 and I've been in hemp, I want to say since 2015. In the last four growing seasons, I've been really looking at these different insects. Tree frog. What I find really interesting about it is that these plants are bringing forward a bunch of diversity. I mean diversity in terms of pest management. So you got ladybugs here, and they're always mating inside these male plants. I don't know why. Then something I've noticed was these Japanese people started showing up. I started like getting rid of them because they were just coming in droves. And then I wrote a grant to the stair project and I was able to secure a grant. So if anybody wants to know anything about how to secure a stair grant and need someone to like, you know, can you look over my applications before I turn in? See where should take my information, okay? And what's interesting about the stair grant is that I'm using a lot of different integrated pest management tools that are sustainable. So I'm not going to sprain my field. I'm using Japanese beetle tents to catch them. I'm using Dr. Bronner's unscented magic soap inside a five gallon bucket and knocking all the Japanese beetles off. It takes about 40 minutes to an hour to cover one acre. So by hand. And then some things I'm also doing is I'm adding this stuff called Beetle Be Gone and I found it in Denver, Colorado. But basically you either put it in the soil because the larvae, that's where they start and then you can also spray it on your plant. And what I'm finding really interesting about this research at the stair grant is I started at the college nomination but then I transferred it over to another program of reservation. What was interesting was that in the station we're not as prevalent as they were at the college. And so this next year I have to figure out okay I'm going to go back to the college and figure out why that is. And what's interesting too, this isn't a hemp plant at all. This is actually some native species plant that's sitting around. Well I noticed that a lot of the Japanese beetles are flocking to these native plants. So like mullin and these other various different plants that are kind of growing in my home's quarters. And it's just fascinating to figure that out. In terms of my research and what we're understanding is that Japanese beetles potentially might not be hazardous to hemp plants but they could also be attracting Japanese beetles. Because they're another, you know, you have the lady mugs mating in the male plants. You've got the Japanese beetles mating in the female plants and you've got the reproduction of all these different insects going on at the same time. So it's very fascinating and what I'm really trying to get home about is we're talking about the environment. All these plants and all these insects coming together there's really not a lot of research on it. So like young people in this room who want to understand how hemp is being grown and what you can do to deal with the IPM management of hemp there's a gold lining there. So the other things about hemp is this root system. Now, I got this root right here. This was over one growing season and what I did was I basically watered every other day from the time I planted up until the end of July. This is the root system. Yeah, just three months. Why? When you don't water them and you just let them grow freely, dry farm. I mean it doesn't look as sexy as they did before. I ran into a couple of doors in a way here and you broke on them. We got caught on a couple of tourists, you know. Cowboys. There's a lot of other things too about it being a carbon sequester. There's a lot of information out there. Some stuff in Europe says 2.48. There's, brings in about 22 tons of carbon. There's some stuff in America that's even less than that. So it's still to be determined how much you can recover from the atmosphere. But we know it can pull from the atmosphere. Economics. So I was granted a generous grant from the Native American Agriculture Fund. The study happened to develop a feasibility study for my tribe, as well as the other regional tribes in the area. But I'm not just going to stop there. Because look at, a feasibility study and a seven-year observational analysis of the American hemp industry. This feasibility study is going to be available in 2023. And I would recommend it to anybody who wants to copy of it. You let me know when I'll give it to you. Because I'm going to put a lot of information in it as soon as we put it all across the market. The college nomination is my partner. She's been my partner since 2015 when we first grew up and got rated. The USDA NEFA. We got one of those big USDA some hemp supply chain grants. And we're actually in the process of developing a hemp research center on the college nomination. And that's going to be open to all tribal students and non-native students who want to come and learn about hemp. So if you want to know more, you want to develop genetics because I have a lot of genetics. And I'll be teaching as well. Please enroll in the college nomination and devote your expertise, your brilliant mind to this because we're looking at seven years of catching up on hemp research, all right? And then we talk about CBD and the market and all that stuff and everyone's like, well, we can't really find a place to sell it. Oh! The USDA Biocertified Biobased Product System that's through the USDA allows you to have a federal procurement opportunity to where if you're able to develop a value-added product and sell it through this program, you have a niche. You got to compete with a lot of the people. I'm going to be honest. Well, when you look at it, you can make it perfectly. You can sell your CBD if you want. You could develop various different automotive products. You could create a biogram with a plastic product. You could create something that a national park needs. Maybe you could do something with oil mitigation. Maybe you need something to do with finding plastic trash bags that aren't plastic, but they're made out of hemp. You guys got to look at the USDA Biocertified Biobased Product Program and if you guys don't know how to start something like that, there is a woman in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Brilliant! Her name's Barbara Filibon. You need to go see her. She has 30 years of experience. Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Barbara Filibon, environmental textiles. She's had a hemp-based company that has been successful for the last 20 years. She just got her certification for 20 years being a part of the Biocertified Program. So any tribes are looking for something that they can actually get a niche in the market, you've got to go through the Biocertified Program. That's my honest opinion after seven years of being in this industry. Climate change. I love climate change. So, you're asking yourself, what's this field here? It's all hemp. This was planted on July or June 7th, 2020 into the month. First week in July. July 23rd. You have plants growing up to 14 feet tall in a matter of less than 90 days. This is a fiber variety. This is Anka and Altena. And what's really interesting about it is we didn't use any water. We did not use any water. We let it just drop with rainfall. And I want to say it was about 10 inches of rain that year. It's really all about the soil, gang. I'm really going to be honest with you. It's all about the soil. If you guys know a guy by the name of Will Allen who ran growing power for years, he told me the same thing back in 2011. It's all about the soil, Mark. If you got good soil, you could grow anything. And he was right. I can't believe it. Because I didn't use any water. I just made this soil really nice and look at this beautiful crap of hemp that came up. It was a jungle. You couldn't even find me in there. I'm going to be honest with you. Amazing. But this is something I'm talking about in a sense of you don't need any water for it. We're coming into an area. I know some of you out there who are from the west. You guys are running out of water. What are you even doing? You don't have anything. No water to grow. Why? Because the hemp seed has everything you need for the human body. So we're going to need some amino acids and one tablespoon packed 10 grams of protein. So we're talking about trying to figure out what we need to do about food. Man, get some hemp seeds. Throw a little chocolate on me if you don't like the taste of it. Got it made. I said something I said earlier about a carbon sequestration. Totally. When you talk about this plant growing back year after year, it does. No, a winter axis over winter too. So the beauty of it is that this crop that I grew in 2021 I didn't touch the field at all. It came back in 2021. So it's really interesting in the sense of you have a crop that just keeps on giving. And not only that, these sprouts here are amazing. So when it comes to using as a garnishment on a piece of meat or with some mashed potatoes that can't tell you enough. It tastes like basil and hemp if they were to come together and make a bacon. That's what it tastes like. Not that I know what a bacon tastes like. So Tribal sovereignty. I really thought about this for a long time because I'm like, when am I going to talk about tribal sovereignty? That is related to that. Well, M.S.I.C.R.C.R.D. played a big role in making sure that tribal sovereignty was upheld and affirmed in the 2018 Farm Bill. We wanted to make sure everybody in Indian game country had the right to grow and we did not have to worry about DEA raids or FBI coming in without warrants because that's what they did to us in the year 2015. Now how do we look at the future? Because this is obviously on the past. I'm currently developing genetics. I took three land races from Ukraine, Romania, Southeast Asia and I developed this variety here. It's called Coyote Otter 15 and remember it's a minor John's meeting since my name is P.S.I.C.R.C.R.C.R.D. so a daughter and John was Coyote. So it's Coyote Otter 15 and why is it Tribal sovereignty? Because now I've got to pay anybody ain't no money to grow this crop. And that's what you guys all got to think about when you come down to this whole you need a certified seed to grow him. No, they just want to create a monopoly. That's what it comes down to. And when you come down to it, so it really comes to it, you all come see me or you go see when only Duke bought the collection that I pulled from. So when only Duke or myself have a seed that's available in the Indian country and you go and you come talk to us historical perspectives. Another one I was thinking about what I'm going to talk about. In 2018, right before we were victorious with the farm bill we were looking at trying to figure out what's the connection of tribes and man because in my culture there's this word called which means heaven. So when you go talk to the elders they're like no, no, no, that's god. Well, I'm a stubborn monotony man and I'm not going to stand for that even if it is my elder. So I'm going to go look and I'm going to dig and I'm going to dig and I'm going to dig and figure out if that's really true. And sure enough, I go to the Library of Congress, I find this book, Anthropological Papers of the American American Museum of Natural History, Textile Fibers Used in Eastern Aboriginal North America. Look at this, you got these, all these different definitions. Now, Indian hem, dog mane, you start looking through it, it's just a directory of all these artifacts that are all throughout America. I found this bag in a Milwaukee public museum. It's got a thunderbird on the back on the front. It's got a water panther on the back. Made out of hem. They have prisoner ties from the Sac and Fox, they're in the Milwaukee public museum. Why don't you New York City, you look at the Aboriginal foe string on the Franklin tribes at the American Museum of Natural History. It was lost. They didn't happen. But there's documentation that did happen. So, you know, my whole conspiracy thing was like oh, maybe they just came in and took it because they didn't want Mark to find out that, you know, hem has been growing in America for a long time. I'm not saying it originated here. Let's just put that out there because there's a lot of haters out there in the world that don't like me. And they'll say, oh Mark, you grew hem all this whole time. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just curious if it can't do the trade routes or if it can't move with the colonists. That's all I want to know. Because regardless, our people were using hem. This is something I really wanted to hit home with you guys. If you guys haven't had a chance and you got some money to spend, you need to go to the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland. And you want to go to the Special Collections Division and you want to ask for the Leicester Dewey Files. Because you have diagrams of how to develop a Decodercator. So you're going to spend a million dollars on it. No, no, no, no, no. You go and you figure it out and you see what this is because I know there are a lot of good engineers in the Indian country, whether they are educated or uneducated. And I want to make sure that you all go inspired today and you go tell them that we need help with developing our Decodercators. People are taking pictures. Great. If you need more information, let me know, okay? But you can see it. These are just little they're just spinning inside. And then when you bring that hemp through it breaks down. I brought a hemp break today because I wanted to show you guys just how really simple it is to do it. Because it's really more than anything. Once you see it then you can figure out, oh okay I can probably develop a machine that can just do this without anything. People can do it. Because guess what? It takes six hours to process 15 pounds of hemp with this thing. Trust me, I did it. Like I said, so much information and there's more information in Washington, D.C. If you go to the National Archives there's more information about this stuff. It's just out there. But for the record, they are classifying some of the stuff because I've had some documents classified on me. So go out there quick. That's my contact information. This is my phone number and my direct line if you guys need to get a hold of me. That's my presentation you guys. I just want to say for being here and being present it's really nice to see this room packed. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start processing this hemp. You guys want to come up, you guys want to process it with me. I'm going to take questions while I'm doing that. Because I know we got it in time in this room. But I'm not taking these hemp stocks home. So anybody that wants to help me process these hemp stocks, please do. Because that's where they already drive with the hemp stocks hitting me in the face from time to time again. I'm not going to do it again. So with that that's it. So when you guys want to process this stuff sometimes you can do it in a bundle. It's really easy. Let me start going. It's called X59. It was developed in Canada I want to say. And it doesn't really have a lot of great fiber within it. It's just kind of really broken up. Because what happens is when you start growing hemp for seed the plant starts hollowing out. And so you lose a lot of fiber. So if you really want to grow fiber we go back to my talk earlier about when the hemp fiber was ready by like July 23rd you're going to want to basically cut it all down and start readying it in the field one to two weeks after that. This one here is a Chinese variety. It's either Yuma or Jin Mao. It's a beast. We go back to climate change again. These plants can handle a tornado storm. What's going to happen is they're going to be standing and then once that tornado rips through they're going to lay down. But they're going to grow back up again but they're going to be curbed. But then their root system right here expands and strengthens so they can withstand those storms. Another reason why you should grow hemp because when we deal with these crazy storms they're going to be coming through because of climate change it's going to be a good problem. Resilient. Mark What did you say about X-59? X-59 usually grows about 4 to 5 feet tall and what happens is that it hollows out so once you start growing basically you don't want to put it right back here and start laying it down and cracking it. Hold it. X-59 grows about 4 to 5 feet tall it has a really nice cola so it gets to all that seed but what happens is that you don't want to use it for a fiber material once it goes to seed but it's a grain drop regardless but basically it hollows out so you don't get as much material once you've run it through the process. So the big thing about the Chinese varieties is if anybody grows Chinese varieties in America you do not want to test it if it's sexed. Once it goes sexed it drops. So if it comes up as a hot crop wait a couple of weeks until it sexes and starts forming the seed and then it will decrease. That's a big thing you need to understand. I brought this green stock for a reason. One, it's a part of a genuine X-59 but two, it's a hard green material. You don't want this for processing because what you're going to do is you're going to really mess up a machine if you're going to be pushing it through. So what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to lay it in the field and you're going to want it to rep and what it's called is Reading is a whole process of you're basically breaking it down you're letting the environment mother nature take care of it for you. What's going to happen is you're going to go back in the soil so put the soil in a better status of being good in terms of good quality soil when you leave the stuff out of the field and sometimes you've got to lift it and let it degrade because you're basically degrading five materials in the outside and you want to make sure that when you do that that it does not get too moldy because it's a pain to deal with when it gets moldy. And another thing, biochar anybody that's in this room that feels a fertilizer and does not have fertilizer available you grow hemp, you burn this stuff you put it in your field I guarantee you're not going to have any weeds because I grew some varieties this past here and I use biochar it's a T.E.K. thing you know, like let's get down to it biochar is just like this new thing no no no, we made that we created that stuff and what we want to do is that the biochar has so much great material and you mix it with that soil perfect for just fertilizer a natural fertilizer um I wouldn't, I would she mentioned pond ready I would not recommend pond ready because what are you going to do with the water after it's done and you're going to create another whole environmental hazard because all that stuff, all the enzymes everything is breaking down up in that water and you just dump it out somewhere else and we'll say we go into the soil you have to think about that when you're dealing with this stuff I also process a lot of hemp using a hammer mill and this is what I got from it material is not separated out at all it's broken down significantly so you have to figure out a way to separate this stuff you should not separate it and use that for textile or like a composite, a bio composite and check by mixing it together what's really interesting is that Europe have BMW, Volkswagen, Audi they create all their door panels on their hemp what they don't use on the assembly line they basically sell it wholesale and they get shipped to Canada and they make these amazing briefcases real sturdy that's another thing you can think about I really want you guys to understand that when you come to Canada there is no blueprint on it we make it up we use our creativity our thinking that's something John Trudell talked about before he died he said you want to be a thinker because the fingers create the solutions in the world be a thinker that is the biggest thing that I'm going to ask you guys to walk away with is to be a thinker be a thinker so that you can come up with a really good idea to create something with this hemp because try the people we've always been the most creative this is what we can do to the world to create a hemp economy because no one else is doing it because everybody wants some money we've got to do it from the heart and we have to do it for the planet and we have to do it for the next seven generations so that's that's all I got to say