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E45 - Hemp Sense and CBDilities

Kirk goes for a snowmobile ride and ends up in Gilbert Plains.  He drops in on Hemp Sense and Lyall Bates graciously gives him an interview.  Learn how Hemp Sense technology is on the cutting edge of getting CBD's out of industrial hemp.  And this isn't from a well controlled green house.  This is industrial hemp from an open field.  And it is harder than you'd think.  If you don't immediately get the hemp buds off the field and start drying and curing them in a couple hours, all the CBD is destroyed by composting.  Hemp Derived CBD is all the rage.  Come listen to an expert on how to get it off the field.

Friday, 07 February 2020 22:09

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Episode Transcript

Lyle:  Hello. I'm president of Hemp Sense from Gilbert Plains Manitoba.

Kirk:  Fantastic. What do you what do you do at Hemp Sense?

Lyle:  What we do here as we set up a company here that's the first company in the world that actually shreds hemp wasted straw and makes products out of it. We make six or seven products out of the waste drawer and we also use the seed. We have products for just a seed and also the hauls off the seed. We make products out of that. So we use all the, there's no waste to any of the hemp straw. And then we also use the buds and leaves, which we harvest off the field and make a product that's ready for extracting CBD out of the biomass.

Kirk:  Boy, that's a whole lot of stuff. So let's start with the first one. You're the first company in the world to do what you're doing.

Lyle:  Yes.

Kirk:  So you are you are taking a, I guess, a sativa strain of hemp.

Lyle:  Yes.

Kirk:  That grows very tall. And you're using every part of it, using the fiber the the seeds, everything. Yes. Wow. What do you do? What do you do with that? What do you do with the fiber? Let's start with the fiber.

Lyle:  The Fiber is the toughest fiber in the world. So it's very hard to shred. For the last hundred years, they've been separate in the fiber in the hurd, the hurd use for bedding insulation where they use lyme sprayed into homes and that for insulation. The fibers used for clothing, insulation also. But what we set up here. We shred the whole bail and we make pellets out of it. And then we make crumbles for cat litter, gardening, bedding, small animal bedding, garden enhancer. And we use the dust for all absorbing cleanups. So we've got use of everything.

Kirk:  So. So everything you you farm and produce at this plant, you use or are you sending stuff for other companies to use?

Lyle:  We do everything here. We finish everything's finished product here, shipped out of here.

Kirk:  You have a surplus of stuff you don't use for your products and send elsewhere.

Lyle:  no we use everything.

Kirk:  OK? So your business. We've actually used some of your garden stuff. That's really cool. And we've actually sent out your cat litter stuff to friends in Alberta who are actively searching, actively searching it. Where would people buy these products? Cat litter, the garden enhancer. Where did you buy?

Kirk:  Right now, we're in some local stores and Freedom Pets out of Ontario. Just taking our products. That'll be all through Ontario. They're gonna be probably one of our main marketers.

Kirk:  OK, so that's the fiber. You use the seeds. What do you do with the seed?

Lyle:  The seed? We make a pet booster out of it. It's like it's good for the pets, but we actually put a natural chicken flavoring with it. So it's good for dogs and cats. It's good for their joints. It's good for hair loss. So that that's a product we use the seed for.

Kirk:  Will it help with my hair.

Lyle:  If you lost it already you are probably done, and we also use the the seed for human use. We bag that here and then we have the hulls that's the outside of the shell that we use except for horse supplement.

Kirk:  OK. Wow. So. Yeah. OK. Now in in Dauphin I can go into the co-op and buy Hemp Sense seeds. Yes. Where else can people Hemp Sense Seeds?

Lyle:  Hemp Sense Seeds or in the co-op. Right now he's in a Manitoba market. Yes, I'd say it's a Manitoba market right now. We're actually now pushing on the market simply because Manitoba Harvest is very large there right through North America. So we've kind of shied away from that market and more into the pet market.

Kirk:  OK. So let's let's let's broach into the CBD market. You obviously have heard of the CBD and you're into that game. So does this manufacturer also deal with CBD?

Lyle:  Yes. This company was focused number one to start with CBD actually, when we built this company is was, we actually got patents back on CBD. 2014, 2013, before CBD was even mentioned. So we've been working with CBD probably for 7 - 8 years. Not selling it. No marketing, it was against the law, but we've been testing how well you take it off the field, how you save the Strains. Different strains, higher strains of CBD oil and keeping a THC low. We've actually harvest last year we did 320 acres. We had an average of one point five percent strain in the field after drying, curing and storing, we've averaged 1.36. So we're about 90 percent saving on the strain. Doing this commercial in the fields. We designed our own equipment. Today, we're now going to design a new harvester. We're in the works of what I put together that where we can do up to 200 acres a day with one person.

Kirk:  Well, again, you throw stuff at me. So let's take a step backwards. This is you're extracting the CBD from cannabis, but a hemp strain.

Lyle:  Yes. Hemp Strain. It's a low it's a low THC,.

Kirk:  High CBD. And how high does your plants get in CBD?

Lyle:  CBD, I mean, everybody in the world's growing higher CBD strains trying to get it higher the better, of course. But the highest one recorded in North America today, what's approved is what I know of as a four.

Kirk:  A four. And that's that's industrial hemp strains of cannabis. Yes. Opposed to the marijuana strains of cannabis, where something like a Charlotte's Web is getting up to 10 to 20 percent CBD.

Lyle:  Yes. And then and then we have a lot happening here. Hemp was just allowed to farm in the United States last year, so they didn't even have many hemp strains out there. I mean, the highest commercial one was about 2 percent. You seen a lot 18 and 20s and 20 some percent. But that was what you call hybrid. So that's putting marijuana with hemp, calling it hemp. But the industry really got shaken last year with a lot of people crossing strains, selling strains and people didn't know what they were doing, so they grew strains that were too high. The government has destroyed a lot of this biomass and it will not allow you to extract CBD out of hemp if your THC 0.3.

Kirk:  Okay. Can you can. But I think for me to understand the difference between because cannabis is cannabis, cannabis right cannabis includes what we call marijuana, which people consume for medicine or for a high. Yes. And hemp is the manufacturers side that's for industrial for building materials and that sort of stuff. Yes. Is there a difference between the CBD found in the again, the marijuana strains compared to the industrial hemp strains? Is there a difference?

Lyle:  No, I don't believe there is. It's just that you want to keep the THC down. But again,.

Kirk:  OK, that is that is that the secret then? So, for example, when when people are growing high, CBD marijuana strains, there is a percentage of THC in those strains. Yes, I see. So in your strains is strictly CBD and no THC.

Lyle:  No THC. But there will be our strains. There is there is some but very, very little like zero point zero point one 0.01.

Kirk:  OK. Now, is there is there a difference in extracting the CBD from an industrial hemp versus the marijuana?

Lyle:  No. They use the same CO2 or ethanol. It's the same type of extraction. I think the big difference is, is that most marijuana. Well, it's supposed to be grown indoors, controlled in greenhouses, not hemp can be done that way, too. But if you're growing strains of 2 or 3 or 4 percent or 5 percent to CBD in hemp, it your cost is gonna be too high in a greenhouse.

Kirk:  OK. So is it possible for you to grow a field of Charlotte's Web that has 20 percent? No. No, it's not. That's why. Why not?

Lyle:  Because you're strain if it's CBD right now, high like that your THC is going to be high. Probably over zero point zero three 0.03 . So once it goes into the lab and they test your strain and if it's over zero point zero three, they destroy it.

Kirk:  OK. Now, is that because you're not registered as a cannabis distribution or a grower? You're registered as a hemp grower?

Lyle:  Yeah. Yeah, there is there. I mean, you can't just grow marijuana in your fields.

Kirk:  You have to have four plants or less or be registered as a grower.

Lyle:  Yes. Right now commercial, you can put hemp out there. You can take the strain off and you get a license for that. But again, what the governments are doing. I mean, everything's coming in place yet. FDA United States have a lot to work out down there. But Health Canada has really stepped up here, they've you know, you get your license, you grow it, you can grow what you want. But at the end of the day, when it goes into the lab, traceability of things can be done. They test it. If it tests within the rules, then you're OK. If it's not, they destroy it.

Kirk:  OK. And that's because you're registered as a hemp farmer, not as a as a marijuana grower. Interesting. Government bureaucracy.

Lyle:  Yeah. Working with a doctor. You're right. Now, that's very educated. She's actually got about 7000 clients right now. She's actually working now to see what the difference is and how she reacts on patients with taken CBD from marijuana prepared to CBD in hemp.

And I think the thing is, is the industry come in so quick with CBD is the problem is when it did come out and all the news what CBD could do, we still need more proof. We need more testing. We need more doctors to test this. But at the end of the day, the industry jumped quicker than the market was there.

Kirk:  Right. You were ready, right? You guys, we were this long time.

Lyle:  Yeah, we've been this is I've been doing this 15-years and I've been probably working with the strains.

Kirk:  Growing hemp for 15 years.

Lyle:  Yeah. Not growing it. Working with it. I let the farmers grow it. OK.

Kirk:  What is your background. And what is your background?

Lyle:  I'm background farmer. OK.

Kirk:  Do you have any university degrees? 

Lyle:  No, I am a background farm boy and designed all this equipment myself. No engineers, nobody.

Kirk:  OK. Yeah. Very cool. So now again, just take a step back on CBD. Is CBD extracted from the flower, from the leaves, from the stem. How do you. Where is it extracted from.

Lyle:  There CBD and the whole implant. But on your stem, which is a fiber in the herd.

Kirk:  Which is what you're using for the cat litter and stuff.

Lyle:  Yes. OK. That would not be worth extracting. OK, cost is too much for what you're getting. What you want is I mean a perfect product you want is just a buds.

Kirk:  OK. But you're growing male flowers, right?

Lyle:  We're male and female and female.

Kirk:  Hybrids or what.

Lyle:  Ours aren't hybrids. OK. Now, if you go into a greenhouse where they're doing marijuana, they had to pick all the leaves off. They just take the buds right where we are out in the field here with hemp taking it off with equipment and large scale. We're taking all the the buds and leaves. OK, our leaves are in with a buds right now. OK. So we extract that. Now, what we do is and our plan is this extract large volumes we're looking at the company that we're working with right now is we'll be putting one hundred thousand pounds per month.

Kirk:  Of seeds and.

Lyle:  Just the buds and leaves.

Kirk:  OK. So, OK. So let's walk through this so that the farmer grows to hemp. You come in and harvest so your machines leave the stems behind, take the small leaves and the flowers. Yes. And then the small leaves and the flowers come here. And then obviously, you must also have to quickly get the stems off the field.

Lyle:  No, you can leave the stems in the field for day. You can harvest like if you want to take them off for waste straw. Well, we make our products, you take them off that fall or you can take them off the following spring.

Kirk:  So there's no worry of composting of stems. it's the composting of the flowers and small leaves that you want to get off,.

Lyle:  You've got to get them off. You've got about two hours. OK. That's got to. As soon as you get them off the field, they've got to be put through a dryer. OK.

Kirk:  And good dryers here. OK. So now you dry the buds and the flowers and of course, I'm not going to ask you to give me any insights on your processes, but you must shake the seeds off the buds because you harvest the seeds separately. don't you.

Lyle:  It's wet biomass when you take it off, so you dry it down to a certain temperature and then you actually screen it to take the seed out and then you actually then you cure, you've got a cure,.

Kirk:  Cure the seeds

Lyle:  The biomass, the seed you just remove. OK, but then the seed isn't a waste because we can use it for our pet booster. So it's not a waste, but the buds and leaves you want clean, but they've got to be cured. Right? There's there's the big catch because.

Kirk:  When you cured, that sort of like like I'm assuming there's gonna be CBDa in there. So by curing you now converting the CBDa into CBD.

Lyle:  No you actually the CBD in the buds and leaves.

Kirk:  As an acid. Right. A raw acid.

Lyle:  Yes. It's already in there. Right now you're drying it. That's why it's important. You can, If you use too much heat, you'll lose it. If you overdry it, you'll lose it.  So you've got to try to a certain temperature to bring it down. And then when you screen it and take the seed away, then the curing, you've now got a biomass that is dry but not cured.

Kirk:  But the curing is the heating process?

Lyle:  No.  And that's where we've come up with technology and patents and we've got from North America that how we dry it, how we separate the seeds and then how we cure it. That's information that we keep them company.

Kirk:  And that's what that's what's gonna make you guys fantastic and wealthy. I take it.

Lyle:  Well, it's not about I think the biggest thing is it was a challenge of his, you know, passion. Yeah. And, you know, I'll admit the first six years. I took a small plots off and we just destroyed them. But learning. I failed six times.

Kirk:  Well. Yeah, but who is said was it Edison? It's not how many times you fail, it's you continue until you succeed.

Lyle:  Right. And you know what it... I always believed it was there was just a matter how you did it.

Kirk:  And you did it.

Lyle:  And there's there's a lot of everything's simple, but when you don't got no companies or nothing on the Internet to help you, it's all learning. The strains will change in the field if it's cloudy. Two years ago, we had smoke B.C. It covered the skies in smoke all summer. Strains went down, huh.

Kirk:  So you're so you're so far ahead of the curve on this, the CBD craze, I take it? OK, so here's a question. Are you ready for the blow up? I mean, now you guys you guys have started small. You've got you've got your patents pending. You're ready to go. How big does Hemp Sense get?

Lyle:  We've got I see. I believe about five or six patents proved already. I've just finished actually one today, actually. Another one would just went in. So another patent pending. But as far as we can take Hemp Sense is probably where it is right now.

Kirk:  That size. Basically.

Lyle:  No, it can grow. Its ready to grow. It's ready to take off. I believe it's we're ranked number one CBD company in the world by analysts.

Kirk:  It's a privately owned company, right?

Lyle:  Yeah. It's privately owned. So it's been some we didn't run for government grants and not. This is all private money. And we took our baby steps. We didn't grow and grow a whole bunch, a whole bunch of acres and take a lot of risk. We tried we did 330 to prove that we were doing.  As far as I know, there's no biomass in the world been taken off and saved 90 percent of the strain. Right now we have hundreds of approximately about one hundred and ten thousand acres get seeded last year for CBD in Canada. About 96 percent of that will be burned.

Kirk:  Really?

Lyle:  Yes. Because of not knowing how to farm it, not knowing how to harvest it, not knowing how to dry it, not having the proper equipment, not knowing what they're dealing with. And just think you just cut it and squeeze it. It don't work that way.

Kirk:  So what do you think when people are saying that the problem with Canada is that we don't have the mass? I was talking to a guy a couple of years ago who says that South America is going to get into CBD game and the cannabis and hemp game and they're gonna just out produce us.

Lyle:  I disagree. I think Canada is a leader. I believe Hemp Sense is one of the leaders. We've drawn attention from a lot of companies all over the world. We've had a lot of the marijuana companies try to join with us or partner with us. I've turned them all down. I don't want to be in the marijuana. I'm not against marijuana, but I'm not, it's not what I believe in. I believe and I want to have a product with hemp. As far as the United States, I mean, well let's look, what was it a week ago, 13 million dollars of biomass just get destroyed. Fifteen companies including Charlotte's Web got shut down, putting products on the market that doesn't even have CBD in it. They have no, no products, hardly even on a market that's approved by FDA today. There's no CBD oil approved by Health Canada.

Kirk:  You see that is an interesting comment you're making. Yes. And because there are companies out there that are selling CBD wellness and you're saying they're not regulated, not approved.

Lyle:  Yes. And no way around that is you sell online line and that. I mean, we've been selling hemp seed out of here where companies are actually squeezing it and bottling it and selling in the CBD oil and it's actually hemp seed oil, which has no CBD in it. So I'd say it's a fraud. It's it's a big scam. It's a gold rush right now. I'm glad Health Canada is being strict on this and weed these people because let's face it, people are buying a product that they're not getting.

Kirk:  So let me unpack that again. So have you sold any of your CBD extract for use human consumption? Not yet. Not yet. So you but you have demonstrated that your technology gives people purity CBD for that use.

Lyle:  Yes. We've done all the testing. We've been working with the extraction company. In fact, we've got two companies we're working with. One is in Toronto. One is in Manitoba. The one in Toronto should have a license here any day, which we've been told by Health Canada. That is a goal for me, too, we're hoping here by March 1st to have bottles labeled him Hemp Sense, the first oil approved in North America we know of that's actually approved by Health Canada, but has CBD in it.

Kirk:  Without THC, pure.  So it's an isolate. Yes, it's an isolate.

Lyle:  So that would be I mean, we're looking at we know we are looking at partnering with a very large company that does the extraction. That's only thing Hemp Sense doesn't do. I think this is gonna be a great joint venture for us. And I think we can take this to another level. This year, we're planning to do between two to three thousand acres and then keep growing from there. But you only have about 40 days to take this off the field.

Kirk:  That's what we learned in the Hemp Hemp Hooray. The first one is that This is grass, so grass composts. Yeah. And that's your technology.

Lyle:  Yeah. And there's there's everything's easy when you know. But we've got some you know, we patent all our work and now it's time to grow this. But yeah we've got we definitely I mean everyday we had calls from other parts of the world.

Kirk:  Yeah. So you're, you're truly ahead of the curve that everyone's on this gold rush and you guys are waiting and watching them. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to make the same mistakes you made until and you're going to be that far ahead.

Lyle:  There's lots. We get calls from farmers all over Canada right now trying to sell us our biomass and we run and get samples and we get the samples sent away to a lab and come back and it's not even worth extracting. Well, yeah, Farmers, just just took it off wrong. You know, cutting whole stocks and bailing it wet and getting mold in it and it's just not that easy.

Kirk:  But here's a question. I mean, hemp used to be one hundred years ago to 50 years ago, it was the crop. So what are what? Is it because. Is it because farmers are trying to grow such large quantities? Many acres that they're having problems? Is hemp a small crop?

Lyle:  Oh, no. When hemp got brought into Canada, here It was Parkland that started it. Joey Fedorowich was one of the first guys that started it. And Joey Fedorowich is one reason I'm sitting here today. When you grew this, it was tough to grow this stuff. It was harder on equipment. It was easy to quit. Right. Most most people would quit, but Joey was a he was a lot like me. You don't walk away, you figure out.

Kirk:  Yeah. So when you look at you look at the fact that President Trump signs a Farmer's Act that allows hemp now in America. Right. If you're going to give those hemp farmers advice. Right. What would you say to them that you've learned over the last 19, 20 years?

Lyle:  Well, I don't really say too much what happens in the United States simply because I think there millions of acres of marijuana growing right outdoors. But that none of my business. I don't care what happens, across the line.  As far as the Canadians, I do tell people, I tell them, be careful. Careful what you're doing. Hemp can be farmed, for seed, you can do a lot of acres. But when it comes to CBD, be careful. It can be done, but be careful. I would do more test plots like 10 acres, five acres. Learn how to do it. But just don't grow and do 2000 acres like you're just going to cut it and sell it. Because if you don't get a buyer, you're wasting your money. Okay.

Kirk:  Thank you for this. We usually just say there is a question I didn't ask you that you would, is there any information I didn't ask you.  Anything you would like our listeners to understand.

Lyle:  No, I think I think the biggest thing is it's it's coming and more testing needs to be done in CBD. But I think with the testing coming in the regulations coming in there and where you can buy CBD of actually approved by Health Canada, at least people know what they're buying.