selling compost bins at the back of his apartment in ohio california that's awesome yeah he's got a you know over 100 million dollar business going yeah but uh to to really you know where the industry is where i see it going and said well we're i think it's going to be food is going to be number one fiber will be number two but this thing i did for john roulak i wrote this story that he put in his his little book he wrote it was basically you know you wake up in the morning and uh you pull your hemp sheets and your hip blanket back and you know move your hemp pillar away and you step onto your hemp carpet and put on your hemp slippers go to the bathroom wash your hands with hemp soap brush your teeth with a a plastic uh hemp tooth plastic toothbrush yep hemp toothpaste you know you know you shower with hemp shampoo dry off with a hemp towel and go downstairs and have a breakfast with hemp milk and hemp nuts um you know just all the stuff you can do with you and then you go out and get in your car that's made from hemp fiber and drive to a factory that where you're working to process him so i mean there's what people need to understand is anything that you can make from a hydrocarbon you can make from a carbohydrate if you think that then that uh 1937 uh uh popular mechanics magazine that said there's 25 000 uses for it yeah yeah there's probably you know there's probably that many uses for plastic so yeah that's where you know i see uh you know the food industry really being big in it but the fiber industry and the um the carbon industry uh i i think are going to be big so i think that's where it's headed in the future i agree with you and i think it's very little what's spoken about right our construction industry our plastics are talked about a lot more but i think that yeah our next wave is definitely going to be around the food this is where we're getting support from our usda right is around exploring these alternative options for food i mean we had we did a study a couple different studies years ago one was feeding fish you know hemp mill which they did great on and the other was using fiber in concrete instead of these plastic fibers and it was coming back that it was stronger than uh than the plastic fibers you know the petroleum power so it's um it's exciting i mean just to see an industry in its uh you know infancy and being part of of you know helping you know make that a mainstream crop again has been just exciting so you know when i when i go back to police thinking that was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me because now you know i've got a legacy to leave my kids and grandkids you know being part of starting a whole new industry i think what thomas jefferson said and i'm paraphrasing it's like the best thing a person can do for his country is to add another crop in the rotation of the field so you know just being part of that you know and having a small part in it has been um you know it's been a great story and a fun ride makes you feel good it should it makes me feel good to talk about it it's so exciting and people say all the time well why do you even care i don't have a business in the hemp industry but i wholeheartedly believe what you are doing and what people along the same journey are doing is what will change our our world right it will give our kids an opportunity and a chance and yeah i'm excited to see them get their hands on it and really make change when i started manny i had no idea that i mean the furthest thing from my mind was to be in the hemp business and you know here 28 years later i am and you know i like to tell people i'm overnight success [Laughter] so but you know i mean just being you know being able to see the industry you know go from you know being a pariah to turning into a mainstream crop is really um it's been a great great journey and a lot of fun just to watch watch it happen so leave your legacy what would be the last thing that you hope to see happen and what's that time frame look like well what i tell people is we're looking at you know like i was talking to the five-year contracts but i think it's going to be you know it took soybeans 40 or 50 years to become a mainstream crop i think 20 years i think i think 20 years and you know you'll have a lot of research uh you'll have a lot of genetics developed for specific um you know applications but you know i'd say 20 years i'll you know hopefully i'll still be around to see you know how it turns out but uh you never know every day every day is uh you know i wake up and wake up going damn i'm still here get another chance to do it right hey i i hope you finish your timeline with getting out of bed turning down those sheets stepping into those slippers in your carpet yes that's right that's it i want to build a home that's my my goal i want a home out of hemp and grapes and yeah the whole thing so that would be cool well thanks joe i really appreciate you if anybody needs to get a hold of you or wants to how do they find you and reach out to you or learn more about your company well our uh our website and for some reason you can go on google and get it but just to type it right in for some reason i don't know godaddy is having a problem today or something but it's uh halcyon it's h-a-l-c-y-o-n-420.com and uh my email address is joe halcyon420.com so um and i you know i get you know i try to help everybody out and i get uh calls and emails a lot so if you email me and i don't email back uh just keep going because i'll i'll eventually you know get to it so well and you attend quite a few events if people want to listen to you speak or get to know you you know i always encourage people attending those events like nor the noco event right um or what was the other one you just recently went up to noco and then you've got the southern hemp expo which is going to be in i think where is it um it's it's like north carolina or south carolina i think uh it might even be virginia but uh but for sure yeah but um you know i go to a few of them i try to you know i try to keep busy been you know i do like going because it's just it's a lot of fun just seeing a lot of yeah meeting people right well so that's what i was saying is feel free to show up to those events support them they're great ways to build relationships and meet people like you and so anyways i'll definitely be attending and i really appreciate your time thank you very very much if there's anything i can do for you and you your team um i'd love to collaborate i'd love to continue to share what you're doing and share the message and yeah well i feel the same way so any any way that i can help you i'm you know or anybody i'm more than glad to do anything that's going to help promote the industry cool well thank you very very much joe we'll sign off now and thank you everybody for watching and listening uh if you do uh i guess do enjoy or like i hate this part joe every time like share subscribe and follow we'll talk to you guys later thank you very much see you later joe take care