Hemp market ripe for picking

By Pamela Dickman Reporter-Herald Staff Writer
 
LOVELAND — Shaun Crew’s company is the biggest processor of industrial hemp in Canada, and his leading product is protein powder.
Hemp Oil Canada also supplies hemp oil, seeds and more for cereal, salad dressings, cooking products, baked goods, soaps and lotions.
“Milk,” salad dressings, paint, cloth, rope, packaging supplies, chewing tobacco alternative and yarn lengthen the list of products that boost the $500 million hemp industry — a venture Colorado is on the verge of joining.
“When I see hemp, I see an alternative crop,” said Kent Peppler, Mead farmer and president of the Rocky Mountain Farmer’s Union, at an industrial hemp symposium Thursday at The Ranch in Loveland.
“I see a crop that doesn’t use fertilizer. I see a crop that doesn’t need a great deal of water. I see a crop that has multiple uses.”
All those factors make hemp a potential cash crop and alternative for Colorado farmers as state voters just legalized the production with Amendment 64.
 
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