Episode Details

Dakota Hemp: Building an Industry in South Dakota

Season 9 Episode 12 Published 1 month, 4 weeks ago

Description

This week on the Hemp Show, we're talking to the guys from Dakota Hemp in Wakonda, South Dakota.

John Peterson and Karll Lecher are running a HempTrain decortication system, taking in bales from local farmers and turning them into fiber and hurd. We get into how the facility works, what they're producing, and what it takes to actually run a processing plant in the Midwest.

We talk about how they brought farmers in, what those early meetings looked like, and how the conversation has shifted over time — from skepticism to real agronomic questions. Once farmers got over the novelty of hemp, they started asking questions about row spacing, fertility, yields, etc. Then suddenly it started to look like farming.

We also talk about where the processed hemp is going right now — animal bedding, early fiber markets — and what still needs to be built downstream to make this thing work at scale.

Plus, a quick look at how U.S.-grown hemp fiber is moving into global textile systems, and why new processing capacity is coming online even in places where acreage is still small.