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Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
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Andrew Bish - Bish Enterprises
I'm Mark Falston, your host for today's episode, brought to you by the Rumbold Leftsy Law Firm. Today we're joined by Andrew Bitch, the Chief Operating Officer of Bitch Enterprises and founder of Hemp Harvest Works. Bitch Enterprises is based out of Giltner, Nebraska, which is in Hamilton County. For those who know Nebraska license plates, that's 28 County. Andrew, welcome to today's show. Let's start with your elevator speech. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what it is you do?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, thank you. Well, I guess I I'm a lot of different things. I've got two kids and a wife, so I'm I'm I'm a father and a husband. I operate a business, a family-owned business. I'd be the third generation operator uh out of uh Bish Enterprises, uh which is based in Gildner, Nebraska, a little town of 400 people. And and our business is actually out in the country and on the pivot corner of a cornfield. So we literally operate out of a cornfield here in central Nebraska. Uh in addition to that, uh I operate a uh sales organization called Hemp Harvest Works, which is uh hemp machinery focused, and I'm very proud to be the president of a nonprofit organization, the Hemp Feed Coalition, uh, which is a group of uh individuals working to legalize hemp as an animal feed ingredient to open up the market, uh the hemp market uh wider and provide rotational crop opportunities to farmers uh throughout the United States.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about hemp, but before we get there, I took a little look at the BISH Enterprises product catalog. You uh looks like you sell uh uh products that you not only manufacture but also resell for others as well. Can you tell our listeners uh perhaps what is the top-selling product that BISH Enterprises sells?
SPEAKER_02:Our core product is going to be what they call header adapters. Uh, that's what our business was founded on. My grandfather started our company by adapting headers from uh specifically John Deere headers to massey encase combines uh back in 1974. And we've worked to expand that out. We have over 120 different header combine combinations that we offer customers today. Uh, and and the purpose for that is uh really making it uh uh more financially uh viable for customers to switch between different combine manufacturers as well as use headers that maybe weren't designed for a particular combine, but a customer might be able to find on auction uh a little bit cheaper uh than a new header.
SPEAKER_00:And how does hemp harvest works differ from BISH Enterprises?
SPEAKER_02:Well, like I tell people that uh work um you it work in the hemp industry. You can always tell the people that have been here long enough because uh we have a history of uh criminal activity. Um Hemp Harvest Works was founded in 2017. And if you look into Nebraska state law, you will find that it wasn't until um uh 2018 before Nebraska actually legalized hemp. So Hemp Harvest Works was founded um specifically uh to help protect the main organization while we work to sell hemp in states that did have legal status.
SPEAKER_00:So why hemp, right? You know, there's a lot of alternative crops out there. I've known folks over the years who have raised sunflowers, uh, hops, uh, cover crops or cover crop seed. How did you get involved into uh hemp?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a great question. Uh you know, a lot of people that are involved in the hemp industry wanted to be involved in the hemp space and sought hemp out. Uh that's not that's not my situation. I didn't mean to get involved in hemp, to be completely honest. Uh you know, we as an organization, uh we tried to solve the needs of we tried to solve the needs that the big ag manufacturers aren't interested in solving. Um so a lot of unique crops we work with and a lot of unique products. It was back in 2015 uh that I was approached by a custom harvester based out of Colorado that was contracted to harvest a hemp field in the 2016 harvest season, and he had a lot of challenges uh in terms of having adequate equipment to do so. He had noticed a piece of equipment that we had constructed for the soybean industry and ultimately asked if we would we would attempt to use that in hemp. Uh, we went out there, had really good success, and that's the point that I realized that there's a group of farmers um that that really has nobody working with them in terms of providing solutions. And I felt like what we could do at Bish Enterprises was was turn our attention towards that group and see how we could be helpful to them.
SPEAKER_00:So can you probably better than anyone can give kind of a history of hemp in the United States? It's my understanding from what little I know that hemp was used as a fiber crop back in World War II, and then obviously later was uh criminalized for by virtue of you know the marijuana, etc. But uh there is value, there's been historical value in the fiber that it provides. But if you can give our listeners a little background on how we got uh where we are today.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So to your point, uh hemp was used widely throughout the United States, and was uh it it was uh prohibition began in the 20s with hemp. However, uh it uh it became legal again uh during World War II under specific uh specific applications. Um and so we did see some growing of hemp throughout the United States uh to help support the war area uh war uh effort in for World War II. Uh after the war ended, uh the prohibition of hemp uh continued on, and that continued ultimately until um Colorado uh was one of the first states to legalize hemp uh in 2015 as a crop. Interestingly enough, uh North Dakota has been growing hemp uh since 2012 under very specific research uh conditions. And a lot of people aren't aware of this, but even though hemp was uh in this uh prohibition state, hemp stock uh hemp stocks and hemp stock production was not illegal in the United States. So there were some companies uh that did import hemp stocks from uh Canada uh throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s, and and companies that imported uh uh uh hemp seed as as bird food uh because those those were those were not illegal. It was actually the growing of hemp that was was illegal. But um the 2018 Farm Bill changed everything for the hemp industry. Uh the federal government acknowledged uh hemp as a legitimate crop opportunity and uh legalized hemp uh throughout the United States uh federally.
SPEAKER_00:So you mentioned that BISH Enterprises is a third-generation company. Was your family at all hesitant about getting involved in the hemp market?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would say that uh my father had a lot of a lot of questions um about the direction that we were we were going, but the thing that I would I would say that that ultimately um I had in my back pocket was the fact that that this was not uh something that was necessarily driven by me, but rather driven by our customers. And and I his desire, uh my desire has always been to help the farmer, and and he acknowledged that what we were doing was helping farmers, and so he he he's he's embraced that. Uh I I will say uh not not as not as rapidly as I did, uh, but I I I would say that there was there was definitely um an uh an optimistic attitude uh towards it.
SPEAKER_00:So most of us have been involved in harvesting corn, soybeans, perhaps even grain sorghum. How does, from a mechanical standpoint, how does the harvesting of hemp differ from some of the other cash crops that uh we're used to here in Nebraska and the surrounding states?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'd say one of the biggest biggest things to consider with hemp that's different from a lot of crops is that most of the crops that we uh grow in the United States, in terms of cash crops, are grown for grain production. And grain is one of uh one of three possible outcomes uh that people are looking for with the hemp plant. So people will grow hemp sometimes for grain, sometimes for stock production, and then uh sometimes for flour production. So the harvesting techniques uh really have to be tailored to what the outcome of that crop is is going to be. So there's quite a quite an array of equipment that a person could use uh to harvest these things. Um however the the no matter what it is, the the biggest obstacle is gonna be the general formidability of the plant. It's it's a tough plant. Uh you know, hemp is known for having strong fibers, and that's what lends it to being very challenging uh with equipment is these strong fibers. Hemp does not like, well, maybe it does like spinning action, um, but uh it it tends to it tends to wrap up in any place that's spinning. Um most of the equipment that you're gonna use has some some spinning actions that are occurring. Uh and especially combines, for instance, in the United States, almost all the combines uh that people use in the United States are what they call rotor combines, uh, which is a big spinning drum inside of the combine. And that that just does not lend itself well well to hemp. So um the formidability of the plant, the those strong fibers, the things that give hemp its qualities in the marketplace are the exact qualities that work against it uh from a harvesting standpoint.
SPEAKER_00:Are there some states that are viewed as being leaders in hemp production? Have they have they gotten out ahead of other states as far as the amount of acres that they currently have in hemp?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so it it really kind of depends on what kind of hemp we're we're talking about. So if we're if we're gonna talk about uh industrial hemp, which is where we've spent the most of our time, uh, which is gonna be stock material producing herd, fiber, uh, or grain, uh we see states like Montana that have been highly active. Uh states like North Dakota, South Dakota. Uh South Dakota had the most amount of acre production in the United States the past two years, um, although Montana definitely rivals them in terms of uh overall production.
SPEAKER_00:Are there some soils or climates that were uh hemp uh uh uh does does better?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so hemp actually tends to do very well in places that are growing corn, soybeans, and wheat crops. So wherever you're gonna find those crops, hemp hemp lends itself to being an excellent rotational uh crop. Now, hemp hemp is not a big fan of a lot of water. Um some people say hemp doesn't need water. That's not true at all. Uh hemp certainly needs water, but uh when you compare it to corn, it it's gonna use about 60% of the water needs that corn would have. So it's a great way, especially in places where we don't have a lot of water. Uh Kansas, for instance, um, Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, into the Dakotas. Uh those those places specifically are gonna lend themselves very, very well to hemp production. Even Nebraska. Um hemp hemp would do really, really well. The challenge that we have in Nebraska is we we have a lot of high revenue crops like seed corn, um, and and the market price for hemp currently can't compete with with a seed corn crop, uh, but but but can definitely compete with uh in some of these other states uh that that have some some more difficult water challenges than than we've got here in Nebraska.
SPEAKER_00:So you're probably not putting hemp under uh center pivot?
SPEAKER_02:That's not true. We see a lot of hemp under center pivots, actually. We just don't uh we we don't see that uh i in Nebraska. So Montana, almost all the hemp is gonna be grown under center pivot. We see a lot of center pivots in in South Dakota. Um but it it's oftentimes just to get that initial water. Um sometimes the timing of when you plant hemp, you plant hemp very early in the season. Uh and if you don't get that water to those seeds, they they are not gonna come up. So uh the the pivots really aid in the the first part of the plant's life, um, and then are often often seldom used uh as the plant uh starts to grow.
SPEAKER_00:Paint a picture, if you would, for our listeners. What is the future of hemp? What does the hemp industry look like, say in 2030?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so what is it? It's 2024, so we're talking about six years out. What uh here's what I see. Um this last year in the United States, we grew about 20,000 acres of industrial hemp. I I anticipate, and I'm a little bit conservative, there's a lot of optimism out there for the hemp industry, and and it's gonna it's gonna grow, but it's gonna grow about 20 to 25 percent per year um over the course of the next six years. Uh that's what I see. So you look you look at 20,000 acres, uh, we might go to 25,000 acres um next year, and then we might go to 30,000 acres, and that might turn into 40,000 acres, and that might turn into 50,000 acres. It's not it's not gonna blow up uh overnight uh unless we start to see some sort of tremendous market pull. And even if we do see a tremendous market pull, we have a lot of logistical problems. I don't know, you know, you're you're in Nebraska, and I don't know if you've you've driven out and seen a hemp grain elevator anywhere.
SPEAKER_00:I have not.
SPEAKER_02:Well, neither have I. So those are challenges that the industry is gonna have to overcome. It's not I I would say that where we are in terms of uh plant production, growing the plants, even though we don't have all of that figured out, that's now the easy part. It's gonna be it's gonna be this logistics problem that we gotta sort out is is where is it gonna be grown, where is it gonna be housed, where's it gonna be traded from? How do we get it from point A to point B in a way that's economical? Because the economics of hemp right now are really what's working against it. The fact that we don't have enough acres, we don't have the volume, and then we don't have that infrastructure set up, what that's done is it's led to hemp being not as attractive just simply due to the the cost of the material. But if you could drive down the price of hemp to uh the end the end consumer um or even the the the person that's gonna be making a product out of hemp, if you could drive that price down by 15 to 20 percent lower than what we're coming in at right now, hemp becomes an extremely attractive crop uh under those circumstances. And then from a soybean perspective, if we were to compare it against soybeans, um we're not quite getting the yield that we need to out of hemp, although there's some good companies out there like New West Genetics out of Colorado that have developed some varieties that are yielding over 2,400 pounds um of hemp seed per acre. If if we could produce that consistently, even at today's prices with hemp, you you would have a real contender against uh soybeans uh for animal feed and food production.
SPEAKER_00:So given that there are no central markets where farmers just take their hemp and sell it, I assume most uh most of those growing hemp are doing so on sort of an individual contract basis?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. What we're seeing is there's there's some processing facilities out there, like uh I'll give you an example, I and D hemp out in Montana. They are they are a full hemp processing facility uh focused on both grain and stock production. So they're an oil seed presser. Uh they contract throughout the state of Montana, bring in material from farmers that they contract with in Montana. Um we go into South Dakota, we see that model uh carried through, but they don't do oil pressing in South Dakota. So those those producers are buying stocks only. Uh Wyoming uh has a stock and oil producer. Uh North Dakota has an oil presser, but not a stock stock uh production facility. And then you get into uh Kentucky, for instance, and another large large organization that's been around uh going back into 20 2016, Victory Hemp. Uh they're an oil seed uh presser and and protein manufacturer and and they're they're buying grain. So all of these companies, um even companies like uh South Bend down in uh uh Kansas, these companies are contracting with local producers typically within a radius of a hundred to two hundred miles around them in order to uh make it economically viable.
SPEAKER_00:And is there uh an industry association or someone out there trying to grow the market, trying to encourage more growers to get involved in hemp, to encourage uh perhaps uh expanded uses of the hemp plant?
SPEAKER_02:I would say the hemp industry is overly saturated with uh associations. Uh there's there's not another industry out there that has as many associations as the hemp industry. Um Do they get along? I mean, there's almost uh uh not not well enough, unfortunately, which is which which has stifled the industry. Um but there are some great groups out there. I'm a big fan of the National Hemp U Association. They they do a lot of work uh at the U.S. Capitol, um, trying to open up markets uh for uh for the hemp space. Uh there's some state-by-state organizations that are that are obviously working in their states to drive awareness and um uh grow the industry. And then uh what we do at the hemp feed coalition, I think is is probably one of the more uh of course I'm partial to to the hemp feed coalition, but I think what we're doing at the hemp feed coalition is the largest opportunity in the hemp space. Um, because by opening up the the market to animal feed, which which even though you can go buy hemp grain, hemp hearts in the store right now, uh in Lincoln, Nebraska, in Omaha, Nebraska, in Grand Island, Nebraska, shoot, in Aurora, Nebraska, I can go buy hemp hearts at the store. You can't take those uh that that hemp seed uh and feed it to a cow or or or feed it to uh another animal and then allow that animal uh to enter the stream of of commerce. But when we open up those opportunities, which is what we're focused on at the hemp feed coalition. Then the opportunities to grow this industry become tremendously advantageous because we have to lower the cost of production for hemp in order to make it viable, like I said before. One of the natural byproducts of grain production is stock production. So it really drives down the cost of stock material, which means fiber becomes cheaper, it means herd material becomes cheaper. That means the building materials that people are using hemp for become cheaper, the animal bedding becomes cheaper, the economics across the board uh start to change quite dramatically as a result of uh simply feeding animals, hemp seed meal or hemp seed oil or other parts of the hemp uh hemp seed.
SPEAKER_00:So, what's the protein in the hemp seed? I mean, if you're using that for animal feed, what what's the protein uh percentage that you generally find?
SPEAKER_02:So it it's a it's gonna be about 15% less than what we're seeing out of soybeans, but it's it's nearly double what we see out of corn. And it's got a uh an incredibly interesting nutritional profile uh that includes omega-3 and omega-fatty, uh omega-6 fatty acids. So for instance, uh we recently legalized uh hemp seed meal for egg-laying chickens. That's that's the first animal that's been legal to eat hemp, and that that became legal here federally in August, uh August 7th of this year. Um so if you were to feed your chicken hemp seed meal uh at a 20% ration, which is what's recommended, you would end up with an egg that has naturally occurring omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. So that means that we we fed the chicken uh an ingredient that was good for the chicken, um, that had health benefits for the chicken, uh, and then they're able to pass on some of those same benefits uh to the egg that then benefits the consumer. Uh so that that's really exciting. And because of the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acid profile, uh, we also see uh a reduction of joint inflammation in any of the animals uh that we're feeding hemp to. And that's that that's good for for all animals. And then when you look at it against soybeans, and I'm not against soybeans by any means, but I think soybeans is a great uh example of a good protein product that's out there, and it's hard to compete with. Uh hemp does not have estrogen in it. So um that that is not a uh a challenge that you have uh with with with that hemp plant.
SPEAKER_00:So often with uh innovation in agriculture, there's often a university, perhaps in an extension service, that's does a lot of research to help uh determine the benefits, to help determine and develop innovation. Is there a university system or a particular state that is is doing the bulk of the research on hemp?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we see there there's a couple universities that are doing uh, you know, I'd say yeoman's work in in this space. Uh first off, Cornell University uh in Geneva, New York. Um Cornell's main campus is in Ithaca. Their agricultural uh research station is in Geneva, New York. Um they they have one of the largest uh operating hemp farms and research facilities, um uh even partnering with the USDA. Um they they do some of their research on hemp right there at Cornell University. Um Dr. Larry Smart uh runs runs that program. You go into uh Kentucky and the University uh of Kentucky has been a leader in this space as well. Um so great people there at the University of Kentucky, really, really doing doing a tremendous job in terms of um uh research for the space. Actually, 50% of the entire USDA budget goes directly to the USDA. Uh sorry, the 50% of the USDA research dollars that they spend go right to uh the University of Kentucky every year. Um Purdue University in Indiana has been fairly active. Um, but definitely Cornell and uh University of Kentucky are are leading the way in terms of uh crop research.
SPEAKER_00:Andrew, I don't want to give our listeners the impression that BISH Enterprises only cares about hemp harvesting. What other innovations or what types of things are going on at BISH Enterprises relative to the other crops, cash crops that uh uh we're used to, corn, soybeans, et cetera?
SPEAKER_02:This year, for instance, we've done some really, really neat things with um some unique crops, such as wild rice. So we developed a wild rice header. A lot of people, almost nobody knows this, uh, but 90% of the U.S. supply of wild rice is grown in northern Minnesota uh in about a 50-mile radius. And so we've been working with some producers up there for the last couple years, uh developed a uh piece of cutting equipment and harvesting equipment that that we feel is is doing an exceptional job at reducing some of the field loss issues that they're having uh in terms of harvesting wild rice. Uh so that that's a really, really great uh product that's gonna help quite a few farmers. And then uh again, where wild rice goes right into the human food supply chain, uh, and and that's good for US consumers. Uh in addition to that, I'm actually doing some product testing later today on a uh a pickup header. This will be the uh world's uh largest production pickup header, it'll be a dual bed pickup header. Uh you can you can pick up any crop that that uh a person would use a normal pickup header for, but we specifically developed this for the ryegrass industry. Um they have a lot of challenges with field loss because uh ryegrass is a is a thin crop and it's hard to keep the combine full. Um and combines process uh most efficiently when they're full. And so the design of this header is really to bring in a larger amount of biomass material into that combine to help improve the overall efficiency of the combine, again, driving down some of those costs uh of production uh for that industry. And and we're blessed to be able to work with a local farmer here that's allowing us to swath their soybeans for doing this testing. I've never heard of people swapping soybeans, so this will be an interesting uh test uh for us to do. And then of course, each year we're developing uh as there's as there's new uh combines that come out into the marketplace, new headers, we're we're continuing to develop uh between two and three uh combine header adaptations every year to keep up and and and help those producers. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one of our uh most notable products uh from this last season, uh, because the reality is most farmers in Nebraska are corn farmers, right? They're corn and soybean farmers. We've got some hay farmers out west, but um we built uh one of the world's largest uh headers last year, a 27-row 20-inch folding corn header using all John Deere components. Uh purchase those components from our local acres dealer here in Aurora, Nebraska. And uh that that header is one of the largest capacity headers uh on the planet, uh running uh just east of Aberdeen, South Dakota.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it sounds ginormous. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_02:17,800 pounds of of header.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, Andrew, one of the things we always uh conc conclude our episodes with is uh asking our guests to, in one word, what's one word that describes and explains this great place in which we live and work, the state of Nebraska? And do you have one word that comes to mind? Perfect. That's a great way to wrap up, Andrew. Yeah, thank you enough for joining us today and for your time. And to those listening, thank you for joining. Please keep listening to 93 the podcast as we release additional episodes on Nebraska. It's great communities, Nebraska's number one industry, agriculture, and the folks who make it happen. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01:This has been 93 the podcast, sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm, Rumbold Flood Keys.
