What Can The U.S. Hemp Industry Learn from Europe

Lancaster Farming Industrial Hemp Podcast

This week on the podcast we talk to Robin Destiche and Corbett Miteff, two founding partners of KonopiUS, a company that sells seeds and consulting services.

KonopiUS specializes in seeds from Europe, importing genetics that work best for North America.

Miteff said the company is a conglomerate of three other businesses that were exporting European genetics to the U.S.

We “decided to kind of quit working against one another and try to make the industry successful. So we we became partners and started KonopiUS,” he said.

Destiche and Miteff teamed up with Hana Gabrielová, a longtime advocate and entrepreneur in the European hemp industry, and Bert James, an agronomist from North Carolina.

“It became very apparent that working together is clearly more advantageous than working apart,” Destiche said.

Founded in 2021, the company has farmers growing its seeds in about 30 states, mostly in the north.

“Some states grow better than others,” Destiche said. “We do work with European genetics, and their home latitude is a bit more north. We have found a lot of success operating 37/38 (degrees) north.”

As you go farther south, the days become shorter, and because hemp is photosensitive, these European varieties don’t do as well in southern climes.

Miteff and Destiche both lived in Europe for several years and have close ties with the European hemp industry.

In this podcast interview they talk about the difference between the European approach to hemp and the American approach.

The Europeans are more conservative in their business development, Destiche said.

“It took them a number of years in Europe, two decades really, to develop the amount of processors that they have now,” he said. “And the U.S. is probably going to have double the amount of processors next year.”

This wide-ranging interview explores many topics, from the history of the hemp industry in France to the future of the Farm Bill here in the U.S., including a look at how KonopiUS supports its farmers with genetics and agronomy support.

“Not only do we try to sell the seed, but we also make sure that the farmer’s successful and has a successful grow and sells his crop and makes a profit,” Miteff said, “because at the end of the day, if the farmer isn’t successful, then we’re really not successful.”

Learn more about KonopiUS: https://www.konopius.com/

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