- [David] We're in the northern end
of Martin County, North Carolina.
Just about a mile south of the Halifax County line.
Well we started raising chickens for Perdue
about 40 years ago.
We raised cotton, soybeans, and had raised peanuts and corn
and we've raised sage and now we're trying
to switch over to see what we can do with CBD hemp.
- [Frank] Growing hemp is not
just a budding business opportunity for David Mayer.
It's personal.
- And I've actually got Parkinson's 10 years ago
and one of my main things was
let's see if this will help Parkinson's
and I don't have any documented research
but I can tell you that I do know that the difference
in not taking it and taking it is big.
And so it really helps.
It helps you sleep at night.
That's one of the big problems with Parkinson's patients.
They can't sleep at night.
The tremors that come with Parkinson's,
it helps me control that.
I take the other medication along with it
but this in conjunction with the other medication
has really proved to be very effective
and it's enabled me to continue to keep doing stuff.
[loud beeping]
- [Frank] This is the cannabis sativa plant.
Yup, that's marijuana or a hemp plant.
And it produces chemical compounds called cannabinoids.
THC is the most well-known of those chemicals.
It's what gives you the high in marijuana
and growing it used to be illegal
but federal and state officials now approve
the growing of cannabis plants that contain
0.3% or less of THC but it also allows for the processing
of CBD oils that interact differently in the body.
- It's got so many possibilities that we just wanted to see
if we could get it raised in North Carolina
in an economically distressed area that needs a crop.
Tobacco is going out. I mean, tobacco is a crop
that used to dominate east North Carolina
and really was the financial backbone of it.
But since tobacco's down-slide the economy
of East North Carolina has really faltered.
And so if we can come up with a crop that,
not only replaces tobacco economically,
but think about the difference.
Tobacco is a negative health effect
and we're going to come in with
something that has positive health effects.
So, it would really be great and we would like to raise it
on a scale that the farmer can make money
and that general public can afford to use the medicine
without having to break his bank account.
- [Frank] And that has fueled a CBD product industry
with it's myriad oils, and capsules,
and gummies, and lotions.
- It's a natural health and wellness product
is how I would refer to it.
So with it being such a new space,
a lot of the regulation that's out there
tends to be around the state-by-state
growing regulations,
THC regulations
- We're coming in here manually clipping this plant
right at the bottom.
We're taking the whole plant
and we're taking it and drying the plant.
Once the plant is dried, we strip this portion of the plant.
These are the buds, but you see those crystal-like,
those shiny type things right there?
That's the concentration is,
so that's what we're trying to get right there.
That's where your CBD oil's at.
And once it's dried down to 10% moisture,
we strip this off of the stems and the stalk.
And that becomes what we call CBD flower.
From that point, it goes to the extraction plant.
- [Jose] So this is how it looks like.
So this is the dry leaves that we receive.
- And once you test it and everything
and it meets your specs.
- Than there is a proof, then it goes into production.
So the first step is to grind it
to mill it to a particle size.
As you see this is very fine powder.
As a fine particle it will improve extractability
of the active ingredients.
- [Frank] The company Criticality has renovated
a former tobacco warehouse in Wilson
and built this maze of machinery
that uses carbon dioxide to extract CBD oil from hemp.
- So right now, the main goal of this process
is to produce high-purity oil
to a high concentration of cannabinoids.
It's expandable but also we can do things
to modify the process if needed.
- Hopefully we'll end up being a financial resource
for the farm to substitute
some of the lower farm commodities
but the main thing we wanted to do was to see
if we can get a medicinal product
that had great potential out to the public.
- [Frank] Criticality is contracting with farmers
throughout North Carolina to process their hemp crop.
- Each farmer has to have a license
and their material is tested to confirm
that it has less than 0.3% THC.
We're a registered processor in the state of North Carolina.
And there's tremendous opportunity
for us as a business.
There's tremendous opportunity for us
to work with farmers and the historical farming base
that we have directly and through our partners,
but also then to connect with consumers.
You know, people who are ultimately
using our final product
help support their natural health and well-being.