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This week, Kelly Burke, COO and co-founder of Kifcure and CEO of Emerald Acres, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss how she helped build the largest industrial hemp grower in Illinois.
Around 2017, Burke was working as a registered nurse when she decided to make a career shift and join a cannabis medical clinic in Illinois. She was quickly promoted and was soon running operations at multiple locations. But Burke had higher aspirations and decided to join her partner in an effort to launch Kifcure, a company charged with revitalizing industrial hemp in the midwest.
Burke immersed herself in the industry and soon became a leader and advocate helping shape new policy. At the same time, she helped build Kifcure into the largest grower and distributor of industrial hemp in Illinois.
Burke still works about 100 hours a week as she tries to remain at the leading edge of the turbulent hemp industry—where what you know to be true today may not be the same tomorrow. She says the industry is rife with opportunity but suffers from common misconceptions that come from outside the community.
As part of her effort to advance industrial hemp, she has helped launch the Northern Illinois Hemp Hub, a green manufacturing campus that could drive sustainable development and economic growth by offering expertise in hemp processing and manufacturing, biomass storage, farm services, seed sales and even sales and distribution.
On the regulatory side, industrial hemp is too often lumped in the same category as recreational cannabis, which Burke says has stifled progress. But she has heard regulatory rumblings from industry insiders, and change could be coming very soon.
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