Hemp cultivation is a complex subject.  First of all there are two main types of Hemp Cultivation.  These are Industrial Hemp grown for just the CBD oil which is extracted from the flower.  This type of cultivation involves a lot of hand work and utilizes female plant clones or feminized seed which is produced by treating the flowers with various solutions.  However, feminized seed does not produce 100% female plants and there is always the possibility that female plants can become hermaphroditic and still pollinate the crop which lowers the CBD levels in the flowers.  This process only uses the flower of the plant and the rest of the plant is not utilized.  Agricultural Hemp, which will be the most viable in the long run, utilizes whole plant processing and is fully mechanized from seed to sale.  This is working in conjunction with Mother Nature and produces four products, the Seed, the residual Flower, and the two other products come from the decortication of the stalk.  These are called the Bast which comes from the outer part of the stalk, and the hurd which comes from the inner part of the stalk.

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One harvested in the field, the raw material from the hemp plant will be taken to a whole plant processing facility.  The CHPC’s whole plant processing facility is a First Tier Processing Facility which means it will produce raw material suitable to be sold to Second Tier Processing and Manufacturing Facilities for the production of value added products.  The machinery for this First Tier Processing is well developed and produces four raw materials that can be further processed into a wide variety of products.  These raw materials are the Seed, Flower, Bast and Hurd.

When the seed and residual flower are harvested and transported to the whole plant processing facility, the first step of processing is to separate the seed from the flower as well as from the residual stems and leaves that were also mechanically harvested with the seed and flower.  This can be done efficiently utilizing machines called deawners, size sorters, and gravity tables.  Because the seed does not mature at the same time, there is both immature seed and mature seed which additionally need to be separated by the gravity table. Once separated, sorted and cleaned, the seed and flower will be packaged and labeled for wholesale purchase by second Tier Processors and manufacturers. When the stalks are harvested, they will be brought into the whole plant processing facility and separated into their two constituent parts, the Bast (long fiber) bark of the stalk and the Hurd (short fiber) pith of the stalk. This separation is done with a machine called a decorticator. Once decorticated the Bast and the Hurd can be further process to whatever spec the Second Tier Processor desires. For example, if the Hurd is going to be used in Hempcrete it doesn’t need much further processing, but if it is going to be used to make paper it will need to be further refined into almost a powder-like substance.

A fifth product can also be produced at the whole plant processing facility and that material is Hemp Biochar.  Not only can Hemp Biochar be produced from the waste stems and leaves of the Agricultural Hemp plant, it can also be produced from the waste materials from the CBD Industry and the Medical and Recreational Cannabis Industry.  As a bonus, with modern biochar ovens electricity can be produced from the syngasses and the excess heat produced by the pyrolysis process which lessens the carbon footprint of the whole plant processing facility.

Machinery for the harvesting of Hemp is still being developed.  The Colorado Hemp Processing Cooperative is working with engineers to provide the proper type of harvesting equipment.  Because this crop has been dormant for over 80 years, we have the opportunity to develop the most efficient harvesting equipment possible utilizing 21st Century Technology.

The ideal harvesting procedure is really a two step process.  Once the Agricultural Hemp plant has produced seed, one type of equipment will be used to harvest the seed and residual flower, leaving the stalks standing in the field to dry while the seed and flower are being sorted and separated at the whole plant processing facility.  When the stalks have dried in the field, they will be harvested utilizing a different type of machinery.  It is not recommended that the stalks be baled as this damages the fiber.  Once the stalks are harvested, they will be taken to the processing facility and decorticated into their two constituent parts, the Bast and the Hurd.

Currently, one-step harvesting machinery is available, but they produce green stalks which are not as efficiently decorticated as dried stalks.

When these four raw materials, the Seed, Flower, Bast and Hurd, have been processed, they will be sold to second tier processing facilities to be further processed into the over 25,000 products that the raw materials from the whole plant are capable of producing.  These products include food, building materials, fuel, textiles, cosmetics and a host of others.