Thank you to all who attended our second Western Canada Hemp Conference

Huge thank you to all who attended our second Western Canada Hemp Conference in April. And a special thanks to the Olds College for providing an excellent venue and to Magpie Coffee for supply delicious hemp coffee. Another special thanks to all our sponsors – we could not have done it without you. Please check out Peavey Mart for your next source of hemp material!

Conference attendance exceeded expectations with nearly 200 participants. The conference attendees included the federal / provincial / municipal public sector, farmers and farm suppliers, investors and NGOS, bankers, researchers and consultants, and producers of hemp products. Another special thank you to our presenters who covered topics from hemp production to tertiary product development.

– Jan Slaski, Principal researcher, Plant Sciences for InnoTech Alberta: New opportunities for industrial hemp including a blueprint to the $1B industry.

– Darren Haarsma, Farmer/CEO of Natty Sask Farms: Opportunities to grow.  A producer’s perspective

– David Fielder, Senior Scientist IV | Agriculture and Forestry | Value-added Fractionation Program Lead: Bio-Actives from Industrial Hemp – The New Green Gold Rush in Alberta?

– Jason Finnis, CEO of Crailar/Bast Fibre: Displacing synthetic fibres with hemp fibres in high value consumer products

– Tam Tekle, CEO of Natural Fibre Technologies: Getting Value from Every Part of the Plant through “Whole Crop Utilization”

Attendees had the opportunity to make their ideas known during two sessions in the afternoon

In addition, ABCTech requested feedback from online registrants in an evaluation sent out. This feedback was extremely useful and will be applied at ABCtech’s 3rd event in 2020 which will have more of a focus on marketing.

Overall, the conference attendees felt that this was a worthwhile event and we are hearing that there is interest in continuing to work together.

Please contact us if you would like to express an interest in attending/presenting/volunteering at the next conference and forward the link to anyone else that you think would be interested in attending future events.

The priorities identified for next year’s conference are:

  • Industry Promotion
  • Industry Expansion
  • Research
  • Product applications
  • Plant management
  • Industry standards
  • Industry Opportunities for Advancement
  • Financing
  • Farm supplies
  • Fiber processing
  • Understanding the CBD market

Please feel free to contact us for more information or if you would like to be put in touch with any of the conference participants, are interested in working on any of the above priorities or have any suggestions for individuals or organizations that you would like us to invite to the next event as speakers or guests.

Looking forward to seeing you at the next event!

Thank you all!

Jesse Hahn
587-985-7814