HEMP BUILDING DIRECTORY 2022 LEADER PROFILE
Andrew Bish: Hemp is good for the soil and air quality What most interests you about hemp and hemp building and hemp growing and why? My background is in agriculture. I see hemp, good for our soil and air quality, as a strongly needed diversification tool for producers. Promoting and working with hemp as an alternative rotational crop is very rewarding, knowing that we can help people within the agriculture industry and even those who will never interact with agriculture outside of being a consumer of products. Regarding hemp building, the exciting part is finding ways to use this crop to make economic sense. If hemp were to clean our soils and air, but we couldn’t find another use for it, the crop wouldn’t become a mainstream commodity. Trying to save the world is great, but it’s economics that drives decision-making, and when we can couple those two things together, I get exceptionally excited.
What was a win for your company in the past year? The biggest win is our existence in general. We faced some very extreme pressures over this past year from multiple angles. Yet, we were able to persevere to the point where we are building out our second operating decortication line.
What is something about hemp building/construction/processing you 24 Hemp Building Direcctory | 2022
Andrew Bish, partner at Global Fiber Processing in charge of strategy, market research, and sourcing of equipment, land, and producers.
“I design, engineer, and manufacture equipment with steel. Nevertheless, working with some of the different levels of grind and the other binding agents has been a real eye-opener after spending this past year helping develop what I believe will be some fantastic products.” Andreew Bish, partner at Global Fiber Processing
didn’t know a year ago?
Virtually everything in the building and construction aspects of hemp is new to me. I design, engineer, and manufac-
ture equipment with steel. Nevertheless, working with some of the different levels of grind and the other binding agents has been a real eye-opener after spending this past year helping develop what I believe will be some fantastic products.
What challenges does the hemp building industry face that it must overcome in the next five years? Standards. That’s the answer. We must overcome the lack of across-the-board standards from genetics to processed material to allow for market-based trading appropriately and thus commoditization to occur.
