$CNPOF $RIV.V Colorado Farmers Invent Novel Hemp Harvester

November 20, 2019

One of the biggest challenges that hemp farmers have faced this season is the intensive labor demands of harvesting their crops. Industrial hemp has only been legalized recently, so the existing machinery is ill-suited to harvest these plants. However, a pair of farmers in Colorado appear to have developed a solution to this problem.

Mike Meyer, who is a hemp farmer and Toby McCracken’s partner, said that McCracken was touching a hemp stalk with his fingers when inspiration to develop a harvester hit his brain.

He devised a way to harvest hemp while holding the hemp stalk. He developed an attachment that is to be fitted at the rear of a power chassis, which is manufactured by Oxbo. McCracken’s creation ended up being a novel hemp harvester whose patent is still being processed.

McCracken and Meyer became partners in 2018. According to Meyer, the majority of hemp farmers harvest hemp manually, and he has hope that the invented hemp harvester will help in improving efficiency in the booming industry.

He further said that harvesting 6-acres of hemp would take a full day for 12 workers. Using his invention earlier this year, McCracken, together with one other worker, harvested 40 acres of hemp within a day.

Meyer said that the hemp harvester is revolutionary, considering the time taken to harvest 40 acres.

The Revolutionary Hemp Harvester can be hooked onto the rear of an Oxbo power chassis. The device is fitted with combs that yank the hemp flower from the stem, and the conveyor belts move the flowers into the truck. The hemp harvester reduces the time taken to dry the flower since most of the water is retained in the stem. It reduces the cost of labor and the need for hand buckling.

McCracken said it is impossible to get laborers in Colorado.

His family owns the KLT farms in Olathe, they partnered with Meyer and formed a limited liability corporation referred to as the Revolutionary Hemp Harvester Equipment.

The two went further and opened a hemp drying facility occupying a 34,000 square foot plot in Delta.

Meyer and McCracken said that hemp flowers harvested using the invented harvester are dried within 24 hours while it takes more than one week to dry hemp flower harvested by hand.

According to a Vote Hemp Survey, there has been an increase in the number of licensed hemp farms in the U.S. since 2018 when the Hemp Farming Act removed hemp containing less than 0.3% of THC from the Controlled Substances Act. The number has increased from 100,000 to 500,000 plus hemp farms.

Meyer and McCracken collaborated with Oxbo in building the prototype. Typically, Oxbo develops new products in a period of three years; however, it took them 40 days to find a method of hooking the equipment onto a chassis. The chassis is used for harvesting green beans and sweet corn.

At the beginning of September, the harvester prototype arrived in Colorado. Oxbo mechanical engineer, Tyler Tetzlaff, said that the harvester has potential and that the company is pursuing means through which they can better develop the device.

To test the device potential, McCracken used the harvester to harvest hundreds of acres in Delta and Olathe.

He further said that although he has kept his invention a secret, word has gotten around and people in the valley have enquired about it.

This invention is farther proof of what hemp companies like HTC Extraction Systems (TSX.V: HTC) and Canopy Rivers Inc. (TSX: RIV) (OTC: CNPOF) have always said that the economic benefits of the industry are nearly endless, as this equipment inventor has clearly demonstrated.

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